What’s really behind all the farmer protests?
Why we need to listen to farmers, not dismiss them
Most of us have heard about the farmer protests that have spread across the EU in recent months, as well as the resurgence of India’s farmer protests. These protests are complex and multifaceted, varying in terms of interests, focuses, localities, and tactics, but they share many underlying causes. We wanted to break those down today and offer insights into what’s actually going on beneath the surface and what it means about the future of our food system.
There has also been an oversimplified narrative, especially in some environmental circles, that the farmers are “standing in the way of progress” because of the pushback against some environmental legislation. We’re going to get into that narrative and why it doesn’t get to the root of the issue–and why we’re more aligned than we might think.
But first of all, let’s get the rundown of why farmers are protesting in the first place. For many years, farmers have been facing rising costs, a complex regulatory system, environmental regulations imposed without adequate support, and increased competition from foreign imports. Let’s look at each cause in turn.
Imports
In recent years, the EU has relaxed things like import quotas coming from places like Ukraine, increasing products in the market that don’t necessarily have to follow the same stringent requirements as food grown in the EU. The EU is also reigniting negotiations between themselves and Mercosur, a bloc of South American countries, to increase trade of products like sugar, meat, and grain. These products would also not have to be grown using the same regulations as EU farmers must face, allowing them to be sold at a cheaper price and drive down prices overall. This creates unfair competition for EU farmers.
Rising costs and dwindling incomes
Farmers’ costs have risen sharply in recent years for crucial inputs like energy, fertilizers, and transportation, notably since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, many governments have tried to reduce food prices. This has resulted in farm-gate prices–the prices farmers receive for their products–dropping by 9 percent. In other words, products are getting more expensive for farmers to produce and, at the same time, they’re being paid less for them, eroding their incomes further.
Environmental regulations and bureaucracy
Farmers in a variety of countries are pushing back against what they see as excessive bureaucracy around new environmental regulations. For example, new EU subsidy rules would have forced farmers to leave 4 percent of their farmland “fallow,” which means leaving it unused for a period of time to allow it to regenerate. But farmers say this is unrealistic given the intense pressure they are under to produce more for cheaper prices. The EU backed down on this requirement for 2024, but instead said that farmers must grow their crops without pesticides in order to receive the subsidy, which farmers point out creates the same issue as before. Pesticides are one aspect of producing higher yields, so being asked to produce more while using fewer inputs without more support doesn’t compute.
This last one is a perfect example of the “nothing for us, without us” principle. Of course there is much diversity amongst farmers’ views, but many are not opposed to making their farms more sustainable in principle. When regulations are imposed from above without consultation or proper compensation, however, it simply isn’t workable–practically or economically. It matters how we attempt to make different sectors more sustainable. We can’t just throw pesticide or fertilizer bans at farmers without offering a just transition pathway. (All we have to do is look at the disaster that unfolded in Sri Lanka after fertilizers were banned overnight to move the country to organic agriculture to recognize that this isn’t a smart way to move forward.)
The bottom line is that farmers are protesting against the paradox of being asked to produce more quickly, in greater quantities, and for cheaper, while also doing so in a more sustainable way and competing against foreign products not held to the same standards. All of this amidst a backdrop of rising debts, red tape, and the intensified denigration of their profession as “standing in the way of environmental progress” – while they feed most of the continent on an income of an average 1,600 euros per month, with incomes falling by 22 percent between 2022 and 2023 and most needing to rely on off-farm income to make ends meet. That would be enough to drive pretty much anyone to protest.
Unfortunately, the response of many governing bodies when faced with protests like these is not to step back, consult with farmers, and find a solution that will lead to long-term, sustainable change in the best interests of farmers, consumers, and the environment. Instead, they back down on their commitments altogether in an effort to quell the unrest, often offering nothing to replace it–which is what happened this time. This means that we don’t move forward environmentally, and we also don’t move very far away from the status quo. We’re just pouring a little bit of water on a smoldering fire that’s bound to flare up again within a matter of years because nothing meaningful has actually changed. It also threatens the legitimacy of the EU as an institution and leaves the door open to the co-opting of the narrative by far-right groups, which is an outcome most of us would probably rather avoid.
The Root Causes of the Food Crisis
To truly understand what’s going on, we need to take a deeper look at the longer-term causes of this crisis. In the last thirty years or so, the food system has taken a sharply neoliberal turn, causing some researchers like Philip McMichael to dub the era we’re in the “Corporate Food Regime,” where corporations effectively set the rules of engagement for the system.
From the 1980s, many of the policies that ensured fair prices for farmers have been systematically dismantled in favour of Free Trade Agreements which have decimated the livelihoods of many small farmers. The concentration of power in agrochemical companies and other food conglomerates has risen sharply to the point where, for example, just four companies control the vast majority of the global seed market.
The Green Revolution, a set of agricultural policies set in motion in the 1960, pushed yields up through increasing use of pesticides, fertilizers, and hybrid seeds, which likely averted much famine in those years. However, it also decimated soil health and drove up costs for farmers who began accessing these inputs for cheap prices, and then once they were fully converted to this industrialized style of farming, began seeing swift price increases, leading to cycles of debt that many have found it impossible to get out from under. To operationalize this, a farmer in the U.S. in 1990 who paid USD$26.65 to plant an acre of corn would have to pay USD$93.48 in 2019, a rate that far exceeds inflation, reflecting the increased costs imposed by seed companies.
This has led to power in our food system shifting to look something like the hourglass below. Farmers are on one end of the hourglass; consumers are on the other. Both of their populations are large, but their concentration of power is low. In the middle, we see all the power sitting in the hands of agrochemical companies, retailers, middlemen, and massive food conglomerates.
This creates a situation where the groups with the least amount of power – farmers and consumers – are pitted against each other and simultaneously blamed for the crisis when they actually hold the least amount of culpability. Farmers are chastized for resisting expensive, ill-supported environmental changes and demanding fair prices; consumers are blamed for wanting “too-cheap” prices than the market can allow (read: prices they can actually afford given their stagnating incomes). Those holding the power in the middle shrug their shoulders, calling both groups unrealistic and greedy, saying we must all ‘make concessions' in the face of rising inflation.
But this is not the zero-sum game they are presenting it to be. In reality, the wealth is just being captured in the middle. We could have reasonable prices for consumers, but grocery chains are hiking up prices to consumers far beyond what is required by inflation. We could have decent prices for farmers, but their farm-gate prices have been plummeting for decades as agrochemical companies hike up the prices of inputs like fertilizers. There are winners in this game; it’s just not the vast majority of us. It’s the unimaginably profitable corporations that hold most of the power in our food system.
The protests are, of course, about specific grievances on one level. The farmers protesting in India a few years ago also had specific policies they were protesting. But on a deeper level, they are pointing out the absurdity of the food system we have arrived at in the last few decades; one that works for virtually nobody except powerful corporations. It doesn’t work for those eating the food, nor for those growing it. And it certainly isn’t working for the environment.
Fundamentally, many farmers around the world want to reclaim the ability to influence the food system, to have a say in how food is grown and produced. This has led to the formation of the global food sovereignty movement, which comprises millions of farmers around the world organizing around this goal of a food system that is truly for the people.
That vision might seem utopian. But it’s actually not unprecedented. Let’s look at an example of small-scale farmers and consumers being genuinely supported, rather than forced to swim upstream against a system that doesn’t value or support them.
The Case of Belo Horizonte
In the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a radical system of food policies took off in the 1990s. The newly-elected left-wing government decided that food insecurity was a market failure and that food would be treated as a right of citizenship for all 2.5 million residents. Their starting place wasn’t strong – 20 percent of children were going hungry, and 11 percent of the population lived in absolute poverty.
They enacted a network of over 20 interconnected policies, from creating “popular restaurants” that offered highly subsidized but high-quality food to anyone who wanted it to making school meals universally accessible, to setting fixed prices for the most important staple foods. They also used participatory budgeting to involve citizens in the process, with over 31,000 people taking part.
They worked with farmers in the surrounding areas to address their concerns in bringing their products to market, offering them the most desirable spots in the city to sell their goods if they also agreed to sell on mobile trucks in the least food-secure areas of the city, many of which were previously food deserts. Farmers' livelihoods strengthened in Belo Horizonte, while in Brazil more broadly, incomes had dropped by about half.
“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.” - City of Belo Horizonte
The impact on farmers was also remarkable. They were extensively consulted in the designing of these policies, and officials took the time to understand their grievances and find solutions to them. Farmers’ incomes increased, and agroecological projects flourished in urban areas as well through supported community gardens. The interesting thing is that when researchers studied comparable farms that were part of Belo Horizonte’s programs and those that were not, they found improved environmental markers on the farms of those who were part of the supported program. They weren’t forced to improve their environmental practices, but with the increased support, many elected to grow more diverse crops or transition to organic or agroecological agriculture. As a result, they had better soil health and higher biodiversity markers. In other words, support and integration led to better environmental outcomes – not the other way around.
For the people, health markers improved astronomically at rates not seen in other comparable Brazilian cities. Rates of infant mortality dropped by more than half, as did infant malnutrition. Maternal mortality also dropped. Rates of diabetes and hypertension went down as well. It was the only city in Brazil during those years where fruit and vegetable consumption went up. Belo Horizonte is now known as “the city that ended hunger” – they actually eradicated food insecurity within the bounds of their city and their model has been taken up by other cities around the world. The kicker? These policies never took more than 2 percent of their city budget. That’s a penny per day for every resident.
This example shows that our current food system is not an inevitability or “simply the way things are.” It’s a matter of political will, of failing to treat food as a human right and allowing corporations to set the rules. We have the food system we do because of a set of choices made by governments and corporations who have designed it as primarily a profit-making machine. It was made, and it can be made differently–we can never forget this.
It also shows the importance of including farmers as valuable stakeholders in the solution-making process. Right now, much of the western world treats farmers with very little respect and dignity. Farming connotes having views deemed as “backwards,” and it’s a job that most consider to be “beneath” them, something people only do out of necessity. And yet it’s the work that quite literally keeps us alive – according to data from ADEM, Paris has just three days of self-sufficiency for fresh food in the case of supply chain disruptions. It’s the same for most major cities. The protest slogan “no farmers, no food” is not rhetorical. We must re-value the work that farmers do as the invaluable contribution that it is.
There are a few important things to take away from this case. Of course, there are far more angles to talk about than what we can cover in one newsletter – the promising potential of investing in small-scale agriculture, the importance of re-valuing farmers culturally, how to achieve global trade that doesn’t undermine small farmers and many others. Today, we’ll just focus on the power imbalance aspect of things.
All of these repeated crises and protests point to the simple exhaustion of our current globalized, industrialized model of agriculture, which has been dominant for the last half-century. We simply cannot sustain it any longer; we’re at a breaking point. The environment is at a breaking point. Farmers are at a breaking point with dwindling incomes. Consumers are approaching a breaking point with unaffordable prices.
Our current food system is what happens when we treat food as a commodity alone, rather than as a right, something necessary for human survival. When we chronically undervalue farmers, treating their work as somehow lesser or undesirable and making it virtually impossible to make a livable wage, we end up with the crisis we’re in today: very few young people entering agriculture, an aging farming population, and a system that threatens to crack under the profit-driven pressure placed upon it. On the consumer side, treating food as a commodity means tolerating a system where 800 million people are food-insecure in a world where we have enough food to feed everyone–but not everyone can afford to buy it. Again, this situation is not an inevitability or a failure of technology; it’s a political choice. It doesn’t have to be this way.
If we look at what’s going on with housing, as well, we can start to see the pattern: treating necessities as commodities tends to result in a lot of human suffering for the majority and staggering profits for a minority. The task of our generation is figuring out how to claw our way back towards seeing these things as rights, rather than something to be left to the free market.
What’s needed here are not technocratic tweaks or cosmetic policy changes. It’s a fundamental rebalancing of power.
We cannot underestimate the importance of getting the food systems transition right. This situation should serve as a reminder of what happens when we don’t get it right – when we fail to consult and centre the ones actually growing the food and slap regulatory changes on without addressing more fundamental parts of the system; when we allow an unjust concentration of power to go on for too long unchallenged. What’s needed here are not technocratic tweaks or cosmetic policy changes. It’s a fundamental rebalancing of power.
The food system is unjust, and it’s gone on for far too long. It’s not built for delivering food to people and decent wages to farmers; it’s built for profit for those in the middle. It’s greed–the greed of retailers, agrochemical conglomerates, distributors, and other middlemen–that’s standing in the way. Not the very reasonable demands of those who currently hold the least amount of power. We must band together, because we represent billions of people, while those holding the power are very, very few. It’s not the farmers against the environmentalists and the consumers. It’s all of us against the corporations that control the system in their image, to the detriment of us all.
Luckily, the farmers in the EU – as well as the farmers in India and across the world – are standing up in greater numbers than we’ve seen in a very long time. They’re demanding that things finally change. It’s in our best interests to stand alongside them.
This video does a great job of breaking down the factors behind the current protests — it’s in French, but the translated captions are accurate.
The book Beginning to End Hunger by M. Jahi Chappell is a great deep-dive into the fascinating case of Belo Horizonte’s food policies.
This article, titled “Farmers’ protests in Europe and the deadend of neoliberalism” does a great job of breaking down why the crisis is more than just about environmental regulations and has more to do with the longstanding trend of neoliberalism in the food system (and beyond).
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