Angry farmers seize headlines and political agendas with their loud, road-blocking, city-stopping protests. But are their calls being heard? Today, Europe’s food and farming system is in the hands of a few powerful actors who bear little resemblance to actual farmers. These ‘strongmen of agriculture’ use their privileged access to twist the protests to their advantage, at the expense of farming communities, consumers, and nature.
Farmers are, once again, taking to the streets to demonstrate their outrage and share their grievance. Their frustration is both justified and unsurprising. Big Agri business has built a cage round them – reinforced by the archaic Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – forcing them to overproduce, sell below production costs, and invest in practices that degrade their land, frequently building enormous debts in the process.
In this hostile environment it’s no surprise that the EU has lost 37% of its farms (that’s 5.3 million fewer farms, predominantly small and medium sized ones) over just 15 years (2005-2020) – many squeezed off the market and eaten up by large, industrial enterprises that have continued to grow larger and more industrialised.
Rescue mission or death sentence?
The European Commission’s recent response to these very real threats to farming was to axe environmental protections. A puzzling response, considering the increasing costs and risks farmers are facing due to the accelerating climate, nature, pollution crisis. Did the Commission get it horribly wrong, or were the wrong people whispering false solutions in their ear?
As farmers demand fairer prices, decent working conditions, and less bureaucracy, this somehow translates to scrapping vital environmental and human rights protections, to the dismay of scientists with decades worth of evidence on the urgent need for decisive action. Removing rules to protect against harmful pesticides doesn’t alleviate farmers’ woes, it harms their health as they, together with their families and local communities, are the first to suffer the effects of the toxic cocktail of synthetic chemicals currently sprayed on fields across Europe. With pesticide exposure linked to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, reproductive issues, and cancer, to name a few, protection should be taken very seriously. As for the five-week chainsaw massacre of vital protections in the CAP, the EU’s own watchdog recently slammed the Commission for violating its own rules, citing a lack of transparency, inclusion, and evidence-based law making.
Removing vital safeguards that protect people and nature is a disaster for everyone, and a costly one at that. A recent study found that the toxic mix of synthetic chemicals swirling around our food is creating a health burden amounting to $2.2tn a year. Since when does the EU bow down to big business at the expense of citizens’ health?
The winner is…
With farmers back on the streets in full force, it’s clear that the measures the EU put in place have nothing to do with “simplifying” or easing any burden for farmers. So, who did benefit? Following the previous protests, a group of investigative journalists across Europe took on the challenge of answering that very question, by building profiles of some of the most influential figures weaponising the protests for their own gain. They discovered that the fate of EU farming sits in the hand of a few wealthy individuals who bear little resemblance to the average farmer. They sit on the boards of multiple companies, have close ties with the Big Agri businesses caging farmers in this unfair system, and portray themselves as “protest leaders” despite never being elected or chosen by farmers. Additionally, many directly control or own shares in agricultural media outlets, allowing them to spread their disinformation amongst the farming community, which leads some farmers to direct their anger in the wrong direction.
These findings follow a 2023 investigation into Copa-Cogeca, the biggest and most powerful farm lobby in the EU, created when the CAP was born in 1962. Since its founding, it has enjoyed privileged access to decision making at all levels in the EU, as the self-proclaimed voice of European farmers and agri-cooperatives in Brussels. In reality, many smaller scale and young farmers say they don’t feel represented. One young farmer put it bluntly: “Most of the youth farmers I know and work with are disconnected and in complete disagreement with the vision of Copa-Cogeca, which has a lot of power in the EU but advocates in favour of the status quo and industrial agriculture.”
This is clear in their stance on the next CAP (post-2027) negotiations, where they are firmly opposed to setting limits on the amount of public money flowing to Europe’s biggest farms. A strange position for the alleged representative of all farmers when (according to 2022 Commission figures) out of the 5.9 million farms receiving public money through direct payments, only 0.5% of them (around 29,500 farms) take home over €100,000 a year – swallowing 15.7% of the total budget. Whose interests are Copa-Cogeca defending by opposing the Commission’s efforts to rebalance the scales by capping payments at €100,000 and direct funding to smaller farms that currently lack and need support?
A brighter future
Our food and farming system is under immense strain from industrial farming and the climate, nature, and pollution crisis – but a fairer, cleaner and healthier future is possible. If we stop pouring public money into industrial farms that churn out cheap, unhealthy calories, we can redirect those funds to support real farmers in their efforts to shift to resilient and sustainable farming that produces healthy food for people, not inputs for Big Agri business.
We stand with Europe’s farmers working tirelessly to farm with nature, not against it; because healthy soils, clean water, and functioning ecosystems are the premise for the very existence of farming, and the foundation of our long-term food security. This shift would also make Europe less dependent on imported fertilisers (much of which comes from Russia) and feed (much of which comes from across the Atlantic), strengthening the EU’s resilience to global market shocks and its ability to feed itself without relying on or negatively impacting others.
What we need is fair incomes for all farmers – not massive public cash payouts for the biggest players – and a resilient food system that can withstand climate extremes while providing sustainable, healthy food for everyone. This is about future-proofing agriculture, not sacrificing it for the short-term gains a few.
Images: Samantha Ibbott, EEB
