The Federal Government provides financial support in order to ease the adjustment process and further the integration of eastern Germany’s agricultural sector into the European Union. Funds are also provided to help convert the former collective farms into competitive operations, a practice that has meanwhile proved successful. Net incomes have improved significantly. Many individual farm enterprises have made a considerable profit, among other things as a consequence of their good size. Federally financed measures have also cushioned the social repercussions of the swift structural changes.

Apart from maintaining food supplies, farming in densely populated, highly industrialized Germany has other increasingly important functions, including

^-conserving the natural sources of life, especially the diversity of species, the groundwater, the climate and the soil;

5>looking after the countryside to provide attractive living, working and recreational areas; and censuring a continuous supply of agricultural ("renewable") raw materials for the chemical-technical sector (industry and commerce) and the energy sector. In 1996, four percent of Germany’s arable land was already being utilized for this purpose. The Federal Government is supporting this alternative form of production through a new promotional concept.