8 - West German Agriculture and the European Recovery Program, 1948-1952

Summary

Agriculture and the agricultural policies of West Germany have been the focus of criticism for over forty years. Overproduction, typified by seas of excess milk and mountains of excess butter, leads to the question of whether the opportunity to build a “healthy” agricultural development policy was not missed. Moreover, the new beginnings of postwar agricultural policy during the founding stage of the Federal Republic of Germany between the currency reform and the first legislative period (1948-53) leaves the impression of the restoration of the old German peasantry and of agricultural protectionism and a general failure to attain the goal of a free market economy.

This argument overlooks three fundamental developments in the process of making agricultural policy:

1. the peculiarities of agricultural production in comparison to industrial production;

2. the structural agricultural inheritance in the Western zones as a result of the division of Germany; and

3. the limited negotiating room and the weak means of intervention on the part of state agricultural policies.

The long-term view of growth and change in agriculture of the Federal Republic of Germany leads to the conclusion that this former orthodoxy of continuity was mistaken. Even before the creation of a joint agricultural market by the European Economic Community (after 1957) the German agricultural system distinguished itself fundamentally from the agricultural systems of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Innovation rather than restoration determined all aspects of the character of agriculture: land, capital, labor. But what role did the European Recovery Program (ERP) play in this change? Was it the decisive prelude to change or merely an accompaniment to a reconstructive process coming from German initiative? In other words, should one speak of an "Americanization" or a “Germanization” of West German agriculture in the years between 1948 and 1952? At the time, the former was clearly associated with fundamental modernization and freedom in trade policy, whereas the latter could hardly avoid the reproach of archaic protectionism.