为什么欧洲各地的农民都在抗议？
伯恩德·里格特
面对欧洲各地日益增长的农民抗议活动，欧盟农业部长将于本周一召开会议。 尽管有巨额补贴，欧盟农民仍然愤怒，而且在布鲁塞尔影响力很大。
欧盟各地的农民已经抗议数周了。
过去几周，大约一半的欧盟成员国都看到农民抗议各自国家和欧洲的农业政策。 周一，欧盟农业部长在布鲁塞尔举行会议，应对抗议活动。
不过，示威的原因差异很大。 例如，在德国，农民对计划减少柴油补贴感到不安。 在波兰和其他东欧国家，他们封锁道路和过境点，因为他们想阻止来自乌克兰的廉价进口。
欧洲农民协会COPA呼吁放宽环境法规，减少欧盟农业政策的官僚主义，并改善国际竞争条件。
监管较少，例外较多
欧盟执行机构欧盟委员会主席乌苏拉·冯德莱恩(Ursula von der Leyen)已经做出反应，并撤回了一项将欧洲农药使用量减少一半的拟议法律。
但大多数农民想要的不止于此——更多的例外和更少的监管。 去年，荷兰农民和公民运动领导人卡罗琳·范德普拉斯指出了一个更为根本的问题。
“为我们提供日常食物的人……被视为动物虐待者、投毒者、土壤破坏者和环境污染者，”她告诉荷兰议会。
波兰农民反对从乌克兰进口廉价产品。
上周，欧盟委员会提出了新的提案，以平息抗议活动。 放宽规则，并制定例外情况，以便更容易获得补贴。
冯德莱恩说，“我们辛勤工作的农民目前感受到的压力必须得到缓解，以保证食品安全”。 “简化我们的农业政策仍然是首要任务。”
然而，农业部长和欧洲议会联合批准了所谓的“从农场到餐桌”战略，这为农场带来了许多新规定。
农民利益在成员国和欧盟首都布鲁塞尔的代表具有影响力。 中右翼保守派欧洲议会议员站在农民一边，中左翼团体也表示理解。
德国农业政治家玛丽亚·诺伊克尔在欧洲议会的一场辩论中警告说，但这并不像农民所反抗的规则在生态和环境上都是错误的，也不是凭空出现的。 不过，她仍然呼吁支持农民的担忧。
“让我们和他们一起进入气候变化的困难时期，”诺希尔说。
德国之声的罗西·伯查德报道布鲁塞尔农民抗议活动
更少的农民，同样的产量
欧盟政界人士毫无疑问地认为，农业部门需要气候保护、减排和结构变革。 但这该怎么做呢？
欧洲农业的结构性变化多年来一直在进行，农场数量迅速减少——自 2005 年以来减少了三分之一，降至 920 万个。然而，耕地面积并未减少。 这意味着农场越来越少，但规模却越来越大。 这不仅仅是经济可行性的问题。 许多农民退休了，而且缺乏继任者和年轻农民，尽管他们得到了欧盟的特殊补贴。
欧洲农业产生大量盈余，并成功出口。 据德国农业部统计，近年来德国农民的平均收入大幅上升。 通货膨胀导致超市顾客购买的商品价格上涨，而生产成本上涨幅度较小。
2022 年，德国一名农业工人的平均收入为 43,000 欧元（46,650 美元）。然而，整个欧盟该行业的收入波动很大。 西班牙或罗马尼亚农民的收入明显较低。 在荷兰，这一数字要高得多。
在德国，主要焦点是计划取消柴油补贴。
农业是欧盟的核心
欧盟正在向农业注入大量资金。 自1962年以来，所有成员国在农业领域共同做出决策，农业政策是欧盟的核心。 共同预算的最大部分（约三分之一）用于向农民和农村发展提供赠款。
尽管农业仅占欧盟经济产出的 1.6%，但它从常规预算中获得了约四分之一的补贴。 2022年，2430亿欧元的补贴投入到所有经济部门，其中570亿欧元用于农业。
高额补贴确保欧盟食品价格回升
相对较低且稳定。 如果农民在没有补贴的情况下转嫁实际生产成本，价格将大幅上涨，并根据收成情况大幅波动。 防止这种情况过去和现在都是欧盟农业政策所宣称的目标。
本文最初以德文发表。
Bernd RiegertBernd Riegert 驻布鲁塞尔欧洲高级记者，重点关注欧盟的人民和政治
Why are farmers across Europe protesting?
The EU's agricultural ministers are meeting this Monday in the face of growing farmers' protests across Europe. Despite hefty subsidies, the bloc's farmers remain angry — and very influential in Brussels.
Farmers have been protesting across the EU for weeks already.
Over the past weeks, around half of the European Union's member states have seen farmers protesting against their respective national and European agricultural policies. On Monday, agricultural ministers from the bloc are meeting in Brussels to address the protests.
The reasons for the demonstrations vary significantly, though. In Germany, for instance, farmers are upset about a planned reduction in subsidies for diesel fuel. In Poland and other Eastern European countries, they are blocking roads and border crossings because they want to prevent cheap imports from Ukraine.
The European farmers' association, COPA, calls for less stringent environmental regulations, less bureaucracy in EU agricultural policy and better conditions in international competition.
Less regulation, more exceptions
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, has already reacted and withdrawn a proposed law that would have halved the use of pesticides in Europe.
But most farmers want more than that — more exceptions and fewer regulations. Last year, the head of the farmers' and citizens' movement in the Netherlands, Caroline van der Plas, pointed to an even more fundamental issue.
"The people who provide our daily food … are dismissed as animal abusers, poisoners, soil destroyers and environmental polluters," she told the Dutch parliament.
Farmers in Poland are against cheap imports from Ukraine.
Last week, the European Commission made new proposals to take the wind out of the sails of the protests. Rules are to be relaxed, and exceptions are made to make it easier to obtain subsidies.
The pressure "currently felt by our hard-working farmers must be alleviated so that food safety is guaranteed," von der Leyen said. "Simplification of our agricultural policy remains a priority."
Yet agriculture ministers and the European Parliament have jointly approved the so-called "Farm to Fork" strategy, which brings a lot of new regulations for farms.
The representation of farmers' interests in the member states and in the EU capital, Brussels, is influential. Center-right conservative MEPs have sided with the farmers, and the center-left group also signals understanding.
But it's not like the rules, against which farmers are rebelling, are all ecologically and environmentally wrong, or that they came out of nowhere, German agricultural politician Maria Noichl warned in a debate in the European Parliament. However, she still called for supporting the farmers in their concerns.
"Let's go with them into a difficult time of climate change," Noichl said.
DW's Rosie Birchard reports from Brussels farmers' protests
Fewer farmers, same production
There's no doubt among EU politicians that the agricultural sector needs climate protection, emissions reduction and structural change. But how is this to be done?
Structural change in European agriculture has been underway for years, as the number of farms is declining rapidly — by a third to 9.2 million since 2005. However, the cultivated area has not shrunk. This means that there are fewer farms, but they are getting bigger. That's not just a matter of economic viability. Many farmers retire, and there's simply a lack of successors and young farmers, even though they'd be supported by special subsidies from the EU.
European agriculture produces large surpluses, and those are successfully exported. According to statistics from the German Ministry of Agriculture, the average income of farmers in Germany has risen sharply in recent years. Inflation led to higher prices for customers in supermarkets, and production costs rose less sharply.
An agricultural worker in Germany earned an average income of €43,000 ($46,650) in 2022. However, incomes in the sector fluctuate considerably across the EU. The incomes of farmers in Spain or Romania are significantly lower. In the Netherlands, they are significantly higher.
In Germany, the main focus is on the planned scrapping of diesel subsidies.
Agriculture at the core of the EU
The EU is injecting a lot of money into agriculture. Since 1962, all member states have jointly made decisions in the agricultural sector, and agricultural policy is at the core of the bloc. The largest part of the common budget, around a third, goes to grants to farmers and rural development.
Although agriculture only accounts for 1.6% of economic output in the EU, it receives around a quarter of all subsidies from the regular budget. In 2022, €243 billion in subsidies were pumped into all sectors of the economy, €57 billion of which went to farms.
The high subsidies ensure that food prices in the EU are relatively low and stable. If farmers were to pass on their actual production costs without subsidies, prices would rise sharply and fluctuate greatly depending on the harvest situation. Preventing this was and is the declared aim of EU agricultural policy.
This article was originally published in German.
Bernd Riegert Senior European correspondent in Brussels with a focus on people and politics in the European Union
Photos: Farmers clash with police near the European Union headquarters
Farmers have been protesting for weeks across Europe against red tape and competition from cheap imports.
Hundreds of tractors thronged streets around the EU's headquarters in Brussels on Monday as ministers met to seek ways to streamline farming rules and red tape amid protests around the bloc. [Harry Nakos/AP Photo]
Farmers have clashed with police in Belgium, spraying officers with liquid manure and setting fire to piles of tyres in a fresh show of force as European Union agriculture ministers met in search of ways to address their concerns.
Brussels police said that 900 tractors had entered the city of Brussels, many bearing down on the European Council building where the ministers were meeting.
Smoke drifted through the air near where police in riot gear used water cannons to defend the EU’s headquarters from behind concrete barriers and barbed wire.
The farmers are protesting against red tape and competition from cheap imports from countries where the EU’s relatively high standards do not have to be met. They lined up scores of tractors down main roads leading to the city’s European Quarter, snarling traffic and blocking public transport.
A few tractors forced their way through one barrier, sending officers scurrying.
Some are lamenting what they see as the slow death of working the land. “Agriculture. As a child you dream of it, as an adult you die of it,” said one.
At the start of the month, a similar demonstration turned violent as farmers torched hay bales and threw eggs and firecrackers at police near a summit of EU leaders.
The protests are the latest in a series of rallies and demonstrations by farmers across Europe.
On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron was greeted with boos and whistles at the opening of the Paris Agricultural Show by farmers who claim that he’s not doing enough to support them. Spain, the Netherlands and Bulgaria have been hit by protests in recent weeks.
The movement has gathered pace as political parties campaign for Europe-wide elections on June 6-9. It’s already had results. Earlier this month, the EU’s executive branch shelved an anti-pesticide proposal in a concession to the farmers, who comprise an important voting constituency.
On the other side of the barriers in Brussels, the ministers were keen to show they’re listening.
The EU presidency, currently held by Belgium, acknowledged that the farmers’ concerns include the burden of respecting environmental policies, a drop in assistance from the bloc’s agricultural subsidy system and the impact of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s grain supplies.
“We hear, clearly, their complaints,” said David Clarinval, Belgium’s agriculture minister. Still, he urged the protesters to refrain from violence. “We can understand that some are in difficult circumstances, but aggression has never been a source for solutions.”
Police estimated that 900 tractors were clogging the European Quarter of the Belgian capital - targeted for the second time in a month - with officers firing water cannon as farmers burned tyres and set off fireworks in the street. [Harry Nakos/AP Photo]
Farmers from Spain, Portugal and Italy joined their Belgian counterparts for the latest show of force in the Europe-wide movement spurred by what they see as excessive EU environmental requirements and unfairly cheap imports. [Nicolas Landemard/AP Photo]
Farmers' protests in Europe and the deadend of neoliberalism
Scrapping environmental protections will not solve the agricultural crisis in Europe.
Morgan Ody Vegetable farmer from Brittany France
Vincent Delobel A Walloon goat dairy farmer
On February 26, the World Trade Organization (WTO) will hold its 13th ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi. While few would make the connection between the proceedings at that summit and the plight of impoverished farmers across the world, there is indeed a direct and clear link between the two.
On that day, we, members of the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC), an international organisation representing small-holder farmers in 21 European countries, will be protesting against the neoliberal policies in agriculture the WTO has been promoting for decades which have led to the systematic impoverishment of farmers.
Photos: Farmers clash with police near the European Union headquarters
Ukraine demands Poland punish protesting farmers for dumping grain
Photos: Greek farmers drive tractors to parliament to demand financial help
Polish farmers block Ukraine’s border in protest against grain imports
This tragic state of affairs has been highlighted by the continuing protests of farmers who have been taking to the streets, blocking motorways and logistics platforms across Europe since January.
These are people who produce Europe’s food – whether conventionally or organically, on a small or a medium scale. They stand united by a shared reality: They are fed up with spending their lives working incessantly without ever getting a decent income.
We have reached this point after decades of neoliberal agricultural policies and free trade agreements. Production costs have risen steadily in recent years, while prices paid to farmers have stagnated or even fallen.
Faced with this situation, farmers have pursued various economic strategies. Some have tried to increase production to compensate for the fall in prices: They have bought more land, invested in machinery, taken on a lot of debt and seen their workload increase significantly. The stress and declining incomes have created a great deal of frustration.
Other farmers have sought better prices for their produce by turning to organic farming and short distribution channels. But for many, these markets collapsed after the COVID-19 pandemic.
All the while, through mergers and speculation, large agroindustrial groups have gotten bigger and stronger, putting increased pressure on prices and practices for farmers.
Since the 1980s, various regulations that ensured fair prices for European farmers have been dismantled. The EU put all its faith in free trade agreements, which placed all the world’s farmers in competition with each other, encouraging them to produce at the lowest possible price at the cost of their own incomes and growing debt.
In recent years, however, the EU has announced its intention to move towards a more sustainable agricultural model, notably with the Farm to Fork Strategy, which is the agricultural component of the Green Deal.
Farmers’ organisations welcomed this ambition, but we also stressed that the sustainability of European agriculture could not be improved without breaking away from the logic of international competitiveness. Producing ecologically has huge benefits for the health and the planet, but it costs more for the farmers, and so to achieve the agroecological transition, agricultural markets need to be protected. Unfortunately, we were not heard.
European farmers were therefore faced with an impossible mission: delivering an agroecological transition while producing for the lowest possible price. As a result, differences between farming organisations have clearly resurfaced.
On the other side, ECVC and other organisations affirm that the environmental and climate crises are real and serious and that it is vital to give ourselves the means to combat them in order to ensure food sovereignty for the decades to come. For us, it is the neoliberal framework that must be challenged, not environmental regulation.
In particular, we denounce the free trade agreement between the EU has been concluding with various countries and regions. One of them is the deal negotiated with Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay). A final text was drafted in 2019, but it has not been signed or ratified by either side.
If it comes into effect, it would be a disaster for European livestock farmers, as it will lead to increased imports of meat, among other products, from Mercosur countries. This could potentially drive down prices, putting even more economic pressure on already struggling European livestock farmers.
Additionally, the deal could result in the importation of products that do not meet the same strict standards for food safety and environmental sustainability that the EU has embraced.
While we are not against international trade in agricultural products, we advocate for trade to be based on food sovereignty. This means allowing the import and export of agricultural products, but under the condition that it does not harm local food production and the livelihood of small-scale food producers.
Instead of protecting their farmers and helping them transition to agroecology, the EU has chosen to respond to the demands of big farmers and agribusiness organisations by reversing a key provision of the Green Deal: halving the use of pesticides by 2030.
Some European countries have also decided to address this crisis by abolishing environmental measures while maintaining neoliberal policies. France, for example, paused the Ecophyto pesticide reduction plan, while Germany abolished its plan to scrap tax breaks on farming vehicles and watered down legislation to lift subsidies on off-road diesel fuel.
Removing environmental regulations is a very risky choice because it does nothing to permanently solve the essential problem of dwindling farmers’ incomes. So we can be sure that farmers’ protests will continue to escalate in coming years.
All of this is happening at a time when the far right is on the rise across the world. Rather than solving the problems by ensuring a better distribution of income, the far right designates minority populations as scapegoats (migrants, women, LGBTQ, etc) and increases the violent repression of popular movements.
In the Netherlands, farmers’ anger was exploited by the right-wing Farmer-Citizen Movement party (BBB), which leveraged anti-system and anti-ecology rhetoric to secure more votes. As a result, the BBB made significant gains in provincial and national elections, increasing its seats in parliament from one to seven.
With the EU’s incoherent reaction to the farmers’ protests, there is a real risk that this trend will continue in the elections for the European Parliament in June.
The farmers’ unions within ECVC maintain that the real solutions for European farmers are policies to regulate markets and promote food sovereignty, in cooperation with the countries of the South. At a time when capital income is exploding, we, as farmers, are standing with the workers’ unions and the climate movement to demand a fair income for all workers and coherent policies to respond to the global climate emergency.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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Vegetable farmer from Brittany FranceMorgan Ody is a vegetable farmer from Brittany, France and General Coordinator of La Via Campesina.
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A Walloon goat dairy farmerVincent Delobel is a Walloon farmer, is a pioneer of organic goat dairy farming in Tournai, Belgium. He is also a spokesperson for the Belgian farmers' union FUGEA and member of La Via Campesina.
