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“Ursula, we are here!” was written by angry farmers in giant yellow letters visible from above on the Paris-to-Brussels motorway.
The message was written in chalk on the road with equal parts defiance and desperation, warning European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen not to ignore farmers’ concerns for better prices and less bureaucracy. .
The European Union will hold a summit on Thursday, but von der Leyen and other EU leaders in attendance can only ignore the plight of farmers at their own peril.
Here’s why European farmers take their anger to the streets.
history
World War II spread famine across the rich continent. When the war ended, Western European leaders knew that the way to people’s hearts was through their stomachs. Agriculture thus became an occupation located in the cradle of what is now the European Union.
Agriculture was encouraged and heavily subsidized to eradicate the idea of starvation.
This has helped many family farmers escape poverty. Some major landowners have turned into global food giants.
What went wrong?
Today’s harvests for small and family farmers are nothing like what was sown back then, and too many farmers are facing financial hardship or worse.
The EU is now seen by many as an enemy rather than a benefactor, sitting aloof in an ivory tower imposing bureaucratic rules on small-scale farmers, while its leaders, like the world’s agricultural powers and wartime China is believed to be willing to ease import restrictions on countries such as Ukraine.
“Ursula has the audacity to go to Kiev, but she doesn’t have the courage to come and see us,” farmer Jean-François Deflandre said from next to a message on a chalk highway in Halle, near Brussels. He complained.
Why is there so much anger?
The same anti-EU message can be seen from Lithuania and Belgium to France, Spain and Italy.
At the exit of a motorway near Rome, farmer Paolo Pepponi was part of a crowd blocking the road.
“It is not a Europe of people, it is not a Europe of working people,” Pepponi said. “It’s multinational corporations that control Europe. That’s why we’re all in the middle of the road.”
The vision for EU agriculture from the beginning was economies of scale: larger farms, larger holdings, and the setting of standard rules across borders. And as long as subsidies were plentiful, complaints were suppressed. Because farmers were paid for their crops without regard to customer demand, hunger was replaced by “mounds of butter” and “lakes of wine,” resulting in waste.
But an undercurrent of anxiety soon developed between farmers who live with the changing seasons and climate, and EU officials with rulers and calculators at the ready.
Take it easy
Each update to the EU’s so-called Common Agricultural Policy has sparked dissatisfaction as smallholder farmers feel increasingly alienated from the new policy but are forced to adapt in order to survive.
In 1971, 100,000 farmers gathered at EU headquarters in Brussels in violent protests that left one person dead and dozens injured.
Then, over the past few decades, pollution has also started to affect them negatively, mostly from industry, but partly from agriculture itself. Agriculture has allowed nitrates to seep into the ground, and cows have pumped methane into the sky. Once again, more rules were imposed on farmers with more costs, further widening the gap between pasture and political office.
Technocrats and globalization
“The problem is with the technocrats, they listen too much to the ecologists,” Benoît Lacou, a farmer from Sedan in northern France, pointed at the EU office during a protest last week, furious. Rather, he said, “We are the ones who have the common sense in agriculture.”
As if problems from within weren’t enough, increasing globalization has opened the door for imports from places like New Zealand and Chile to be cheaper than ever before. People feel they have to do agricultural work with their hands tied behind their backs. Even in the face of all sorts of strict and expensive regulations, importers don’t necessarily have to follow the same regulations, making it much easier to drive down prices.
“The market could be flooded with products that really aren’t of the same quality,” said Nicolas Abbelos, a farmer in southern Belgium. “We are forced to sell our products at very low prices.”
Why now?
Over the past two years, the problem has reached critical mass for farmers.
Crops are being destroyed by unprecedented droughts, fires and floods caused by climate change. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has dealt a blow to the economy. Russia’s war in Ukraine has caused energy prices to soar. Runaway inflation occurred, and agricultural production often could not keep up.
European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčović said: “European farmers have found themselves under increasing pressure from multiple directions.” He said some reservoirs in southern Spain had only 4% of their water capacity. Wildfires have wiped out around 20% of Greece’s annual agricultural income.
Mr Šefčović said that in cash terms, the value of grain production last year fell by 30% from 80 billion euros to less than 60 billion euros. “Therefore, we need to reflect on the fact that farmers’ incomes are decreasing,” he says.
What can you do?
One is to favor farmers. This is a perfect opportunity, as the EU will hold parliamentary elections across the region in June.
The African continent is struggling with threats to its democracies, and especially the EU, from the far right’s rise to mainstream politics. Many farm protests have been attended by far-right politicians, putting generations of ties between farmers and traditional conservative parties under strain.
So things are moving. On Wednesday, the European Commission made two important proposals. One is to protect EU farmers from cheap Ukrainian imports, and the other is to avoid environmental measures. On Tuesday, France pledged support ranging from emergency cash assistance to restrictions on imported food. President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to cancel trade deals with South American countries if they cause too much harm to farmers.
Compared to the violent clashes of 1971, these protests have been handled with kid gloves. In Belgium, authorities even allowed french fries shops to be set up on major highways that farmers had blocked off to ensure they had enough to eat.