Eva Piepenbrock is specialist journalist of the year 2025

The German Trade Press Association honored top agrar editor Eva Piepenbrock as Trade Journalist of the Year 2025 at the B2B Media Days in Berlin on May 22, 2025.

With this award, the German trade press once again recognizes outstanding articles that impress with their in-depth research, linguistic precision and topical relevance. Eva Piepenbrock receives the €1,000 award for the article “Moss instead of milk”, which appeared in the Perspectives section of top agrar issue 2/2024.

The independent expert jury of editors-in-chief and publishing directors from various industry titles praised the “economic and ecological balancing act surrounding the rewetting of German moorland” precisely described in the article and the impressive pioneering spirit of a start-up. Piepenbrock impressed with its expertise, stylistic quality, originality and high sense of responsibility in dealing with complex issues. “The author describes the start-up spirit, weighs up climate targets against the economic interests of cow farmers, but without ever becoming one-sided or judgmental,” said jury chairman Prof. Dr. Lutz Frühbrodt from the Würzburg-Schweinfurt University of Applied Sciences in his laudatory speech, praising the strengths of the article.

„It is striking that the topic area ‘climate crisis and sustainable solutions’ is very well represented in the submitted articles compared to general reporting - and in a wide variety of facets. This shows that the specialist media and specialist journalism, with their unagitated approach, are often literally more sustainable than others,“ said Prof. Dr. Frühbrodt, praising the work of the specialist journalists. For the jury, this continues the trend of the submitted articles having their ear close to the pulse of the times.

“The reporting helps to understand the sustainable potential that still lies dormant in the topic of ‘peatland rewetting’ - but also the conflicting goals that still prevail in agricultural practice,” says Eva Piepenbrock, delighted with the award and the attention it has drawn to the complex topic. “I am keeping my fingers crossed that the start-up will be able to offer affected farmers an economically viable mainstay in the future.”

The two top agrar editors-in-chief Guido Höner and Matthias Schulze Steinmann congratulate their longstanding colleague. „The award is a great acknowledgement for Eva, but also for the entire top agrar team. And it is an incentive for us to continue to create a framework that makes it possible to present complex topics in a well-founded, understandable and entertaining way for our readers.“

“Despite all the potential that AI offers us, good journalism is ultimately done by competent editors like Eva Piepenbrock,” Dr. Ludger Schulze Pals, Managing Director of Landwirtschaftsverlag Münster, is convinced. „This is why we consistently focus on quality journalism in our media and are certain that this will continue to be of value to our readers in the future. Competitions such as ‘Specialist Journalist of the Year’ create the necessary attention for this.“

You can find the article ‘Moss instead of milk’ here.