Many farmers in Lower Saxony, northwestern Germany, have been working non-stop for days to save their lands from the floods. Regional farmers' association Landvolk Niedersachsen estimates that all of the 35,000 farms in Lower Saxony have suffered water damage to their fields. "Several hundred thousand hectares of arable land and grassland have been flooded," says the association's President Holger Hennies. Hundreds of farm buildings were affected, "but fortunately only very few farms saw their stables flooded and had to evacuate their livestock."
In many parts of Lower Saxony, the potato and sugar beet harvest is at risk. Due to an extremely wet autumn, many paths were no longer navigable for the heavy machinery used for harvesting. Locally, many fields have been underwater since November.
Because of the floods and the large-scale damage, there are calls for the federal government to relax the "debt brake" enshrined in the Constitution. Under German law, fresh debt is limited to 1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in any annual budget. Additional borrowing is only allowed in the event of natural disasters or emergencies "that are beyond the control of the state and significantly affect the state's financial situation."
Source: dw.com