Disinformation is fuelling Europe’s farming protests – Inside track

This post is by Ariel Brunner, Regional Director at BirdLife Europe and Central Asia.

In recent weeks, Europe has been swept by mass demonstrations by farmers. While climate protesters get treated as terrorists, farmers have been allowed to vandalise cities almost undisturbed. The torching of a tree in front of the European Parliament provided a powerful symbol.

Farmers have been protesting on a range of issues: imports of commodities from Ukraine, trade deals with the likes of New Zealand and the Mercosur countries, low farm gate prices, abusive practices by retailers, excessive bureaucracy surrounding farm payments and attempts to reduce tax benefits. But, above all else, (at least in farm unions’ communications, media spin and politicians’ understanding), they are protesting against the European Green Deal.

Politicians are rolling back green measures to appease farmers Politicians, from the European Commission’s (EC’s) President Von der Leyen to French President Macron, have been falling over each other to try and appease the protesting farmers by throwing the Green Deal under the tractor.

The EC has withdrawn its proposed pesticide reduction legislation (which had already been blocked in the parliament), authorised a third year of exemption for CAP beneficiaries from having to dedicate four per cent of their land to biodiversity, and stripped out all references to farming from its communication on future climate targets.

At the national level, special subsidies, repeal of tax reforms and other goodies have been freely distributed. France has withdrawn its pesticides reduction plan.

Farmers’ protests are a decades long European tradition. So is the response by governments, combining empty gestures and financial handouts that do nothing to solve the underlying problems.

Genuine grievances are being used for culture wars What is unusual is the absence of an obvious triggering factor, nor a central target, like a proposed CAP reform, or a new trade agreement. What seems to be happening is the proximity of the European elections leading to the boiling over of a toxic mix of genuine (though mostly misguided) grievances, and a concerted attempt by the extreme right to import US type culture wars into Europe.

The result is explosive. Many farmers feel that ‘society’ owes them for its food but does not respect or understand them. Many struggle economically, and even those who don’t face huge uncertainty.

There are ever fewer farmers and they have become a minority even in the most rural areas. Consumer demands shift, and raise issues like animal welfare, biodiversity and climate footprint that stem from failures of current production modes.

Climate change means most European farming will simply not be able to continue the way it is, though many are in denial about this. Far right propagandist, and the increasingly mainstream centre right politicians trying to compete with them, offer a simple explanation and an external enemy: detached urban environmentalists that don’t understand farming, and evil Brussels ‘rulers’ hell bent on destroying European farming and the rural way of life. The parallels with the Brexit campaign are too obvious to delve into.

The reality is both complex and simple While the ‘farmers revolting against excessive environmental regulation’ narrative is being endlessly and lazily repeated, the reality is both more complex and simpler.

First the complexity. While some farmers are having a hard economic time, overall farm incomes have been growing for years and are not doing visibly worse than other sectors. But that average masks huge differences between winners and losers, with agriculture probably one of the most unequal sectors in society.

The EU’s Green Deal can hardly have had any impact on farmers, as not a single piece of farming relevant legislation has been adopted under it (the farm lobby has effectively already torpedoed proposed laws relating to pesticides and fertiliser reduction, sustainable food systems, livestock pollution etc).

The legislation actually affecting farmers, like the nature directives, nitrates directive and water framework directive, have been on the books for decades, and environmental law is extremely poorly enforced when it comes to farming.

The picture of European farmers facing ever growing imports is also not very grounded as the sector’s trade balance is largely positive, and moving towards even more net exports, though again there are big winners and losers.

Bureaucracy is hard to quantify and nobody likes it, but most citizens have to fill out cumbersome paperwork to pay their taxes, rather than receive income support, as farmers do. So what is going on?

Agribusiness is benefitting at the expense of small farmers The simple answer is that we are facing a well-orchestrated anti-environment push back, by those handsomely profiting from the current agri-food sector. The immediate effect of the commission’s withdrawal of the pesticide law was an increase in Bayer’s shares.

The Dutch farmers’ party, who played a big role in giving airtime to the anti-Green Deal backlash, was founded by an executive from a PR agency working for agribusiness. The dominant farm unions are not only run by some of the biggest and richest farmers, but are marred by conflict of interest, obviously promoting the interests of large agribusiness at the expense of smaller farmers. A third of CAP subsidies are pocketed by the top 1.5 per cent of beneficiaries. These facts are not anecdotal. The intensive farm sector has managed, for decades, to avoid scrutiny, capture politics and channel huge profits into a limited number of pockets.

As the climate and biodiversity crisis spirals out of control, and the internal contradictions become untenable, there is a concerted effort to push back on the environmental agenda, and use environmentalists as the bogeymen to deflect anger away from those responsible for most farmers’ hardship.

Mainstream politicians are making things worse by pandering to this agenda, rather than calling it out. With every concession, a discourse that is very thin in substance gains credibility. With extremists sailing high on the wave of disinformation.