By The IWL-FI
The rebellion of farmers and ranchers has reached all EU countries. It has revealed a very deep dissatisfaction with the EU and its governments and is having an affect on one of the historical pillars of European stability. This is why it has provoked a convulsion in European societies.
The movement’s sustained mobilization and direct actions, which have largely overwhelmed the majority of agricultural unions, which it distrusts, have created a movement that is sympathetic in the eyes of the public. And, incidentally, has exposed the pacifist meekness of workers’ movement’s trade union bureaucracies.
Under the Label of “Farmers and Ranchers” There is Great Heterogeneity
At one extreme, we find the majority of peasants working on family farms, which are doomed to extinction (the number of European farms has fallen from 15 to 10 million in the last 20 years, and another 6.4 million will disappear in the next 15 years, according to a study by the European Parliament). At the other extreme are the large landowners who, along with the governments, participate in defining the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
In the case of France, the antagonism between large agribusinesses and family farms is clear. At one extreme is Arnaud Rousseau, president of the main agricultural union (FNSEA), owner of large tracts of land and a powerful network of companies, including the industrial and financial giant Avril Group. The FNSEA is a powerful lobby of large farmers, using a sector of small producers (it won 55% of the votes for the agricultural chambers in 2019). In recent decades, the FNSEA has had competition from the Coordination Rurale (20% of the vote), which claims to defend small farmers, although it remains trapped in a productivist and chauvinist logic.
Most farms in France are less than 20 hectares in size, often run by a single farmer, with an average age of around fifty, who largely works their land alone. With the ongoing concentration of land and wealth, the number of farmers in France is a quarter of what it was 40 years ago.
On the left, the Confédération Paysanne (20% of the vote) has developed. It is a member of the European Peasant Coordination, Via Campesina, and Attac. It represents family farmers and defends agriculture that respects the environment, agricultural employment, and product quality. It opposes the unbridled productivism of the CAP and participates in movements in defense of the environment. In recent weeks, it has led demonstrations against Arnaud Rousseau’s companies, including on February 9 in front of the multinational Avril, with slogans such as “Avril, robber of the farmers’ income.” Sébastien Vétil, of the Confédération Paysanne de Ille-et-Vilaine, declared that “the government’s announcements do not satisfy us, we denounce the free trade agreements and the liberalism surrounding our agricultural production, which Avril symbolizes.” At the same time, he denounced Arnaud Rousseau as co-responsible and a co-manager, together with the Macron government, of agricultural policy.
In other countries, such as Spain, this distinction is not clear and organizations representing mainly family farms, such as COAG, are working hand in hand with large agricultural employers represented in organizations such as Asaja. In Italy, large farmers are with Salvini’s right wing, while many family farms have no specific political orientation.
It is worth mentioning the maneuvers and competition between the right and the far right to capitalize on the protests. These efforts have been accentuated by the upcoming European elections, where the polls predict a significant rise of the far right.
It should also be noted that the salaried agricultural workers are absent from the mobilizations, while in some rallies in Spain slogans against the minimum wage have been shouted, to the liking of the big agricultural bosses.
As for the position of the workers’ unions, in the case of Spain, the leadership of the CCOO has branded the mobilizations on the whole as reactionary, avoiding the distinction between small farmers and the big agricultural employers. In Italy, the CGIL, which has been absent from the mobilizations, has come out in favor of the EU’s “green policies” (!). In France, the workers’ unions generally support the peasant movement, while organizations like (CFDT) decry the “double standards” of the French government: benevolence towards the peasants (especially the FNSEA) and brutality towards the workers fighting against the pension reform. Some central organizations (Solidaires and, to a lesser extent, the CGT) have aligned themselves with the struggle of the Confédération Paysanne, and the CGT has also called for the convergence of the demands of the various sectors to call for a job that pays enough to live on.
The Demands
There are some national differences. For example, in Eastern Europe, one of the most heartfelt demands is to put an end to free agricultural trade with Ukraine, through which the EU has tried to finance the Ukrainian government at the expense of farmers and ranchers.
However, there are demands that are common to the different countries and that are clearly directed against the EU’s agricultural policy. One of the most important is the guarantee of a decent income for farmers. Family farms have particularly been affected, as they have been plundered by the big parasites of the agri-food industry and the large distribution chains, without forgetting the chemical industry, which monopolizes the production and marketing of seeds, and the energy oligopolies. CAP subsidies, which favor large landowners and are disconnected from production, mask the central problem rather than solve it.
Another common demand is opposition to free trade agreements, such as the one being negotiated with Mercosur, in addition to those signed with Morocco, South Africa, Canada, and New Zealand. The resistance to these agreements stems from the fact that they put family farmers and ranchers in direct competition with big agribusinesses in these countries, which have very different cost and regulatory conditions, so they have no chance of competing. The only people who benefit are the large industrialists who can export with little or no tariffs, the large distribution chains that negotiate with national farmers on the basis of foreign prices, and the large agro-industrial companies that exploit new markets in these countries.
In truth, the CAP policy, combined with free trade agreements, is a real plan to dismantle family farming in the EU in favor of large agricultural oligopolies and cheap imports.
In the countries of southern Europe, the demand for aid in the face of the worst drought in recent years is also important. In addition to this, which is a direct expression of the environmental catastrophe we are experiencing, there are other threats including the growing desertification in the Mediterranean basin, the contamination of soils and aquifers, and the loss of biodiversity. According to various studies, 80% of Europe’s habitats are currently in poor condition and 70% of its soils are in an unhealthy state. Despite this obvious reality, a significant sector of small and medium-sized farmers and stockbreeders, who have been forced to produce more and more competitively, and who are indebted and in an increasingly precarious situation, support the large agricultural organizations. At the same time, the latter is trying to divert attention from the underlying problems to the EU environmental regulations, whose withdrawal they demand. It is also in this context of the above social distress that the far-right is trying to spread its creed on climate change denial.
The Response of the EU and National Governments
Frightened by the strength of the protests and the threat to social and political stability, the EU and governments responses have fallen in line with the interests of the big corporations they represent.
While maintaining the CAP and all the structural elements that lead to the ruin of family farms, the President of the European Commission has suspended the plan to reduce the use of pesticides, which was one of the key elements of the European “Green New Deal.” She has also cancelled measures such as the obligation to leave a certain proportion of arable or irrigated land fallow (a year without cultivation to allow the soil to recover nutrients). Also under direct threat are the lukewarm measures provided for in the Law on Nature Restoration, which included the regulation of fertilizers and the defined protected ecological areas. As for the governments, they are supporting the European Commission in rolling back the measures of the Green Pact, offering tax rebates, promising less bureaucracy, more controls, and announcing (for the umpteenth time) that they will monitor to ensure that no farmers are selling at a loss.
Successive Changes to the CAP
The EU says that via the CAP it wants to ensure a decent income for farmers, help the transition to sustainable agriculture, and guarantee European food security and sovereignty. Reality has shown the opposite. The CAP is a complete fraud in all areas, except for the huge profits pocketed by big agribusiness, big retail chains, and agribusiness giants.
When the CAP was created in 1962, the EU (then the European Economic Community) consisted of only six countries and Europe was suffering from large agricultural deficits. The initial CAP established protective measures through strong regulation: intervention prices, import tariffs, stock fixing and, later, production quotas in cases, such as milk, where surpluses were produced. For a long time, there was no need for subsidies or aid to farmers. This original CAP was one of the foundations of the European Community: a fundamental instrument for maintaining peace and stability in the countryside, it was part of the post-World War II “welfare state” framework.
But from 1992 onward (together with the Maastricht Treaty), at the same time as the welfare state was being into question, agricultural regulation was abolished and replaced by neo-liberal policy, which was fully imposed by 2003. Intervention prices, stocks, and quotas disappeared; per-hectare subsidies were introduced regardless of production, without any conditionality in favor of sustainable agriculture and the environment; and tariffs were replaced by free trade agreements. This policy has remained unchanged since, with the exception of some environmental measures in recent years, which are now being questioned. The result has been the unstoppable development of agribusiness and oligopolies, the pollution of ecosystems, the loss of biodiversity, the dismantling of family farms and the progressive desertification of the countryside.
The Agrarian Crisis, An Expression of the EU Crisis
If the CAP was one of the foundations of the EU’s stability and legitimacy, its current crisis and the anger of small and medium-sized farmers and livestock breeders is one of the elements of its crisis. The dismantling of family farms promoted by the EU is a destabilizing and delegitimizing factor.
The agrarian crisis also reveals the growing imbalance between the city and the countryside, which is increasingly polluted, depopulated, and socially neglected. This imbalance, promoted by capitalism, is reaching increasingly threatening levels.
The dismantling of family farms goes hand in hand with the rabid neoliberal offensive against the welfare state. Both are also a reflection of the decline of the EU, the European imperialist bloc caught in the middle of the conflict between American imperialism and the rising Chinese imperialism. Its two big powers, Germany and France, are also in deep crisis and have decreasing weight in the world order.
The Way Out
As the European organizations of the IWL, we are fighting for an alliance of the organizations of the working class with the peasants who work on family farms to put an end to the neoliberal CAP, the free trade agreements, and to defend measures of transition to sustainable agriculture and livestock farming that guarantees a decent income for farmers and ranchers.
We want an agricultural system that consumes less oil, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, respects animals, and is in balance with nature. This requires a plan to limit industrial agriculture and close the ecologically unsustainable macro-farms that devastate and depopulate rural areas. We are in favor of redirecting production towards sustainable and local agriculture and recovering abandoned fertile lands. We must put an end to the absurd and irrational use of water resources, especially in drought-stricken countries.
We must establish a fair price for agricultural and livestock products that covers costs and allows for a decent standard of living for family farmers, putting an end to the exorbitant difference between the prices paid at source and the final prices charged to consumers, the vast majority of whom are working class. We must punish with the utmost severity the selling at a loss that large retail chains and agribusiness impose on small and medium farmers.
We defend the creation of a public body, under the control of family farmers, the rural working class, and consumers, to set prices and annual stocks to be maintained and to ensure state control of distribution. It is not possible to respond to the crisis of the countryside without attacking the big landowners and industrial farms, the commercial oligopolies, and the chemical industry that monopolizes the supply of fertilizers and seeds.
It is necessary to regularize the migrant population working in the countryside and to impose exemplary punishment on the employers who do not respect collective agreements.
Substantial steps must be taken to restore the balance between the big cities – true ecological black holes – and the rural areas, which are increasingly polluted, neglected, and depopulated. There can be no ecologically healthy society without solving this enormous problem caused by capitalism.
All these measures are linked to the struggle for the establishment of a workers’ government, which should expropriate and nationalize, under workers and popular control, the large agricultural and agro-industrial enterprises, the large distribution chains, the large chemical corporations and the banks, and effectively support the maximum cooperation of family farms. We must establish democratic economic planning based on the needs of the people and international solidarity. Such a program cannot be developed without integrating it into the strategic struggle to replace the Europe of Capital with a Europe of Workers and Peoples, a Socialist United States of Europe.
