Over 50,000 people took to the streets of the German capital Berlin on Saturday to demand that the government changes its farming policy and halt the increasing industrialisation of agriculture.

The mass protest against factory farming and genetic engineering of crops was timed to coincide with International Green Week, an agricultural trade fair held annually in the city.

Under the slogan: “We are sick of agribusiness,” protesters called for a worldwide right to food, legal restrictions to protect food and agriculture from genetic manipulation and an end to the establishment of mega-factory farms.

The protesters marched from Potsdam Square to the Federal Chancellery demanding rejection of the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement between the European Union and the US.

Jochen Fritz, spokesman for the alliance of more than 120 environmental, consumer and development organisations behind the protest, said that TTIP would ruin many farmers’ livelihoods.

“TTIP only serves global concerns and will take away the means of existence from many farms here and across the world,” he said.

Mr Fritz added that the agreement would also jeopardise consumer standards and that more than three-quarters of German pig farmers had had to give up their businesses since 2000, with large meat companies increasingly taking over livestock farming.

He called for agriculture to be based on regional markets.

“Eating is political. Every single decision I make about what to buy is determined by how the animals are kept or

what grows in our fields,” he added.

“I can make sure that I support the farmers and not the big agricultural industry corporations.”

The much-delayed TTIP, whose 24-chapter provisional text was made public last week after formal negotiations since July 2013, seeks to formalise the economic relationship between the EU and US across the board.

But the search for standardisation has led to wide rifts, especially in agriculture, with US-based transnationals such as Monsanto pushing for technological innovations, while the European public remains wary, despite soft soap from EU regulators.

Friends of the Earth Germany chairman Hubert Weiger said that years of protest against current agricultural policy were gradually having an effect.