The last straw

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Farmers in Europe who challenge climate regulations.

For months now, agricultural workers across Europe have blocked major highways and streets in their nations’ capitals. They’re protesting rules aimed at fixing the climate that farmers claim are creating new problems.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: WORLD’s Europe Reporter Jenny Lind Schmitt brings us the story.

SOUND: [Protestors in Brussels]

JENNY LIND SCHMITT: On Tuesday morning, farmers drove their tractors to the center of Brussels during a meeting of the EU agricultural ministers. They dumped mounds of manure in front of the European parliament and turned hale bales into a huge effigy of a farmer holding a sign reading: “The EU is killing farmers.”

Across Europe, farmers have had enough of overregulation and falling prices.

RALPH SCHOELLHAMMER: All these different protests are motivated by very specific, mostly economic issues.

Ralph Schoellhammer is assistant professor of international relations at Webster University in Vienna.

SCHOELLHAMMER: But it was mostly driven by, in the Polish case, agricultural imports from Ukraine. In the German case, it was about subsidies for the use of diesel. In France, it was about pesticides. In the Netherlands, it was about nitrogen rules. Again, what’s tied all these protests together was the idea that government policies seemed to take aim at the agricultural sector, which I think broadly speaking is correct.

European farmers have long demanded minimum price guarantees and complained about onerous regulations. But those long standing complaints took on new urgency this year. Rising inflation made governments push for lower consumer food prices. That pressure came as new climate-related regulations were going into effect. For many farmers, that was the last straw.

SOUND: [PROTESTS]

In France, environmental regulations are stricter than those of the EU. Under the 2020 European Green Deal, its Ecophyto Plan aims to cut the use of certain pesticides in half by 2030.

JEAN-CLAUDE GRABER: Dans ma tête, ça veut pas dire que je suis contre, mais ça veut surtout dire c'est pas faisable dans la méthode que nous propose quoi?

Jean-Claude Graber farms in eastern France on land inherited from his father. He has 40 dairy cows and grows wheat, corn, flax, and rye.

He says he’s not opposed to pesticide reduction in principle, but without good alternatives, the rules put farmers and the food chain in peril. Because of the protests, the government recently announced plans to postpone France’s Ecophyto Plan.

GRABER: [Speaking French]

But what about the manure protests in Belgium? Protestors say they want to get public attention before the EU parliament elections in June. They want Europe’s leaders to reform the Common Agricultural Policy. The CAP, as it’s known, pays farmers subsidies as long as they abide by environmental policies from Brussels.

But over the years, the CAP’s regulations have become more and more onerous. Authorities dictate how much fertilizer farmers can use, when and how they can use it, and which pesticides are allowed and how much. Satellites monitor fields across Europe every three days to ensure rules about cover crops are enforced. Armed bureaucrats come out to enforce rules about ditches on farmland. Farmers say they spend one day a week just doing paperwork for the government.

Graber says his biggest problem is knowing which ever-changing rule applies on a particular day.

GRABER: Et les règles changent, ça change, ça change, ça change…

VOICEOVER 1: The rules change, they change, they change….

The Graber farm is a designated “vulnerable zone,” so there are special rules for when and how he can spread manure. Meanwhile his next-door neighbor, who is just outside of the “vulnerable zone,” has another set of regulations.

GRABER: Donc sur ces zones là, vous pouvez mettre des fumiers, mais que telle date à telle date de telle quantité machin. Vous pouvez tout faire, mais la quantité il faut la respecter et pas aller sur la neige, ok? Et puis l'autre qui sera ailleurs, l'autre qui sera ailleurs. Vous pouvez mettre les fumiers, mais seulement s'il est composté. Alors la colère des agriculteurs, c'est tout des petites choses comme ça, mais ça devient terrible.

VOICEOVER 2: So in these zones you can spread manure, but only between certain dates, only so much, etcetera. And the neighbor, he can go ahead but only an allowed amount and not on any snow. And another guy? He can spread manure, but only if it’s well-composted.

So the anger of the farmers–it’s all the little things like that that have become too much.

To make matters worse, the promised subsidies are often delayed–sometimes up to two years. That causes financial problems for farmers who are already cash-strapped because of falling prices.

But Schoellhammer says the farmer protests are a symptom of a bigger problem.

SCHOELLHAMMER: The underlying problem of all of this, is the remaining issue in Europe, which is that we have become a continent that is very hostile, I would argue, to production in general.

Schoellhammer says that in its rush to embrace a lofty climate agenda, the political class has forgotten what makes for a vibrant economy and the place that agriculture should have in it.

SCHOELLHAMMER: Where does Europe want to be in the future with its agriculture? Do we want it to be secure from geopolitical turmoil? Do we want it to be innovative or do we want to shrink it in the name of climate goals? And you cannot pursue all of these goals at once, so a decision has to be made. And now the chickens are coming home to roost, and I think the sooner we address this, the better it is.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt at the Ferme du Petit Chalembert in Boron, France.

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