Friedrich-Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf was Member of the European Parliament for the German political party Alliance 90/The Greens, part of the European Greens, from 1984 to 1987 and 1989 to 2009, and from 1996 to 2012 chairperson of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (ABL), an association for peasant-based or family-farming in Germany.