Farmers’ protests sweep Europe

Farmers’ protests have subsided somewhat in France, following government concessions, but continue in many countries across Europe.

They were sparked by new European Union rules which require a certain proportion of fallow land, crop rotations, and reduced fertiliser use. The EU is now stepping back.

German farmers object to the phasing out of tax breaks on agricultural diesel; Netherlands farmers, to rules curbing nitrogen oxide and ammonia emissions. In Greece, fuel tax is a target; in Bulgaria, food imports from Ukraine.

The French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (Révolutionnaires) reports that new prime minister Gabriel Attal has promised a “pause” in the plans for pesticide reduction, to reduce requirements for fallow, and to restore subsidies for tractor fuel. The NPA (R) summarises this as: “The government is using ‘green austerity’ as a scapegoat so as to spare the giants of agrobusiness, the banks, the big food firms, or the supermarkets. They are just asked to... obey the law better. A low which has shown that it is incapable of ensuring an income for those who work the land”.

“In the mobilisation”, continues the NPA (R), “there were both the small farmers, crushed by their debts, living below the minimum wage, under pressure from the big capitalists, and the leaders of real empires of agrobusiness”.

It reports however that “the anger of the peasants elicited deep sympathy among workers. The slogan ‘live, don’t just survive’ struck a chord with the stagnation of wages and the increase of prices in the cities”.

The average farm household income in France is £45,000, but that often includes outside-farming incomes. 18% of farm people are below the official poverty line, as against 15% overall; the farm work is often harder than much wage-work.

Lutte Ouvrière, another French activist-left group, was more sceptical about the progressive potential of farmer revolt.

“Many farmers have difficulty in paying themselves the minimum wage, but the sector is very lucrative for the shareholders of [agribusiness]...

“No basic problem will be resolved for the small farmers as long as the laws of the market embedded in capitalism reign. However, in their overwhelming majority, the farmers are attached to the capitalist order...

“The market economy and competition grind down the small farmers, but they see their future only in that economy. They defend private property and free enterprise all the more because they fear to lose their own.

“It is like that with many tradespeople, shopkeeper, or self-employed people who have one foot in the world of labour and another in that of the bosses. They denounce the weight of the state but demand more and more subsidies from it. They defend the market and free enterprise, but also want guaranteed incomes and protected markets.

“That is why the perspective of overthrowing capitalism to get rid of the law of devil-take-the-hindmost can be carried forward only by those who live only by their labour-power, that is, the wage-workers”.

Lutte Ouvrière will have precedents in mind. For many decades now, the European Union has been operating a gradual rundown of small farming in favour of higher-productivity, large-scale farming, softening it by subsidies to the farmers. Agriculture now has 2.5% of the working population, where it was near 40% in 1949.

A large movement of small farmers in the 1950s, the “Poujadists”, was initially supported by the Communist Party, but took a markedly fascist direction. Across Europe, the far right seems to be gaining most from the current farmers’ revolts.

The other NPA, the NPA (L’Anticapitaliste), makes much of opposing “productivism” in agriculture. However, a world population of eight billion needs highly-productive agriculture. It also needs the environmental protections attempted by the EU. Indeed, many more.

Socialists have to seek alternative ways of social protection for farm people than tax breaks on fossil fuels, looser eco-rules, or blocking imports from poorer countries.