Via LWA, reasonably good article on the rise of farmer protest movements in Ireland and EU countries and the context behind them. Dismissive of the 'reactionary' tendencies and showing no interest in engaging, rather taking pot-shots at perceived ideological opponents and trying to emulate their successes but with more urban involvement along progressive lines. Good luck with that... However the analysis appears sounds and the contradictions, hypocrisies and dangers they flag are fair comment. Shame all the farmers will hear is 'racist' and thus be completely dismissive themselves. If they ever even hear about it, which they probably won't...
February 29, 2024 Farmer Revolts and the Green Agenda
Scrolling through their website and social media account, you will find an incoherent grab bag of reactionary tropes…
by Patrick Bresnihan
This article looks at the establishment of the Farmers’ Alliance, a new rural political organisation in Ireland that shares a lot with other farmer-based, regressive populist movements that have been surfacing in recent months in other European countries. These movements have been organising effectively around the economic grievances of farmers and, in particular, the burdens of environmental regulation. This article gives some historical context for this and why we need to amplify and grow alternative, progressive rural-urban political platforms.
In April 2023, the Irish Farmers’ Alliance formed from a Facebook group that had grown in prominence over the last few years. Initially, the Alliance claimed to simply represent the interests of (mostly beef and sheep) farmers who were struggling to make a living – some of those involved had also been part of the Beef Plan, a renegade farmer’s organisation that had blockaded Dublin city centre with tractors and picketed meat processing plants back in 2019.
For its official launch, the Farmers’ Alliance invited Caroline van der Plas, leader of the Dutch agrarian party (BBB or Farmer-Citizen Movement). Founded in 2019, the BBB registered significant electoral successes last year, channeling the frustrations of Dutch farmers on a right-wing, populist platform. These frustrations had intensified in response to the Dutch Government’s decision to restrict nitrogen pollution and buy out farmers unable to comply. Van der Plas urged the Farmers’ Alliance to form a similar political party and contest local and European elections.
Over the past few months, the Farmers’ Alliance have followed that advice, interviewing potential candidates, developing a broader policy platform and throwing themselves behind the anti-migrant protests that have sprung up across the country, particularly in rural towns and villages.
Scrolling through their website and social media account, you will find an incoherent grab bag of reactionary tropes. While building from genuine grievances, such as the high cost of living, lack of affordable housing, and the impossibility of making a livelihood for many farmers, the source of these problems are traced to a familiar assortment of enemies: an overbearing state, environmentalists, migrants, and the ‘woke’ brigade reigning in ‘free speech’ and importing ‘cultural Marxism’ into the classroom.
Against these forces, the Alliance claims to defend the family, national sovereignty and individual freedom, particularly the institution of private property. The Alliance is regressive, grounding its politics in the defence of an imagined order that is being undermined by external foes. We can question the coherence of their platform but the strength of right wing mobilisation elsewhere has been an ability to articulate different, even contradictory positions, around a common ‘us’ and ‘them’.
It remains to be seen how effective the Farmers’ Alliance will be at election time, but the reactionary tendency they are tapping into has been bubbling up across rural Ireland for years. The same pattern is observable in other places – the Netherlands, France, Spain, Greece, Belgium, Romania and, most recently, Germany, where an eight-day countrywide protest was led by farmers objecting to the Government’s decision to cut diesel subsidies and tax breaks for farming vehicles.
While housing and migration have been key areas of far-right organising, the rise of the Farmers’ Alliance and its links with other regressive, rural-based organisations, make it clear that there are other sources of political reaction. As with housing, the roots of economic precarity and inequality in the agricultural sector stretch back decades – the result of neoliberal agri-food policies and the imperative to maximise profit within a highly competitive, capitalist agri-food system.
These economic contradictions are now coming up against the real and urgent need for action on climate and environmental protection in the sector. As tightening environmental regulations appear the most immediate threat to farmer livelihoods, the response has been a near visceral rejection of what is commonly described as the ‘green agenda’, a term that manages to conflate environmental action with everything from anti-rural prejudice to great replacement conspiracies. How did we get here?
Containing the contradictions
In the early 1990s, Ireland’s agri-food industry underwent significant structural change. In the wake of the overproduction crisis of the 1980s – the ‘butter mountains’ created by two decades of European production-driven subsidies – the focus of Ireland’s dairy industry shifted towards processing: in 1995, dairy processors recorded a turnover of £6,000 million, compared to £20 million in 1970. Clearly, the money was in the development of protein-based products and the markets to absorb them.
The state threw itself behind the profitable dairy processing sector, where the potential for capital accumulation was far greater than in any other sector. Since then, the global expansion of the dairy processing industry has only accelerated, with free trade agreements opening new international markets and diversification into niche ingredient supply chains, including milk derivatives that undercut local production in other parts of the world. Ireland now accounts for 13% of the global baby formula market. This amounts to €1 billion in exports a year from just six global infant formula manufacturers.
This model of agri-production generated significant profits for some farmers, but the main beneficiaries were the processors, chemical and feed providers, and financial institutions that offered easy credit to ‘entrepreneurial’ farmers. The model also intensified inequality within the agricultural sector. As the dairy sector expanded from the 1990s, supported by Teagasc and other state institutions, a dualistic agricultural system emerged. One class of (dairy) farmers were encouraged to become more efficient enterprises, and another class of farmers were forced to diversify into other sectors, including the less profitable beef sector which itself is characterised by high levels of consolidation.
Today, the majority of farms in the country earn less than €20,000, with agriculture having the most severe inequality in income distribution of any sector in Ireland. While this is not new, the EU subsidies that have contained the uneconomic nature of EU farming for decades are now being linked to environmental performance and new forms of bureaucratic administration, sparking particular ire from farmers.
Since the 1990s, the environmental consequences of Ireland’s livestock intensive agricultural sector have also mounted. GHG emissions from the agricultural sector account for over 38% of the total emissions in Ireland – the highest proportion from any agricultural sector in the European Union. The EPA reports annually on the decline of surface water quality, largely due to nutrient run-off from agriculture. The agricultural sector is also the main driver of habitat decline according to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). In a recent report, they identified that agricultural practices are negatively impacting over 70% of terrestrial and coastal habitats.
From the beginning, the state’s response to these environmental problems has been to treat them as ‘externalities’ that can be brought under control through appropriate incentives and technological innovation, or, in the words of the sociologist George Taylor writing as early as 1993, ‘organising consent around new definitions of justifiable pollution.’
Multiple state initiatives, including agri-environmental and eco-certification schemes, have proliferated in an attempt to control agricultural pollution, rather than prevent it. By placing the focus on the pollutant – nitrogen, MCPA, methane – the policy and economic drivers that produce the pollution are hidden. The result has been ever more elaborate efforts to plaster over the deep contradictions that exist between the dominant agri-food model and environmental quality. What is more, the burden of these measures is applied to all farmers, hiding the deep inequalities that exist within the sector, both in terms of responsibility for pollution and capacity to respond – through investment in new technology, the purchasing of more land or the offsetting of pollution elsewhere.
Coming home to roost
Farmers understand that environmental policies as they are currently designed and implemented will make it harder for them to make a living. The recently passed EU Nature Restoration Law, for example, promises to protect more land necessary for viable ecosystems but does nothing to challenge the existing, highly concentrated system of agri-food production. Shrinking the area of productive farmland without radical agrarian reform will increase the already high cost of land, benefiting those with financial resources, often the biggest polluters.
The effect of these environmental policies will be a reduction in the number of farmers, which gets to the heart of the present conflict: struggling farmers are worried about their future. Farmer representative bodies use this to stoke anti-environmental sentiment. They argue that environmentalists are anti-farmer and don’t think about ‘food security’. This allows them to deflect from the reality that most of our productive land doesn’t produce food for people in Ireland – we export the vast majority of our cattle-based products, and we import the vast majority of the calories consumed here. The slogan ‘no farmers, no food’ also allows them to build up a narrative around the ordinary farmer trying to make a living under the ‘unfair’ pressures of environmental regulation, masking the gross inequalities within the sector.
One of the most urgent and difficult tasks for any progressive environmental politics is figuring out how to challenge unjust environmental policies, while at the same time not ceding ground to reactionary, ‘anti-environmental’ forces that defend ‘business as usual’ – to build a popular environmentalism that is attuned to, not ignorant of, the precarious social and economic conditions of the majority and their desire for something different. In the context of food production, these conditions are not the same for all, and extend beyond the landowning farmers in Ireland or Europe, to food producers around the world and the exploited workers that exist all along the globalised food supply chain.
At the core of the politics espoused by the Farmers Alliance and their European counterparts is a desperate clinging on to an imagined past, to tradition, that is embodied in the image of the ‘farmer’ (akin to the white, blue collar worker in Trump’s MAGA narrative). The only antidote to this is to build an alternative vision of food production and land-use that is in the interests of more farmers, workers and ‘consumers’.
Fortunately, there are many who desire different rural futures which include different ways of producing food and living on the land. In Ireland, such visions are articulated by alternative, progressive farmer-led organisations like Talamh Beo and the Landworkers’ Alliance. Theirs is a vision grounded in agroecology and food sovereignty, requiring more people on the land, not less, producing good quality food and caring for land and ecosystems. For this vision to move out of the margins, it will need to connect with social issues beyond food, building new rural-urban platforms and organising with other movements, here and internationally, just like the Farmers’ Alliance appear to be doing so effectively. Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
De-Smog: ' Are Europe’s Farmers Protesting Green Reforms? It’s Complicated'
Better than some of their other articles trashing the movement as right-wing, anti-environmental, conspiracy-theorist etc. A report from someone who actually went to some of the protests tells a different story.
Are Europe’s Farmers Protesting Green Reforms? It’s Complicated
Big agriculture and far-right parties set farmers against the environment but producers on the ground in Brussels told a different story.
Analysis By Rachel Sherrington Feb 7, 2024 @ 02:39 PST
Across France, Italy and Belgium last week thousands of farmers descended on capital cities to express their deep discontent with the European food system.
The scenes were dramatic. Parked tractors brought traffic to a standstill in Paris, and on Thursday burning piles of hay and debris sent up huge, dark plumes of smoke in Brussels. The protests show no sign of slowing down and are expected this week across Italy, Slovenia and Spain.
Farmers’ demonstrations have been portrayed as a revolt against net zero, by the media and far-right groups.
This is the message received by governments – and they are acting on it. So far, the farmers have won key concessions, with the EU decision on Tuesday to drop its plans to cut pesticide use, hot on the heels of the same move by France on Friday, despite numbers of birds and pollinators plummeting in Europe.
Yet the reality on the ground in Brussels last week was more mixed. While Europe’s largest farming union, Copa-Cogeca, paints environmental measures as an enemy to farmers’ prosperity, an analysis by Carbon Brief has found that a fifth of farmer concerns were not on green issues, relating instead to high production costs, food pricing and trade-related concerns.
Other groups of farmers came out onto the streets of Brussels with a different message. They say the EU should see the protests as a sign to do more, not less, to protect the environment.
“We are very clear that as farmers we want to take action to struggle against the climate crisis,” said Morgan Ody, a farmer from Brittany who belongs to the European chapter of La Via Campesina (ECVC).
Ody travelled to Belgium with over a thousand farmers connected to Via Campesina – and other allied national smallholder farmer groups from Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Germany – to protest last Thursday.
Via Campesina and its smallholder allies also insist that ambitious action to address climate breakdown and biodiversity loss must go hand in hand with tackling other farmer concerns – such as low pay. Difficult working conditions, they say, are also at the root of the frustrations of many who showed up to demonstrate.
Big Agri vs EU Green Reform
The position of Via Campesina stands in contrast to those of other powerful groups, which also attended the protest in Brussels and others across Europe.
Copa-Cogeca, which enjoys privileged access to many of the EU’s key decision-makers, has taken an aggressive stance on EU sustainable farming policies proposed through the bloc’s Farm to Fork. It has also undertaken lobbying to derail key EU-wide measures such as a nature restoration law which was only narrowly approved by EU lawmakers at the end of last year, full of loopholes.
The group’s political legitimacy has rested in part on a claim to represent 22 million farmers and their families across the EU, which a recent investigation from Lighthouse Reports found to be exaggerated. Many smallholder farmers interviewed by Lighthouse Reports and others have said Copa-Cogeca does not represent them.
Policy experts say the farming system needs to become more sustainable to safeguard food production and address climate impacts. Intensive, industrial farming from larger operations currently drives much of the sector’s emissions, as well as harming soils and causing a vertiginous fall in populations of bees, birds and butterflies.
Copa-Cogeca’s recent demands have included the rollback of an important environmental provision in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – the subsidy scheme which supports European producers. The provision would require farmers to leave four percent of their land free for nature in order to protect and rebuild biodiversity.
This week, the EU announced it would postpone the incoming CAP biodiversity clause, in concession to protests across the bloc.
On Friday, the French government pledged to halt a measure to halve pesticide use by 2030, following sustained lobbying from industry-aligned union FNSEA on the measure over the last several years.
Tuesday’s decision by the EU commission to drop a bloc-wide measure aimed at slashing pesticide use was met with praise from a triumphant Copa-Cogeca, which, in a post on X (formerly Twitter) called the regulation a “top-down proposal” that was “poorly designed,” but with dismay from environmentalists who said the move would hurt farmers in the longer term. Wage Worries
It was clear on the ground in Brussels on Thursday that the CAP debate was on farmer’s minds. Copa-Cogeca affiliates and independent farmers both expressed frustrations.
“We don’t have enough money to compensate for this four percent of the surface where we can’t produce,” said Mélanie Favereaux, from the Féderation des Jeunes Agriculteurs (FJA), which represents young farmers in Belgium and was responsible for some of the blockades last week. She stressed that her worries did not stem from anti-environment sentiment but from income pressures.
A representative from a powerful Italian regional group affiliated with Copa-Cogeca, Coldiretti, which has recently been accused by smaller Italian farmers of betraying their interests, said her group would be pushing for the CAP measure to be withdrawn by the EU and not just postponed.
Ody, from Via Campesina, told DeSmog that small farmers also believe the CAP system should be reformed – but in a different way. She argues that the EU should bring in market regulation to ensure a minimum price and stable income for farmers, as was the case under the CAP until the subsidy system was reformed in 1992.
Via Campesina also argues that, rather than eliminate green rules, CAP grants should be redistributed better to the benefit of smaller, family-owned farms, which perform better on biodiversity and productivity than larger operations, according to a 2021 global study.
Under current rules, the amount of CAP subsidies a farm receives is tied to its size. This means that the lion’s share of EU’s financial support goes to larger farms and landowners, with the biggest 20 percent of farms absorbing 80 percent of the CAP, a sum equal to around a third of the EU’s annual budget.
Ody shares the income worries of Coldiretti and young farmer’s group the FJA. But she insists that the CAP should be used to incentivise the transition to more climate friendly farming.
“We are put into an impossible situation,” said Ody, because “to produce in an ecological way does come with a cost.”
Trade Trouble
The EU’s free trade agreements were another key concern in Brussels, highlighted by small and large-scale farmers alike, who feel European producers are forced to compete with cheap imports.
“It’s right to talk about the climate,” said a local producer from the Belgian municipality of Ath, who gave his name only as Jean. “But they shouldn’t be targeting us, they should be looking at industry – and products that come in from abroad.”
His concern about green measures principally stemmed from a sense of unfairness and double standards. “Importing from Australia, I don’t believe that can be as sustainable as they say,” he said.
Mélanie Favereaux also brought up trade, arguing: “We are not against protecting the environment, but we think it’s not fair if we import products from outside Europe and then they don’t respect the environment like we do, for example by using pesticides we are not allowed to. It’s difficult for us to survive in this environment.”
Belgian farmers’ view that green reforms will make Europe dependent on imports that are produced to lower standards is an argument that has been consistently pushed by the agribusiness lobby. Pro-Green and Pro-Worker
Ody said trade issues cut to the heart of the debate around the current crisis, but that it was not a reason to roll back green policies.
“There is a contradiction between producing cheaply to be competitive on international markets on one side, and being asked to produce in an environmentally friendly way,” she said.
“In Copa-Cogeca, faced with this choice, they say okay, let’s get rid of the environmental measures so that we can be competitive. And some farmers think okay, if we are obliged to compete in global competition, we can’t have these rules.
“But we at Via Campesina say – why do we continue to be obliged to compete at a global level? And that is the big divide between farmers’ organisations currently in Europe.”
The EU is continuing to pursue trade agreements. It’s currently in the final negotiating stages of a major new deal with Latin American countries such as Brazil.
Ody says the trade system is ripe for reform. She points to an ongoing crisis at the WTO, the trade body that regulates trade agreements, which currently lacks sufficient judges to monitor its dispute settlement circuit due to the U.S.’ refusal to nominate one under both Trump and Biden.
Researchers have pointed to this deadlock as a key development. They say it could usher in wider changes to how trade agreements work, and move the WTO away from the current liberalised regime that has reigned over many decades.
Via Campesina is particularly concerned about EU-Mercosur, which Greenpeace Europe has called “nightmare for nature”. Many smallholder farmers on both sides of the Atlantic oppose the deal, which was also brought up by farmers in Brussels last week. Favereaux told DeSmog she saw it as unfair and “dangerous” for her business.
‘Far-Right’ Farmers?
Much of the reporting on farmers protests across the EU has focussed on the actions of the far-right, which has tried to weaponise the protest.
As protests in Germany kicked off in January, Deutsche Welle reported on “deliberate attempts by right-wing extremists to use farmers’ anger for their own ends,” while others such as Politico and the Guardian have noted the same trend.
In Brussels, far-right activists were assembled alongside the farmers. There is some evidence that a thinktank linked to Hungary’s authoritarian leader Victor Orban has helped to orchestrate, and possibly finance, some of the action.
Elsewhere in Europe, in the Netherlands, far-right parties have capitalised on farmers’ discontent to make electoral gains.
While Ody agreed there was a real “danger” to the far-right co-opting farmers, she also emphasised that farmers were a very mixed group.
“The farming sector is like the rest of the society,” she said. “You’ve got 99 percent of the people who are working, trying to make a living, and they can be right-wing, left-wing, whatever,” she said.
Ody’s view was shared by Felipe van Keirsbilck, Secretary General of the Belgian workers’ union CNE, who attended the protest to show workers’ solidarity with small food producers. He called the crowd “really divided, really mixed.”
Business Opportunists
The far right are not the only interests weighing in and capitalising on the unrest. A 2023 investigation by DeSmog showed how companies with a commercial interest in slowing moves to more nature-friendly farming have actively sought to win over key politicians deciding on green reforms in recent years.
DeSmog found the industrial farming industry overall had an average of two meetings a week with key decision-makers in Europe’s ruling party, the European People’s Party (EPP), since 2020, as the EU negotiated flagship reforms to protect nature and climate.
Industry tactics, including from farmers’ unions, have also taken more novel approaches, including organising Alpine hikes for key decision-makers on green reforms, and renting free office space.
One group that has targeted EU decision-makers is French union FNSEA. The group has also become dominant in debates around the farmers’ protests, and has been accused of co-opting smaller farmers’ concerns.
In recent weeks its president, Arnaud Rousseau – who also is the boss of the major agricultural commodities trader Avril Grouphas – met with disapproval after pushing the group’s talking points on TV even when speaking about protests organised by non-affiliated FNSEA farmers who have a different agenda.
FNSEA is a regional affiliate and key ally of Copa-Cogeca. The group has been accused by campaigners at groups such as Corporate Europe Observatory of representing the interests of large businesses’ interests over those smaller producers.
Like Copa-Cogeca the group has been an aggressive lobbyist against Europe’s green measures, referring to the Farm to Fork as a “degrowth strategy.”
Environmentalists have also pointed to the fraught relations between farmers groups in Italy as signs of a much more fractured movement than is often acknowledged. Several groups – including one named the “Betrayed Farmers” have taken a stance against Coldiretti – a Copa-Cogeca affiliate, saying they don’t feel represented by its positions.
Ody sums up: “The farmers’ protests and anger is legitimate. But they have been using this in order to protect their own interests as big businessmen.” Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
Analysis: How do the EU farmer protests relate to climate change?
Orla Dwyer 05.02.2024 | 4:36pm Food and farming
From Berlin and Paris, to Brussels and Bucharest, European farmers have driven their tractors to the streets in protest over recent weeks.
According to reports, these agricultural protesters from across the European Union have a series of concerns, including competition from cheaper imports, rising costs of energy and fertiliser, and environmental rules.
Farmers have been protesting across the EU, including in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Romania. The demonstrations have also begun in the UK and India in recent weeks in response to similar concerns.
The UK’s Sunday Telegraph has tried to frame the protests as a “net-zero revolt” with several other media outlets saying the farmers have been rallying against climate or “green” rules.
Carbon Brief has analysed the key demands from farmer groups in 12 countries to determine how they are related to greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, biodiversity or conservation.
The findings show that many of the issues farmers are raising are directly and indirectly related to these issues. But some are not related at all. Several are based on policy measures that have not yet taken effect, such as the EU’s nature restoration law and a South American trade agreement.
Update: This article was extended on 19 February to include more countries in the analysis. Why farmers are protesting
The issues EU farmers are raising centre around “falling sale prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, powerful and domineering retailers, debt, climate change and cheap foreign imports”, the Guardian reported.
Carbon Brief has gathered a range of specific concerns based on media reports and farmer union statements across 12 EU countries.
Each one is classified around whether the concern is related to climate change and/or greenhouse gas emissions (green), biodiversity and/or conservation (yellow), or not related to either set of issues (red).
Note, this table is not exhaustive.
[table]
These issues relate to climate change and biodiversity in different ways.
In some countries, protesters are calling for more action on climate adaptation, particularly in Greece where farmers are asking for measures to prevent farmland being damaged by flooding and other extreme weather.
In other cases, farmers are calling for fuel subsidies to continue and for fertiliser and pesticide restrictions to be reconsidered.
The EU’s “farm to fork” strategy – the bloc’s broad sustainable food initiative – focuses on cutting both pesticides and fertilisers in the years ahead to optimise their use and reduce harm (read Carbon Brief’s Q&A on fertilisers and climate change). tweet from Gerardo Fortuna (@gerardofortuna) "It's been a tough job but someone had to: I checked ALL the proposed actions in the Farm to Fork strategy and I found out that over half of them have not got off the ground (and more than two-thirds will likely remain unfinished before the term ends)"
Last November, politicians voted against the EU’s proposed pesticide regulation which aimed to halve the use and risk of chemical pesticides by the end of this decade. The European commission scrapped the plans entirely on 6 February.
The EU said these rules would have “translate[d] our commitment to halt biodiversity loss in Europe into action”, highlighting the health risks and water quality issues associated with pesticide use.
European legislators are working to finalise a number of other climate and biodiversity rules this year ahead of the June elections. How the protests have developed
In December, the German government announced plans to reduce subsidies and spending in an effort to fill a €17bn gap in the country’s 2024 budget.
The measures included cutting some agricultural subsidies and tax breaks, leading to an outburst of farmer protests (as covered in Carbon Brief’s Cropped newsletter).
In the weeks since then, other farmer groups across the EU have been taking to the streets with their own concerns.