Hermann Färber

Hermann Klaus Färber (born 26 March 1963 in Böhmenkirch) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a master farmer (Landwirtschaftsmeister). He has been a directly elected member of the Bundestag for constituency 263 Göppingen in Baden-Württemberg since 2013, and sits in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. In the 21st Bundestag he chairs the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat (Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft, Ernährung und Heimat), of which he is also a full member, serves as a secretary (Schriftführer) of the plenary, and is a deputy member of the Petitions Committee.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members' own statements, records a vocational-school education, an apprenticeship as an agricultural-machinery mechanic and qualification as a Landwirtschaftsmeister, then work on his parents' farm, which he later took over and ran on his own account. The holding was recognized as a training farm and was later relocated and rebuilt. He is a Roman Catholic, is married and has five children; his own site gives his wife's name as Irene and the year of the marriage as 1988. He sat on the Göppingen district council from 2004 to 2009, has been a CDU member since 2012, chairs the CDU branch in Böhmenkirch, and is honorary chairman of the Göppingen district farmers' association.

He has held the Göppingen direct mandate at each federal election since 2013. In 2013 the CDU took 49.0 percent of the constituency first votes (64,095), ahead of the Social Democratic Party of Germany on 24.2 percent, with turnout at 74.0 percent. The CDU first-vote share fell to 37.6 percent (50,892 votes) in 2017 and to 31.0 percent (41,558) in 2021, with the SPD again second, then rose to 37.1 percent (52,947) in 2025, when Alternative for Germany candidate Hans-Jürgen Goßner placed second on 22.6 percent and turnout reached 82.4 percent.

Färber chaired the Bundestag Committee on Food and Agriculture in the 20th electoral term and was elected chair of the renamed Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat on 21 May 2025, at the committee's constitutive sitting. He remains managing partner of Hermann Färber GbR, the family farm partnership in Böhmenkirch, for which the Bundestag publishes a monthly profit distribution of 750 euros, and he declares further paid roles on the supervisory board of Buchstelle LBV GmbH in Stuttgart (7,000 euros a year) and the advisory board of Kreissparkasse Göppingen (3,498.60 euros a year).

Early life and farming career

Childhood and schooling

Hermann Färber was born on 26 March 1963 in Böhmenkirch, in the district of Göppingen, Baden-Württemberg. He was the youngest of five children and grew up on his parents' farm there, and has described a childhood spent outdoors with the animals and an early interest in tractors and machinery; during his later mechanic's apprenticeship, he has written, the family asked him to take the farm on. The Bundestag biography, based on members' own statements, records a Berufsfachschule before his trade training.

Agricultural training

After primary school and the Hauptschule in Böhmenkirch, his own account lists an apprenticeship as a Landmaschinenmechaniker (agricultural-machinery mechanic), a further apprenticeship as a Landwirt (farmer), study at a Fachschule für Landwirtschaft, the qualification staatlich geprüfter Wirtschafter für Landbau (state-certified agricultural manager) and the agricultural master's examination. The Bundestag biography states the same endpoint more briefly: training as a farm-machinery mechanic and as a Landwirtschaftsmeister. Before he entered parliament his occupation was listed as Landwirtschaftsmeister in the family partnership Hermann Färber GbR at Böhmenkirch.

The family farm

That biography states that he worked in the parental business and later took it over, farming from then on his own account; that the holding was recognised as a training farm (Ausbildungsbetrieb); and that the enterprise was relocated and rebuilt (Aussiedlung und Neubau).

A Stuttgarter Zeitung profile in August 2013, when he was 50 and the Christian Democratic Union candidate for the Göppingen seat in the Bundestag, described a farm passed down over generations, with a first move out of the village, to Holzstraße, in 1910. In the 1990s a pig house for 350 animals was built at the edge of the village, and about four years before the article—around 2009—the family gave up dairying. The business then centred on pigs and Christmas geese: about 8,000 piglets a year were born and sold at twelve weeks, and the feed grain was grown on the farm. His father had built a winter snow-clearing round for private customers, and power generation on the new barn was another sideline. The paper called the holding his training farm, and he said that if he were elected, his eldest son, an employee and his wife would keep it going.

By April 2014 the same newspaper reported that the shift had taken place: 360 breeding sows, 20 hectares of grassland and 80 hectares of cereals and oilseed rape, with Michael, then 25, in charge, and his siblings Tobias, Daniel, Andreas and Hanna helping. Färber said that when he came home from Berlin the family no longer asked him how the pigs should be fed.

A September 2019 profile in ProAgrar, a magazine of the meat company Vion, said he had managed the farm for 25 years before 2013, after which he spent 23 sitting weeks in Berlin and the rest of his time in the constituency. It put the holding at about 110 hectares on the Swabian Jura, with sows and piglets, geese, goats, mobile hen housing, eight bee colonies and a small suckler herd. About 300 sows produced some 8,500 piglets a year to the premium criteria of the German Animal Welfare Federation for Edeka's Hofglück label, under a ten-year change, in stages, to outdoor-climate housing and straw, with keeping curly tails as the next step. Some 300 Christmas geese stayed on the surrounding pasture through the year and were sold directly. A small herd of Welsh Black cattle, bought the year before and called Black Welsh in the article, was not to exceed 20 cows, a ceiling he is quoted as setting for his wife and son. Michael, by then 30 and himself a Landwirtschaftsmeister, and Färber's wife Irene ran the farm; he still worked at times in the sow house. Poultry and direct sales were later offered as Hof am Leispel, an Aussiedlerhof at Holzstraße 26, where Tobias and Lisa are named as keeping the hens, pasture chickens and geese.

Local politics and farmers' organizations

Rural youth and the Kreisbauernverband

Färber's public roles began in the rural youth movement of the district of Göppingen rather than in a party youth organization. In his early twenties he became chairman of the Kreislandjugend Göppingen; the biography issued by the district CDU dates that office to 1986–1988. The Kreislandjugend belongs to the rural youth movement whose national umbrella, the Bund der Deutschen Landjugend, is the youth organization of the German Farmers' Association. Färber has written that the post first drew him toward politics: he organized events and discussions and met local members of the Bundestag, among them Manfred Wörner of the CDU, later defence minister and secretary general of NATO, the FDP parliamentary state secretary Georg Gallus, and the SPD member Heinz Rapp.

From 1988 he sat on the board of the Kreisbauernverband Göppingen, and from 1999 he was its chairman, again according to the CDU district biography. The association is one of 20 district organizations of the Landesbauernverband in Baden-Württemberg, which presents itself as the professional representation of the state's farmers, with about 30,000 members, and which belongs to the German Farmers' Association. The Göppingen body advises members on legal, business and farm-succession questions and represents them to local authorities. When Färber sought a Bundestag nomination in 2012, the Südwest Presse described him as the association's long-serving chairman. The same CDU biography lists him on the executive board of the state association from 2006 to 2022 and as district chairman until 2022. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own information, records him as honorary chairman of the Kreisbauernverband Göppingen; the state association's website names Ina Höfle as district chair.

District council and CDU membership

From 2004 to 2009 Färber sat on the Kreistag, the district council, with the CDU group but without a party card. The Stuttgarter Zeitung later called him a political lateral entrant and wrote that he had held no party membership in those years. The Bundestag biography likewise places his council service in 2004–2009 and his joining of the CDU in 2012. Reporting at the time of his candidacy did not fix the joining date in the same way. On 29 September 2012 the Südwest Presse wrote that he had been a CDU member for only two years. In August 2013 the Stuttgarter Zeitung headed the second page of a profile with the statement that the farmers' leader had been a member since 2011, and quoted him tying the decision to the Baden-Württemberg election of May 2011, when voters sent the CDU–FDP state government into opposition. "That was the moment for me to show my colours," he told the paper.

Within the party he became chairman of the CDU branch in Böhmenkirch. The Bundestag biography also lists him as chair of the CDU Baden-Württemberg specialist committee on rural areas. The district association's biography records him as deputy chairman of the CDU Kreisverband Göppingen from 2016 to 2024.

The 2012 nomination

The incumbent was Klaus Riegert, a former criminal-police officer from Süßen. He had entered the Bundestag in 1992, aged 33, in succession to the deceased CDU member Lutz-Georg Stavenhagen, and by autumn 2012 had sat for about twenty years. A Bundestag portrait the following year described him as the long-time sports-policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU group. He did not stand in 2013 after losing the nomination.

The nomination meeting was held on the evening of Friday, 28 September 2012, in the Autalhalle in Bad Überkingen. The Südwest Presse reported that the hall was full, that 503 CDU members cast valid votes, and that district chair Nicole Razavi announced the result shortly before 11 p.m. Färber, then 49, received 305 votes; Riegert received 198. Färber presented his wife, his family and his Catholic faith as his foundations and said he would say what he thought and do what he said. He called the margin a surprisingly large vote of confidence. Riegert told the paper only, "The Lord evidently has other plans for me." Razavi called the evening one of the most painful moments for a member of parliament, and added that every mandate was held only for a time.

A year later Färber rejected conspiracy theories then circulating in the district. He told the Stuttgarter Zeitung that he had not known who was in the hall or who had voted for him, and that a bus said to have ferried a voting convoy from Böhmenkirch had, his sister assured him, carried only about 20 people. He did confirm that the CDU local association in Böhmenkirch had shortly beforehand grown from about 30 members to about 100. In 2014 Riegert told the same paper that the vote had meant he was no longer considered good enough, and that he had misjudged the party. He believed members resented his living, after remarrying, in Kirchheim unter Teck, outside the district, though he said nobody had said so directly; the separation from his first wife, he added, had not been treated as a problem, but the remarriage had. He stayed in the CDU.

The 2012 contest was not repeated in that form. On 15 July 2024 the district CDU again nominated Färber as its Bundestag candidate, this time with 96.3 percent of the vote.

Elections to the Bundestag

The Göppingen constituency

Constituency 263, Göppingen, is a Bundestag electoral district in Baden-Württemberg. For the 2025 election it was identical with the rural district (Landkreis) of Göppingen: 38 municipalities and 642.3 square kilometres, on the northern edge of the Swabian Jura and along the Fils. The Federal Statistical Office map of the constituency, drawn to the administrative boundaries of 30 September 2023, labels the district seat Göppingen together with Geislingen an der Steige, Eislingen/Fils, Ebersbach an der Fils, Donzdorf, Uhingen, Süßen and the smaller communes, including Färber's home municipality of Böhmenkirch.

At the end of 2023 the district had about 259,200 inhabitants, 403.6 people per square kilometre, and a foreign-national share of 19.3 percent. Of socially insured employees on 30 June 2023, 39.4 percent worked in manufacturing. Unemployment at the end of November 2024 was 4.8 percent, and gross domestic product in 2021 was 33,499 euro per inhabitant.

The public broadcaster SWR describes the seat as one the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has carried at every Bundestag election since 1949. A constituency results series records CDU pluralities of the first vote (Erststimme) in 1998, 2002, 2005, 2009 and 2013, the last of them Färber's first victory. The Bundestag's biography, based on his own return, lists him as a member since 2013 and records his current mandate as the constituency seat for 263 Göppingen. For the election of 23 February 2025 the Baden-Württemberg state returning officer also placed Hermann Klaus Färber, a master farmer (Landwirtschaftsmeister) living in Böhmenkirch, at number 14 on the CDU state list. The seat he took was the direct mandate, which the Federal Returning Officer records in his name.

Results from 2013 to 2025

Färber won a plurality of first votes in Göppingen in 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025. The CDU share fell from 49.0 percent in 2013 to 31.0 percent in 2021, then rose at the 2025 snap election, which also had the highest turnout of the four. The electorate shrank from 179,130 people in 2013 to 174,712 in 2025.

On 22 September 2013, 74.0 percent of those eligible voted, 2.1 percentage points more than in 2009. The CDU received 64,095 first votes, 49.0 percent, a gain of 5.9 points, and the Federal Returning Officer names the CDU as the party of the elected constituency candidate. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) was second, with 31,646 votes and 24.2 percent; its candidate was Heike Baehrens. Next were Alliance 90/The Greens on 10.7 percent (Dennis De), the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 5.3 percent (Volker Münz), Die Linke on 3.6 percent (Thomas Edtmaier) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) on 3.4 percent (Werner Simmling). On the party-list vote (Zweitstimme) the CDU led with 45.8 percent, ahead of the SPD on 21.7 percent, the Greens on 10.1 percent and the AfD on 6.3 percent. The district administration's final table gives the same vote totals and dates the election to 22 September 2013.

For the election of 24 September 2017 the constituency returning committee admitted seven nominations, among them Färber (CDU), Baehrens (SPD), Münz (AfD), Dietrich Burchard (Greens), Hans-Peter Semmler (FDP) and Konstantinos Katevas (the Left). Turnout was 77.1 percent of 178,409 eligible voters. The CDU's 50,892 first votes were 37.6 percent, down 11.5 points, but still ahead of the SPD on 21.9 percent (29,730 votes). The AfD rose to 14.5 percent, the Greens stood at 12.1 percent, the FDP at 9.2 percent and the Left at 4.4 percent. Second votes put the CDU on 33.3 percent, the SPD on 17.6 percent, the AfD on 14.7 percent, the FDP on 12.6 percent and the Greens on 12.3 percent.

On 26 September 2021 the Südwest Presse reported that Färber, Baehrens and Münz were seeking another term, with Viktoria Kruse (Greens), Jan Olsson (FDP) and Eva Maria Glathe-Braun (the Left) also candidates. Turnout was 76.6 percent of 177,107 eligible voters. The CDU won with 41,558 first votes, 31.0 percent, down 6.6 points. The SPD, the runner-up, had 31,824 votes and 23.7 percent, a margin of 9,734 votes. The FDP took 12.3 percent of the first vote, the Greens 11.9 percent and the AfD 11.8 percent. The Free Voters, without a constituency candidate in 2017, took 3.3 percent, and dieBasis 2.1 percent; the Left fell to 2.2 percent. On the second vote the CDU still led, with 26.1 percent, against 23.4 percent for the SPD, 16.2 percent for the FDP, 12.6 percent for the Greens and 11.5 percent for the AfD.

The final result for 23 February 2025 names the winner as Hermann Klaus Färber (CDU): 52,947 first votes, 37.1 percent, a gain of 6.1 points. The runner-up was Hans-Jürgen Hilmar Goßner of the AfD, with 32,264 votes and 22.6 percent, up 10.8 points. SWR's guide to the constituency listed the other principal candidates as Franziska Blessing (SPD), Moritz Franz-Gerstein (Greens), Anna Ortwein (FDP) and Sabine Schapke (the Left), and noted that Baehrens was not standing again. The parties' first-vote shares were 17.0 percent for the SPD (down 6.8 points), 9.3 percent for the Greens (down 2.6), 4.8 percent for the Left (up 2.6), 4.1 percent for the FDP (down 8.2) and 3.1 percent for the Free Voters (down 0.2). Turnout rose to 82.4 percent, 5.8 points above 2021.

Second votes in 2025 put the CDU on 33.5 percent (up 7.4 points) and the AfD on 23.3 percent (up 11.8). The SPD fell to 14.4 percent (down 9.0), the Greens to 9.4 percent (down 3.2) and the FDP to 5.5 percent (down 10.6). The Left also reached 5.5 percent (up 3.0), the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) 4.3 percent, and the Free Voters 1.5 percent. The Stuttgarter Zeitung reported that on election night Färber said the CDU had won the federal contest and that Friedrich Merz would become chancellor, adding that he wanted a coalition with as few partners as possible. In Böhmenkirch he took 52.6 percent. Goßner, sixth on the AfD state list, told the paper he would give up his seat in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament for the Bundestag; in his own municipality, Albershausen, Färber still led him by 38.9 percent to 23.4 percent of the first vote. The same report noted particularly strong AfD second-vote results in the Göppingen districts of Bodenfeld, Faurndau, Jebenhausen and Hohenstaufen.

Roles in the Bundestag

Committee memberships

Hermann Färber has been a member of the Bundestag since the opening of the 18th electoral term on 22 October 2013, as the directly elected member for Göppingen. The offices recorded for him have centred on the agriculture committee, with the Petitions Committee (Petitionsausschuss) the other recurring assignment.

In the 18th term (2013–2017) the archived biography lists him as a full member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture (Ausschuss für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft) and of the Petitions Committee. In the 19th term (2017–2021) he kept both full memberships and was also a full member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and a deputy member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development. For the 20th term (2021–2025) the archived biography lists him as chair and full member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture and as a secretary (Schriftführer), and not on the petitions or environment committees or the advisory council. In the 21st term he is chair and full member of the renamed Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat (Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft, Ernährung und Heimat), again a secretary, and a deputy member of the Petitions Committee. The archived biographies for the 18th and 19th terms do not list him as a secretary.

Inside the CDU/CSU group he sits on its working group on agriculture, food and Heimat. The Bundestag sets committee size; the groups name full members and substitutes, and places follow group strength.

Chair of the agriculture committee

Färber has chaired the agriculture committee since the 20th term and was elected again on 21 May 2025. Bundestag vice president Andrea Lindholz (CSU) presided at that constitutive sitting of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat.

Hermann Färber speaks at the committee table after his election as chair on 21 May 2025; the nameplate reads “Vorsitzender Färber, MdB.”

The Council of Elders decides, by group strength, which group may propose each committee’s chair and which its deputy; one group is not supposed to hold both rights in the same committee. The entitled group nominates a member, and the committee elects by a majority of the votes cast. The minutes record an inter-group agreement that the CDU/CSU would provide the chair, and that Johannes Steiniger proposed Färber. On a motion by Franziska Kersten (SPD) the vote was secret: the CDU/CSU, the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens were in favour, the Alternative for Germany against, and Die Linke abstained. Of 30 valid votes, 29 were in favour and one was an abstention, and Färber accepted.

The deputy’s election was postponed because the Council of Elders had not yet agreed, under section 58 of the rules, which group would propose the deputy. Karl Bär (Alliance 90/The Greens), a full member, is deputy chair. The committee has 30 full members and 30 substitutes; the full seats are ten CDU/CSU, seven AfD, six SPD, four Greens and three Die Linke.

On 15 May 2025 the Bundestag, at its fourth sitting, adopted a CDU/CSU–SPD motion (Drucksache 21/150) to establish 24 standing committees, with the CDU/CSU, the SPD and the Greens voting in favour and the AfD and Die Linke abstaining. The agriculture committee was set at 30 full members and listed as the Committee on Food, Agriculture and Heimat. Its minutes and the Bundestag’s committee page use the title Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat. The minutes state that Heimat had passed from the Interior Ministry to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Heimat and so into the committee. In the 20th term the committee had been the Committee on Food and Agriculture, without Heimat in the name. Färber was first chosen as its chair on 15 December 2021, at a sitting led by vice president Yvonne Magwas (CDU). It then had 35 full members: ten SPD, nine CDU/CSU, six Greens, four Free Democratic Party, four AfD and two Die Linke.

The committee’s page describes a remit covering nutrition and food, health-related consumer protection, agriculture and forestry, hunting and fishing, environmental and climate protection, animal welfare and rural areas. At the May 2025 sitting Färber added that the work included securing the food supply, and that Heimat concerned rural and urban areas and the relationship between them.

Secretary of the Bundestag and other posts

The Bundestag sets the number of secretaries and may elect them together on proposals from the groups, shared out by group strength. Two sit with the presiding officer as the board of the sitting (Sitzungsvorstand), usually one from the government side and one from the opposition, and rotate across sitting days. They take motions and requests to speak, keep the speakers’ list, read out papers, oversee corrections to the plenary record and establish voting results. The 21st term has 64 secretaries. On 22 May 2025 they were elected without debate from Drucksache 21/215: 21 CDU/CSU, 15 AfD, 12 SPD, nine Greens and seven Die Linke. Färber is on the CDU/CSU list in that paper, as the 20th-term biography had already listed him as a secretary.

The Petitions Committee handles requests, complaints and suggestions from the public. Article 17 of the Basic Law gives everyone the right to address requests or complaints in writing to the competent bodies and to parliament; Article 45c requires a Petitions Committee for those addressed to the Bundestag. In the 21st term it has 26 full members and deals with petitions within federal competence. Färber was a full member in the 18th and 19th terms and is a deputy member in the 21st.

Agricultural and food policy

Common Agricultural Policy and regulation

On 10 June 2021 the Bundestag passed the national laws for the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy from 2023. Direct payments passed with the CDU/CSU and the SPD against the AfD and Alliance 90/The Greens, the FDP and Die Linke abstaining; conditionality with the CDU/CSU and the SPD against the Greens, the other three abstaining. Cross-compliance became conditionality, including standards for good agricultural and environmental condition (GLÖZ). Of an annual EU allocation of about €4.9 billion, a share rising from 10 percent in 2023 to 15 percent in 2026 was to move into rural development, and 12 percent was reserved for a redistributive payment to smaller and medium-sized farms.

With agriculture spokesman Albert Stegemann, Färber called this a system change: payments tied to ten main GLÖZ standards, and 25 percent of first-pillar money for voluntary eco-schemes, which he said would cut the per-hectare payment from €250 to €150. Eco-schemes, he said, had to be practical, pay a real incentive and not duplicate the Länder's agri-environment schemes; Stegemann added that the rules, including for grassland, had to be meetable by as many farms as possible. A Green motion accusing the government of a weaker line in the Council than in the Bundestag was rejected by the CDU/CSU, SPD, AfD and FDP, with Die Linke abstaining.

On 30 January 2025 Färber, chair of the agriculture committee, proposed a mandatory bureaucratic-impact test for farm laws and criticised "calendar farming": fixed dates instead of farmers' judgement. Susanne Mittag (SPD) called the pledges generalities; Johannes Kretschmann (Greens) said they ignored farm closures, species loss and climate; Bernd Schattner (AfD) said the Union had copied his group; Artur Auernhammer (CSU) tied support to food security. The motion and an FDP text on new breeding methods went to committee. On 26 June 2025 the Bundestag passed a CDU/CSU–SPD bill (Drucksache 21/328) postponing by a year two eco-schemes added in 2024 — dairy grazing, and biodiversity areas inside a holding — because funds for 2026 and 2027 needed a longer lead time. The CDU/CSU and the SPD voted yes; the AfD, the Greens and Die Linke no. Only the Greens and Die Linke backed a motion to start the schemes in 2026 as planned.

On 19 June 2015 Färber opposed a ban or tighter rules on glyphosate. He compared the International Agency for Research on Cancer finding that it was probably carcinogenic with mate tea and hairdressing, placed in the same category, and said other World Health Organization bodies and the European Food Safety Authority had not treated the suspicion as proven. Harald Ebner (Greens) demanded a precautionary ban; Kirsten Tackmann (Die Linke) said questioning the IARC was unacceptable. The House rejected The Left's motion and referred the Greens' motion to committee. In December 2023, as protests began against ending the agricultural-diesel rebate and the vehicle-tax exemption for farm and forestry vehicles, the Südwest Presse reported that Färber backed the farmers, while Heike Baehrens, the SPD member for the same Göppingen constituency, pointed to possible corrections in parliament.

Animal welfare and livestock farming

On 16 June 2023 the Bundestag passed the government's husbandry-labelling law without a roll-call vote: the SPD, Greens and FDP for; the CDU/CSU, AfD and Die Linke against. It required a state label, at first for fresh unprocessed pork from pigs finished in Germany. A companion bill easing permits for stalls adapted to the label passed with the coalition and the AfD against the CDU/CSU and Die Linke.

He asked Susanne Mittag of the SPD how piglets castrated below German standards — demonstrated to a joint delegation in the Netherlands and Denmark — could receive the highest state label after a few weeks' finishing in Germany. Mittag said rules for piglets, boars and sows would follow later that year. In a written explanation he said he wanted higher standards but rejected the bill. It covered only pigs, so only about 60 percent of a pig's life was labelled, and imported piglets — one in three, he wrote — castrated abroad without anaesthetic could still take the top grade. Foreign suppliers needed only a self-declaration; catering and processed meat, about two thirds of sales on his figure, were excluded; €1 billion for conversion would not suffice; and the Borchert commission had been ignored. Farms would give up livestock and production would move abroad, he argued. On abgeordnetenwatch.de he said most farmers would like more space, occupation material and straw, but conversions cost millions, and he called the gaps — domestic pork only, about 30 percent of carcass marketing, breeding sows and piglets omitted — "state-ordered consumer deception". FDP member Ingo Bodtke presented the act as the conversion earlier governments had not delivered, joining welfare, farm economics and information for buyers.

The Kompetenznetzwerk Nutztierhaltung, chaired by former minister Jochen Borchert, had in February 2020 proposed long-term state premiums and a stepwise rise above the EU baseline for the whole sector, then disbanded on 22 August 2023. Building-law changes, the label and the start of a premium still left most farms without a basis, it wrote: neither the previous legislature nor the coalition's first two years, nor the draft 2024 budget, had produced legally secure contracts for ongoing premiums or money to convert a rising number of organic and conventional farms. In May 2025 Färber told Agra-Europe that the new CDU/CSU–SPD agreement did not exclude help with running welfare costs, unlike Stegemann, who wanted only investment grants for buildings. The Borchert concept still had "a high priority", Färber said; whether long-term funding could be made legally secure, and whether the concept needed changes, had still to be examined. "More animal welfare, as people want it, cannot be achieved through the market alone."

Food, forests and rural areas

On 14 March 2024, on the citizens' assembly "Ernährung im Wandel", Färber treated its call for food education as the foundation of the other recommendations. Passing edible food to charities such as the Tafel, he said, required a check of edibility — feasible for fruit, vegetables and bread, not for sealed goods such as yoghurt — and any state label or VAT cut for processed foods of mixed origin should also state process standards and where ingredients came from. He asked that the recommendations go to the agriculture committee rather than be met only with a list of obstacles.

On 26 January 2023, for a CDU/CSU motion, he cited 11.4 million hectares of forest, about two million private and municipal owners, almost €13 billion of damage from drought, storms and bark beetles, and 450,000 hectares to replant, which timber sales could not fund. He wanted a simple, market-based payment for carbon storage and climate adaptation, without set-aside — "not the set-aside forest, but the sustainably used forest" — and said the ministry's €900 million programme through 2026 did not pay for the carbon sink. The House adopted the committee's recommendation to reject the motion, with the governing parties, the AfD and Die Linke in favour of rejection and only the Union against. Receiving the Schutzgemeinschaft Deutscher Wald's Goldene Tanne on 21 May 2025, he blamed heat, drought, storms and pests rather than forestry, and argued for mixed stands and continued timber use.

Other political positions and constituency work

Transport and the B 10

Outside agriculture, the constituency question most closely tied to Färber is the B 10 in the Fils valley. Baden-Württemberg, planning for the federal government, is preparing about eight kilometres of new road from Gingen/Ost to Geislingen/Ost, to take through-traffic around Kuchen and Geislingen an der Steige in the district of Göppingen. In the federal requirement plan, Gingen/Ost to Geislingen/Mitte is priority need and Geislingen/Mitte to Geislingen/Ost is further need with a right to plan; the two stretches are being designed together. At the November 2024 planning stage the Stuttgart regional council put the cost at about €374 million. The route includes tunnels and valley bridges and affects protected habitats, water-protection zones and old mines used by bats.

Färber has called that listing in the Bundesverkehrswegeplan 2030 his own result after he entered the Bundestag in 2013. In a written reply in the summer of 2024, which he later stood by, he said the Geislingen section had been missing from the plan and that he had restored it, with the whole route planned as one project and the eastern part raised to "further need with a right to plan". Repeated on 15 February 2025 in Gruibingen, the letter said an FDP transport-committee member had argued for a route toward Laichingen and had nearly got the bypass downgraded or dropped. The district Free Democratic Party, through Bundestag candidate Anna Ortwein, called that demonstrably false and an attack on the late FDP parliamentarian Werner Simmling. The liberals said a government of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Alliance 90/The Greens had removed the bypass in 2003, that the FDP had always wanted the Geislingen route, and that the CDU owed a correction. They set a deadline of 19 March. Färber refused, telling the Stuttgarter Zeitung he was repeating private conversations, not attacking Simmling, and that the FDP was confusing the 2030 plan with a draft. He said the deadline email had not arrived. The paper reported both accounts without deciding between them.

On 18 March 2025 the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport gave formal consent, a Gesehenvermerk, to the draft, so the state could prepare planning approval (Planfeststellung). Transport minister Winfried Hermann and Susanne Bay, president of the Stuttgart regional council, called it a milestone toward relieving Geislingen and Kuchen of through-traffic. The Stuttgarter Zeitung reported that the state hoped to open the procedure in 2026. The council's project page, describing the position after that consent, still listed a traffic forecast extended to 2040, wildlife surveys in 2025 and land-acquisition plans, with the procedure to begin only once the file was complete.

Energy, climate and other issues

Published positions on energy and climate are mostly votes and replies to voters. On 8 September 2023 Färber voted against the federal bill amending the Gebäudeenergiegesetz (building energy act), the heating-costs ordinance and the chimney-sweep rules (Drucksachen 20/6875 and 20/7619). It passed by 397 votes to 275, with five abstentions. In September 2021, answering a voter who accused the CDU of blocking action on man-made climate change, he wrote that the charge was false: the party had recognised anthropogenic warming, adopted a climate package and a coal exit, and in May 2021 raised statutory targets to a 65 percent cut by 2030 against 1990, at least 88 percent by 2040 and greenhouse-gas neutrality in 2045, within the Paris Agreement. He argued for European and international measures as well as national ones. In February 2025 he wrote that he saw no concrete plans to return to nuclear power, but that the option should stay open because he regarded it as safe and climate-friendly, while renewables had priority. On transport he favoured technology-neutral competition and emissions trading, so as to cut carbon without removing rural mobility. He rejected a general motorway speed limit, writing that it would not add climate protection and that safety limits already covered 30 percent of the network.

The non-agricultural vote that drew the sharpest local comment was on migration. On 29 January 2025 he voted for a CDU/CSU motion tabled with a government statement on domestic policy (Drucksache 20/14698). The Bundestag adopted it by 348 votes to 344, with 10 abstentions. Deputies of the Alternative for Germany, including Göppingen member Volker Münz, and FDP members including Christian Lindner also voted yes; SPD deputy Heike Baehrens and Green co-leader Robert Habeck voted no. The Südwest Presse reported the sitting as an asylum vote carried with the AfD: Baehrens was "appalled and agitated", Münz saw core demands of his party met, and Färber rejected the criticism. On 20 February 2025 he wrote that municipalities were overloaded and that he wanted stricter border controls, faster asylum decisions and returns, and limits on social benefits, with language courses for people granted protection, while leaving housing to the municipalities.

Outside income and organisational ties

Members of the Bundestag may keep a profession alongside the mandate. Section 44a of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz) states that the mandate is the centre of a member's activity, while work of a professional or other kind remains generally permissible. It prohibits paid representation of third parties before the Bundestag or the federal government, paid advice immediately connected with the mandate, and benefits given because representation of the payer's interests is expected. Under the code of conduct in sections 45 and following, notifications are due within three months of taking the seat, and changes within three months; after a check of whether publication is required, they appear on the member's Bundestag page. Notifiable income is published as an exact amount in euros and cents, labelled as gross or as profit.

Declared activities and earnings

Färber's published pre-mandate occupation is master farmer (Landwirtschaftsmeister) in the partnership Hermann Färber GbR at Böhmenkirch. The current disclosure lists him as its managing partner, with a monthly profit distribution of €750, and records the same partnership as a shareholding whose income is that distribution. In the archived disclosure for the 20th electoral term the distribution was €500 a month until 31 December 2024 and €750 from 1 January 2025.

A seat on the supervisory board of Buchstelle LBV GmbH in Stuttgart is listed at €7,000 gross a year. The archive shows €5,000 gross a year until 31 December 2022 and €7,000 from 1 January 2023, plus irregular payments of €600 in 2021 and €1,200 in 2022. The company is registered at the Amtsgericht Stuttgart as HRB 10393. Its registered object, citing section 4 no. 8 of the Tax Consultancy Act, is assistance in tax matters and help with bookkeeping for agricultural and forestry holdings within the meaning of the Valuation Act.

On the advisory board of Kreissparkasse Göppingen the published remuneration is €3,498.60 gross a year, with irregular payments of €238 in each of 2021 and 2022 in the archive. Membership of the representatives' assembly of Volksbank Göppingen eG is marked honorary. The customer advisory board of R+V Allgemeine Versicherung AG in Hannover is named without a published amount. The archive also recorded an unpaid advisory-board seat at AR Agrar-Redaktion GmbH in Stuttgart until 31 December 2024. Abgeordnetenwatch carries the current farm, Buchstelle and savings-bank lines.

In June 2026 agrarheute, using figures compiled by Abgeordnetenwatch and Der Spiegel, compared side income on the agriculture committee. It reported the two largest totals in the Bundestag as those of committee members Ophelia Nick, about €2.7 million since March 2025 from company profit distributions, and Alexander Engelhard, about €1.5 million, almost entirely from an organic mill. On that reckoning Färber, a CDU member and the committee chair, stood at just under €21,000; Carolin Bosbach was put at €66,144, from employment and lecture fees; and 14 of the committee's 30 members had no declared side income. Färber's Abgeordnetenwatch profile states that he has not made the platform's voluntary transparency pledge. Offered to candidates before the 2021 election, it asked for individual commitments to a ban on corporate donations to parties, an independent scrutiny body, an effective lobby register, and disclosure of members' income, expenditure and lobbying contacts.

Agricultural organisations and the interest debate

The 20th-term archive lists Färber as chair of the board of Kreisbauernverband Göppingen e.V., in Eislingen, until 12 April 2022; as a member of the board of the Landesbauernverband in Baden-Württemberg e.V. until the same day; and as a member of that association's executive board (Geschäftsführender Vorstand) until 12 July 2022. No remuneration is published for those posts. The CDU district association in Göppingen dates the district chairmanship to 1999–2022, district-board membership to 1988–2022 and the state executive-board seat to 2006–2022, and lists him as honorary chair. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own statements, also lists the honorary chairmanship.

In the 2021 campaign, Parents for Future put Färber on its "Rote Klimakarte" series of candidate profiles. The profile, an advocacy sheet rather than an official inquiry, tied him to agriculture through the district chairmanship, the state executive board and the supervisory board of what it called Buchstelle Landesbauernverband Baden-Württemberg GmbH, described as tax advice, business advice and bookkeeping. It argued that, through Bundestag committees and influence in the parties, especially the CDU, the German Farmers' Association (Deutscher Bauernverband) shaped agricultural, food and environmental policy and had repeatedly blocked or diluted rules on fertiliser, large-scale livestock farming, stable emissions, glyphosate and animal protection. It cited a Süddeutsche Zeitung report that 13 of 17 CDU/CSU members of the then food and agriculture committee had a link to the sector. The Bundestag pages present the offices and fees as notified outside activities. Neither those pages nor the 2026 agrarheute comparison records a finding by the Bundestag President, a court or another regulator that the posts breached the rules on outside earnings or paid interest representation.

Personal life

Family and residence

The Bundestag biography of Hermann Färber, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own information, records that he was born on 26 March 1963 in Böhmenkirch, in the district of Göppingen in Baden-Württemberg, and that he is Roman Catholic, married and the father of five children. On his website he names his wife as Irene, gives 1988 as the year of the marriage, describes the five children as adults, and states that the family farms in Böhmenkirch, on the Swabian Jura. In a separate personal account he writes that sittings in Berlin take up much of his time, that the day-to-day running of the holding has passed to his sons, and that he still treats the Göppingen district as home. The parliamentary biography does not give a private street address. It lists a Bundestag office at Platz der Republik 1 in Berlin and a constituency office at Heidenheimer Straße 68 in Süßen.

Local associations

A curriculum vitae published by the Göppingen district association of the Christian Democratic Union lists membership of the Freiwillige Feuerwehr Böhmenkirch, the municipality's volunteer fire brigade; the Musikverein Böhmenkirch; the Schützenverein Hubertus Böhmenkirch, a local shooting club; and the Böhmenkirch group of the Schwäbischer Albverein. The Albverein, founded in 1888 in Plochingen, describes itself as Europe's largest hiking association, with about 75,000 members, and says it maintains waymarked paths. Its Böhmenkirch group says it was founded in 1962 and has about 100 members.

The same curriculum vitae names Färber as president of the Chorverband Hohenstaufen, a Göppingen-area choir association, from 2014 to 2023. In the Bundestag register of outside positions for the 20th electoral term, the office is recorded as honorary chair of the association's presidium, ending on 2 November 2023. At the 99th general meeting in Böhmenkirch, an association account published by Filstalexpress on 18 November 2019 said that delegates re-elected him unanimously as chairman, and that he welcomed them in his home municipality ahead of the association's centenary.

On 30 July 2020 Filstalexpress carried a release from Schwabenkitz e.V. naming Färber, then chair of the district farmers' association, as a founding member. The Göppingen group joined hunters, farmers, forest owners and conservationists, including a deputy chair of NABU, to find fawns with a thermal-imaging drone before mowing and to involve children in nature projects around the Hohenstaufen. The release called him a farmer and hunter.

The curriculum vitae also lists membership, without an executive post, of the Björn Steiger Stiftung and of the BRH Rettungshundestaffel Mittlerer Neckar, and names him a founding and committee member of the Göppingen district branch of the Schutzgemeinschaft Deutscher Wald. The Steiger foundation, based in Winnenden, was set up on 7 July 1969 by Ute and Siegfried Steiger after their eight-year-old son Björn was fatally injured in a road accident on 3 May 1969, when an ambulance was slow to arrive; it campaigns for faster emergency care in Germany. The rescue-dog squad trains volunteer teams for area, rubble and trailing searches and is called out by police in Göppingen and Esslingen districts. On 21 May 2025 in Bonn the national forest association awarded Färber its Goldene Tanne, an honorary prize for work on the future of forests, and referred to him as a forest owner.