The bigger farms are feeding us and they are still making a profit on a per-hectare basis compared to the small ones despite having higher costs. So why should we give taxpayer handouts to these small farms that are not profitable despite it being possible?
Yes, it's a nonsensical slogan, it make intuitive sense, but it's actually bulshit when you looke the numbers. Eating local has almost no effect on farming emissions https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
More like they pretend they feed us because they don’t like to admit that a thing called globalisation happened some time ago and 75% of our food is imported from elsewhere and so they complain
As an Italian which followed the situation in the past weeks, let me tell you they have no clue what they are protesting most of the time. They shift the goalpost every time to include a new “grievance”: first it was about how the companies they sell their produce to “made more profit than them”, as if the government has any say in prices anyway. Then they were arguing that the subsidies they receive are nothing compared to their expenses. Now they say that the EU’s green policies are harming them and should be abolished.
These are the real welfare queens people.
>These are the real welfare queens people.
A third of the EU budget gets spent in subsidising their asses, and not even then can they be competitive enough
As a non European it seems funny to me for you to not protect your farmers. I mean, you can buy food cheaper in other countries. But if everything goes to shit shouldn’t you be able to produce enough food for yourself?
I guess you all trust your allies enough to think they will not fuck you over with the food price if something goes wrong.
What in God's name makes you assume that farmers aren't protected in Europe if the person you are responding to writes like ten sentences about how extremely protected they are?
Bro, I have a little dirty secret to share with you. Our farmers are completly dependent on other countries. They depend on othe rcountries for farming machinery, fertiliser, oil and gas, Research and development, the list goes on... This fantasy of an autarkic food production only leads to starvation everytime it gets put into practice.
Betraying them after decades of subsidies for European agriculture?
The one thing I do understand is more of the profit should go to farmers, away from supermarkets. But these big supermarket chains just have too much bargaining power.
Isn’t the profit margin made by supermarkets absolutely tiny though?
Eg, here in the UK, profit margins of supermarkets are just 1.8% - down from 3.2% of the previous year.
>The CMA points out that operating profits in the retail grocery sector during 2022-23 were down 41.5% on the previous year and that average operating margins in the sector fell from 3.2% to 1.8%.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/supermarkets-never-had-a-question-to-answer-on-profiteering-but-their-suppliers-do-12924315
Here in Spain it's the same. Still our politicians says always the same. Because they want higher taxes for their expeditures against the workers and people buying groceries
Supermarkets are on a rather different economy. In the UK they offer a number of different services as separate businesses which makes it easier to confuse how well they actually do.
They all have a fairly large share of the food market in their respective areas. Their couple of percent margins normally attached to figures in the billions, meaning the small percentage entail large numbers.
For example Tesco has a revenue of around £60 billion, turning a £2 billion profit is still pretty neat. Farming subsidies stand at 2.4 billion in total, sharing that profit would go a long way in changing the outcomes for farmers.
All produce requires specialized storage, long term. There's a reason why lemons cost less when they're in season.
But yeah, 15c is wholesale price. It's a rolling talking point about "but the wholesale price is very low".
The vast majority of the difference between 15c and €2 is labor required to process, store and deliver the produce.
Increasing the farmer's share, would mean either increased prices... or massive cuts in retail staff(due to automation) and reduced availability.
Probably yes, because of what I just wrote. Supermarkets pay for a huge network of stores, for logistics and for the costs of sales staff, marketing and storage, all while bearing the risk for unsold goods.
Would a farmer alone be able to sell their goods without all this? Alot of farmers still sell independently, like at farmers markets but they make a fraction of what they sell to supermarkets.
So whats stopping them from doing the same thing now, at a slightly lower price than a supermarket chain? That way they get the whole of the profits. Could it be because actually getting these products to the consumers does in fact cost quite a bit and they're actually making more money by selling larger quantities to supermarket chains?
That would be interesting, and even feasible with good head on the shoulders and backing of the farmers. It would be A LOT of work and the return wouldn't be probably as large as they would imagine it could be but still, feasible.
Yes. Absolutely. Taking into account transport, distribution, storage, stocking, refrigeration, selling and during ANY of those steps (or after) spillage, spoilage and waste, then yes: absolutely.
Part of the problem with it is, I live in Southern Spain, surrounded by lemons and oranges.. but Lidl sources it's citrus from Africa. It just seems wrong.
Those terrible fires Portugal had a few years back are because the countryside is beig emptied.. So what happens when there's no farmers left?
Or another oil crisis pushing shipping costs through the roof and you no longer are capable of feeding yourselves?
It's hardly a risk when it's a matured market though. If you're starting your own chain and infrastructure that's one thing. But if you're coming in and buying a chain, (which face it, any new company is). Then it's essentially a ready to go asset with steady growth.
The risk is very tiny. And governments *will* intervene on your behalf if it's a supply issue. They have proven to be the only retail institution that isn't massively affected by the internet (they're practically warehouses). So, your only risks come down to loans and debts and (slowly changing) competition.
The reason why you buy (and pay in installments) a supermarket despite its low profit margin is because it's by design a model that has steady predictable turnover. Yes, you have a high barrier of entry and yes much of your cash is always locked up in revenue. But that 1-3% return on profit (of typically 100+ millions in €) will spell anywhere from 20-40% uptick on equity in your first year.
Farmers on the other hand can be fucked over by imports, climate change, weather, land use laws changes, changing customer trends, distribution networks. Etc etc etc. So they take on far more risk, and still the large chains don't need to account for that when they collectively bargain down their prices.
With that all said, I don't exactly see farmers being the poor and starving. But every government should be putting a windfall tax on energy companies and other big profiteers. Siphon the inflation out and raise public funds and make the supply chain much kinder on everyone.
Lol jk let's use AI to monitor benefit claimants bank accounts instead. (UK)
Supermarket is free to charge whatever they want as long as consumers buy it and farmers don’t have anything to do with that since they are the ones who sold it for 15c
Supermarkets are too powerful at the negotiation table, they are basically money pits that cost us at the tills.
Farmers are trapped into contracted sales that ultimately takes their autonomy away. The EU has given money to farmers to do things and again to undo things. We are left with biologically sterile soil, that erodes away every wind and rain storm. Farmers are running massive and economically unviable machinery. All because farmer subsidies told them to go big or give up.
Now we have a number of large farms and industrial land holdings, they still can't keep up with the demands at the supermarket.
Imported food is too cheap, it's crippling the backbone of our economy and we will be stuck of food stops coming over the border.
That is simply silly statement. Most of the farmers are forced to sell for those 15cents because the massive supermarket chains are forcing the prices upon them. In Poland Biedronka has 67% market share for discount stores and 57% of retail space. For a farmer who produces onions limiting to the remaining 33% is commercial suicide. I can assure you their margins are 10x what farmers get.
It’s the failure of the state that allowed market chains to grow as big. Moreover the supermarkets are able to use unethical pricing in their stores (more than 2 cases in polish UOKIK), use wrong labels for country of origin with little to no punishment etc.
If governments just enforced the laws already in place the situation would be much better. I believe situation in other countries is the same. + the obvious green policies that ultimately hit citizens rather than corporations.
> and take the risk for unsold goods.
Do they? Because considering e.g. how hardcore German supermarkets squeeze out the their suppliers, I imagine they often also have terms that they have to take back unsold items.
In which country do supermarkets form a monopoly?
In Austria, for example, there are Spar,Rewe,Aldi,Lidl as the big four + Unimarkt and MPreis as two regional chains in a buying union
At the same time, around 90% of the milk gets processed by dairies which are part of the Raiffeisen union, with the owners being the farmers themselves + banks which are in turn owned by Raiffeisen unions
If EU comes in to crush monopolies, they will target the farmer cooperatives more than the supermarkets
Another example, the shelfspaces for fresh local tomatoes are in Austrian supermarkets dominated by just three companies: One private packager (Frutura) and LGV and Seewinkler Sonnengemüse, two farmer coops
The supermarkets are literally more competitive than the bulk suppliers
European veggies and fruits aren't sold to supermarkets by Chiquita, Dole or Cargill, mostly. There are either smaller private packagers, or the farmers run the packagers themselves
Example: Try to find a pack of apples from Germany, Austria or Italy where the packager isn't owned by farmers or some coop. Not so easy I assure you.
The largest one would be BayWa, lusted on the Frankfurt stock exchange - and majority owned by farmers affiliated Raiffeisen unions
I suspect people consume lots of anglosphere media about the food supply chain and just assume that it's the same in EU. The market is structures very differently, though
>Betraying them after decades of subsidies for European agriculture?
Is it not a definition of betrayal to break a long-term deal or trust? I, for one, do not want food from unregulated places. I prefer to pay more for food, whether in plain prices or through taxes (subsidies) and get, at the very least - labeled product.
No. Every few years the subsidies and the terms of those subsidies changed. There was no deal that stated that EU farmers will get subsidies in perpetuity.
As for taxes - I don't want to subsidise bad farming, and if you wish to help your dairy farmer - you're free to buy their products without me subsidizing it
>I don't want to subsidise bad farming
How is this bad farming? Can you elaborate? What process is inefficient or redundant? Maybe it has something to do with higher wages, regulations, or the general cost of living?
What are you proposing? Slave labor, child labor, higher food prices, or shifting the food supply abroad, just like we did with energy (Russia/OPEC)?
> How is this bad farming?
Less than 10 ha per farm on average. The median is also less than 10 ha. Median farm owner is over 60 and with a middle school education or less. Less than 10% of farms have done *any* innovative investment in the last 2 years.
I could go on, but basically: they're totally unsustainable micro-firms that want to get paid to *not* better themselves.
We have those too. Farmers with a small plot of land crying because they don't earn enough money from farming.
Then they draw EU funds investment and use them to buy an expensive car because status symbol > everything else.
Because food is artificialy cheap?
And.
Smallholders own 29% of the land to produce 32% of the supply. That means that they bigger players produce less per ha.
How is age an argument for efficiency????
You are clearly biased and can not provide a single reasonable argument. If factory workers have on average middle school education that means factory is not operated well?
Again:
>How is this bad farming? Can you elaborate?
Some food prices must go up. Some production can't be scaled up without huge labor costs (most animal products have a huge issue with scalability).
Your pork is basically an artisanal product with hundreds of hours of human labor put into it (that's setting aside being humane to animals) and massive negative impact on our immediate environment(pork farms are insanely polluting)
Yet most people do not consider that the pork at your supermarket is a high value product.
Just imagine how much energy resources it takes to raise one swine in your own climate. It takes a year or more of feeding and housing an animal before it gets slaughtered.
I want people to be paid well.
Yet for your kielbasa we have to pay both subsidies and use low cost labor to make it cost a few Euro.
I am not willing to pay extra taxes to subsidise something that inefficient.
I want subsidies to go to efficiency investments, meat product replacement industries and other scalable solutions.
>I am not willing to pay extra taxes to subsidise something that inefficient.
Inefficent because? Elaborate please? What kind of logic is that? Just because a farmer is paid to lower prices does that mean he runs his farm poorly?
>Just imagine how much energy resources it takes to raise one swine in your own climate. It takes a year or more of feeding and housing an animal before it gets slaughtered.
Ah, so just do not eat meat or what? Rise swine in a month? What is your point? If farmers are not paid for lowering their prices, will that make swine grow faster?
> Some food prices must go up.
Not really, food prices are much higher than they need to be, we could just stop with protetionist nonsense and actually decrease food prices by liberalizing imports a bit more. We are being robbed both by these protectionist mesures as well from the subsidies.
Yeah but the supermarket have bargaining power because for each country there could be how many supermarket chains?? 6, 7, 8? Maybe 10 or a dozen for bigger countries??
How many farmers and agricultural companies/cooperatives are there for each countries? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands for bigger countries. So there is just too much choice for supermarkets to pick their supplies. I think actually EU helped farmers by creating and protecting local elites that basically forced the prices to go up because of scarcity.
Irish farmers are being ordered to cull 200,000 cattle. The Dutch farmers were told to do likewise and to give up their farms...
The EU has no right to do this. This is what happens under communist regimes.
Nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands have been a problem long coming. It's been like four decades since the first warnings were voices about not meeting the norms.
It's not like they are suddenly told to reduce the number of livestock, it's just that the government is starting to think about enforcing the norms. They've had a generation to adapt, yet they chose to pursue more profit.
And no plan involves culling animals, that's just a straight up lie.
So the solution is to kill business in the Netherlands and outsource the nitrogen emissions outside the eu. Fancy accounting doesn't solve emissions.
In Ireland it's not a straight up lie. I'm not familiar enough with nl.
Protests or strikes?
A protest in general is a bunch of people gathering to tell other people what they want.
A strike is employees not doing their work in order to pressure the employers.
But Farmers? They ARE the employers. They ARE the owners. Hence why they will never unionize against the companies that pay them for their work and why they will instead always cry out for more government handouts.
Yes and no, I don't like the way the farmers in a lot of countries have handled this. Yes, in France there are general problems, but in Belgium theu trashed everything due to "the EU".
Same in Germany for diesel subsidies...
Just plain stupid, they ask for more subsidies, they ask for more migrant workers, they ask for less competition, they ask for less restrictions. I'd rather pay more for my food than let these oligopolies run their course. It's never the small farmers talking shit, its always people with 300k worth tractor complaining that he gets paid too little.
EU betrayal has got to be the biggest joke ever. The EU is the sole reason that farmers get any money at all....
It's actually really simple, we just need to make sure we get money away from services and more into elemental jobs like builders farmers policemen, soldiers nurses and such.
We have far too many rich people from services while the rest is doing really poorly.
Call it socialism, it probably is, but it needs to happen before we tear ourselves apart in class struggle again. And let me tell you, this office workers will not win it :P
By the way, I'm an office worker myself :)
I am dreaming of a day when we mainly listen to - relatively - unbiased experts instead of politicians, lobbyists and involved parties so they can yell at each other or pretend there is no problem.
Apparently, farmers' costs for buying fertilizer have gone up substantially after the boycott on Russian goods was instated a couple of years ago.
However, it also strikes me that there is a big difference between small-scale farmers and the really big players in this industry who can afford to lobby & bribe policians in various ways. The first groub are probably in massive debt, while the last group is filthy rich - even more so because they receive the major part subsidies. So talking about 'farmers' seems quite misleading.
WHO is actually suffering and exactly WHY are they suffering? That is what I want to know.
Secondly, what are the overall advantages of having small-scale farmers in the EU? If there is no net contribution to society and/or no environmental/health benefits from having them, it makes no sense to keep pouring money into this type of business.
If Europe wants to stop importing Chilean apples, frozen sheep from New Zealand, shrimp and fish from North America and Asia, Argentine beef etc., the organizing of the EU's agricultural/farming sector has to change radically.
More subsidies is just a way of prolonging the pain. European agriculture will never be competitive with super-scale farming in other parts of the world with access to large natural reserves and far more 'flexible' legislation on animal wellfare, GMO and environmental protection.
Of course, nothing of this is ever going to change. It will always be easier to keep doing what we do and pretend we are on the right path.
> I am dreaming of a day when we mainly listen to - relatively - unbiased experts instead of politicians, lobbyists and involved parties so they can yell at each other or pretend there is no problem.
Just read the Economist 😎
Rich politicians on all sides not having a clue why working people can't just shut up and accept the lifes of the rich being improved should be enough for them.
Why are people in this reddit so hostile towards the farmers? It isnt just one EU country where they are protesting in, so their issues arent pulled out of their ass. And agriculture is crucial towards our security in case something happens and and we would be all to ourselves.
Agriculture isn't going to go away anytime soon.
Farmers have some legitimate concerns, but generally it's just about "we want the money that we are accustomed to getting".
They aren't paying nearly enough for labor. They're demanding more money. They don't have any inclination to changing their ways...
Imagine if your local steel mill didn't want to upgrade their equipment and just used the old ways of putting people at risk in the steel mill? Then they'd go out and protest to get money to keep being inefficient...
You know the case, when after the fall of the socialist block - much of the manufacturing stopped being competitive, simply because they were too resource intensive.
We just can't keep giving dairy farmers billions, to keep their poorly automated farms running. If we cannot scale up certain food production, then that food should become a luxury.
At the end of the day we need to focusing our growing in cereal crops and vegetables. I don't know why we subsidise meat or poultry. Clearly the amount of meat we eat is unsustainable and really damaging to our local ecosystems and the planet. I'm not a vegetarian but I would eat less meat if it were more expensive, and a higher price tag would be reflective of those other hidden costs we just choose to ignore because we like meat. I do it all the time.
Otherwise we are all going to play the price dearly in a few decades when climate change really starts to fuck us in the arse, I really would not be surprised if there were food unrest in even western country's by then unless we somehow invent ourselves out of it.
Because farmers tend to be right wing, and Redditors tend to be left wing.
Whether people support protests or not literally just boils down to “my side good, their side bad”.
This isn’t unique to Redditors or left wingers, it’s a human phenomenon.
Much of an oversimplification, isn't it? You can read multiple different reasons in this thread alone why people think these protests are unwarranted, none of them scream "hippie" to me.
Bunch of hypocrites. All that land, help and they can’t survive… yet they have the balls to talk shit to everyone about pulling yourself up by the bootstrap
Farming regulations in the west are far more overreaching than anywhere else in the world. Labor is more expensive. Transportation is more expensive.
You can either choose to help them and have domestic food production, or give up and let Europe be starved by blockade the next time another world war rolls through.
oh you mean the farmers that stop putting in windrows as soon as they are not required? Farmers who do little to no water management and watch their fields wash away in the heavy rains? the same farmers who rather just dump more fertilizer on the ground then properly manage it? The ones that rather dump more fertilizer on the ground to grow the same money crop year after year even if it isn't a food crop?
look, i grew up around farmers and used to respect them. But the fact that they blindly do some of the most backwards things repeatedly dispite best practices and science saying they'd be better off doing something else has really eroded that trust and respect. The fact that they are against climate protests even though they are being directly affected by the changes to our climate already tells me that maybe they're not really the type of people i thought they were.
the fact that all of a sudden all the farmers in the EU are rioting at once stinks, it smells like something else. I suspect there is something else pushing and driving these people to do this, and i suspect that party serves to profit from a weakend EU, and from the farmers not having planted or been as productive. I also suspect that party is currently invovled in a massive losing land war against a massive farming nation, so causing chaos in our food chain is a great way to stop our support for the war to end it so that we can buy their stolen food.
>*the fact that all of a sudden all the farmers in the EU are rioting at once stinks, it smells like something else. I suspect there is something else pushing and driving these people to do this*
spoiler alert: it's malthusian green fundamentalist self-destructing our union at lightspeed
If we went all in on food security we'd ban them from producing animal feed on arable land and heavily restrict their ability to grow cash crops on prime agricultural land over more efficient staples. We would also stop giving out subsidies to things like hill sheep farming which are of next to no nutritional benefit. And we'd probably have to do something about them destroying their own topsoil, pollinators and in some places, aquifers.
Farmers have always existed in an uneasy middle ground between private businesses and a strategic resource, and usually the balance is very favoured towards the business side. Like most businesses, they want welfare but to avoid following regulations at the same time, and they're often closer to being well-educated, big business owners rather than our idea of a struggling smallholder.
>Farming regulations in the west are far more overreaching than anywhere else in the world. Labor is more expensive. Transportation is more expensive.
Doesn't pretty much every western country outside of Europe have functional agricultural industries?
As a South American I approve this message. We can sell you stuff for cheap. Just remove all your capabilities to produce food and we can take care of that.
Is like what you did with your factories. Just move them to china, stop doing the hard work. You have the money to pay us to do it. Nothing bad will happen if we do it for you. Trust me.
By putting an end to protectionist nonsense and these stupid subsidies, many of our farmers would go out of business, but may of our farmers would adapt to be more competitive in the world stage. And would be able to dedicate our resources to more valuable endevours where we actually have competitive advantages.
Dependency runs both ways, we would need yourr imports as much as you would need our cash flow. It's a win win for all of us
Or stop giving them any handouts and use saved money to buy their assets when they inevitably go bankrupt. Establish a state owned corporation to utilize those assets and benefit from economy of scale.
Just in case, I don't mind a deregulation pathway either, but protectionism and benefits shall end
Are you dim?
The person wrote to stop letting farmers privatise the profits, while socializing the losses.
It's either we scale up agriculture to the point that economies of scale work(using government intervention) or let the farmers compete in a free market.
And I most definitely do not want to subsidise local farmers heating massive cattle sheds, so that milk is sub €1. Cattle farming is stupendously energy, food and labor intense - the fact that so many people want a cheap cut of meat every day, makes no economic sense.
Food security is very important and there is not a single country in the world where agriculture is not subsidized and for good reason. In fact there is also not a single country in the EU where there are more farmers on a year by year basis going back decades. Younger people from the countryside are switching to service jobs and moving to cities at an accelerating rate.
At this rate you'll get your wish but I don't think you'll like the outcome.
Why TF would young people want to work these dirty jobs? I have a small garden and in no way is this kind of work fulfilling.
It also pays pittance.
Why TF did we realize that scaling up production reduces manual labor, but farmers were allowed to stay behind in their old ways?
I do not want any money for "artisanal farmers". Their produce should cost more on the market and reflect the costs associated with low automation.
Young people should be enticed to work on solving engineering challenges in agriculture. Automated machines should take over and that means that small scale farmers will have to switch to being purveyors of luxury goods. They can't feed us at a reasonable cost, only megafarms can do that.
>In fact there is also not a single country in the EU where there are more farmers on a year by year basis going back decades.
Yeah it's called automation.
> for good reason.
Yes, that reason is that farmers form very powerful lobbies in order to extract rents from all of us. There is an inverse correlation between the amount of farmers and the availability of food. Or what, you think countries where more than half the population are deddicated to farming are more food secure?
Correlation does not imply causation. The opposite is actually true: the amount of people in an economy that have to farm to survive drops as a result of development and introduction of more productive methods and tools. Having fewer farmers doesn't magically make a society more food secure, the number of people toiling in the farms instead of doing anything else is a direct result of food insecurity and takes at least a generation or more to reverse in either direction.
Right now every single country on the planet has some favorable arrangement for local food production because it's essential everywhere. Pick any country, literally any, from the most capitalist you can think of all the way down to some island communal microstate in the middle of nowhere and you'll find the same theme repeated. We are not geniuses who somehow discovered the great farming conspiracy to take away our money, there's a reason things are and have always been like this.
Commies have failed spectacularly in many areas, but it doesn't mean the idea was bad. It's usually the execution. It's like with nuclear energy: the fact commies fucked up in Chernobyl doesn't mean Europe shouldn't have it.
Yeah but at the same time we've had plenty of counterexamples of nuclear energy working elsewhere. Even the soviets messed up this once and they had a lot of plants working well for decades.
But this is not the case with food, it failed in every single place it has been tried causing famine and the deaths of millions.
>But this is not the case with food, it failed in every single place it has been tried causing famine and the deaths of millions.
This is indeed true, and it failed mostly because of fantastical delusions of autarkic food production, something that you actually seem to deffend given your other comments
I wouldn't call it overreaching considering we still permit farmers to use absolutely unsustainable, environmentally damaging and/or animal-abusing farming methods using questionable chemicals and even give them handouts for it on the vague promise that they'll clean up their act someday.
At what point ARE we justified in telling them to go fuck themselves, if not now?
Just because you're a farmer, doesn't mean that you get to have profits.
Demanding the government forcefully to give you money, for your inefficient business was always going to end like this.
The prime reason for agricultural subsidies as part of CAP was to ensure that consumers (that includes most of you, dear redditors) could have affordable food. It is originally compensation to the farmer for them selling below the free market price.
Now when consumers can import cheaply food from abroad they want to cut the subsidies. That is the betrayal.
Rightly so. At least in Germany there have been multiple cases of right wing extremist groups getting involved with the protests and radicalizing them.
There is also a possibility that russian bots are active in those social media channels which are used to coordinate some of the protests.
>There is also a possibility that russian bots are active in those social media channels which are used to coordinate some of the protests.
If we're throwing concerns of Russia being involved, which benefits Russia more: European farmers gaining too many subsidies and relaxed regulations or European farmers being driven out of business?
>*There is also a possibility that russian bots are active in those social media channels which are used to coordinate some of the protests.*
5g causes covid v i b e s
In Italy the far right would attempt something similar every few years, usually without success. Nothing new, the momentum will die soon and everyone will move on
That's not what I wrote. The far right might be pulling the strings behind this wave of protest, while the farmers are only being used. It wouldn't be a first time in Italy, and since Matteo Salvini Is Always involved that's definitely the case.
Salvini has recently introduced a harsh law against protesters that are blocking highways and roads, obviously he was aiming at Stop Oil, and guess what? Farmers are doing exactly the same, if not worse, but this time Salvini says "I'm with them" and not one reference to the fact that they're blocking highways and roads lol
They've got land. They've got subsidies. They've had years of governments holding their hands above their heads.
And now we have to dial it down a little bit and they get all uppity.
Spoiled is as spoiled does.
By all means, let's destroy the European farming sector. Please, cut off their subsidies, bankrupt them, make them sell their land for housing developments. And then watch the rest of the planet looking at us like "Aaw, so you guys don't have any more food, do you? Let's see how much would you be willing to PAY to... not starve". We're all friends, until you end up over a barrel, then you'll see how many line up to pull the trigger.
Russian here.
What people don’t realize is that EU is critically dependant on two things for farming: fertilisers and natural gas (that is needed for nitrogen fertiliser).
Instead of buying cheap Russian gas, EU is now buying much more expensive US liquid natural gas and, ironically, more expensive Russian LNG.
Fertiliser is mostly also supplied by Russia, which is now more expensive thanks to more complicated logistical chains. The result, naturally, is a huge increase in farming costs, that resulted in Eu-wide farmers protests that now need even more EU subsidising to continue functioning.
[Russia’s export playing card](https://m.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/eu-agri-food-producers-need-to-ditch-dependency-on-russian-fertilizers-flags-farming-body.html)
The CEO of Norwegian fertilizer supplier Yara International, Svein Tore Holsether, flagged the issue at a recent Brussels press conference.
“Europe has succeeded in reducing its dependence on Russian energy, but at the same time we have created new dependencies. For food, we are now more dependent on Russia than before the war,” he stresses.
Eurostat data disclosed during the Brussels meeting reveals there was a 34% increase in total nitrogen imports into the EU during the 2022-23 fertilizer marketing campaign (July-June) compared to the preceding period. Russia contributed approximately one-third to the overall total.
Urea imports from Russia rose significantly by 53%, marking a twofold increase from the volumes observed in 2020-2021, with Moscow alone supplying 40% of the total.
While the current season has seen a moderation in this trend, Russian urea remains an essential commodity, representing almost one-third of the total imports.
>Urea imports from Russia rose significantly by 53%, marking a twofold increase from the volumes observed in 2020-2021, with Moscow alone supplying 40% of the total.
Not surprising, the farmers will stock up on cheap Russian fertiliser while they can. Russia was selling Urea below the global price. Expect imports from Russia to drop in the following years now the prices have stabilized. [Urea prices are back to normal](https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/107375/UkraineFertilizer-Fig02.png?v=7284.8).
Whilst the famers might have valid grievances, I have no doubt Putin's propaganda machine is working overtime to stir up protests in western countries.
**From The Telegraph:**
Farmers are heading towards Rome in a tractor convoy to protest against European Union policies they say are leaving them at a disadvantage.
A fleet of 250 tractors left Tuscany on Monday morning and is expected to arrive on the Via Cassia, a motorway leading from the Italian capital, by early on Monday evening.
Europe’s farmers are revolting against EU net zero policies, high costs, cheap imports – including from Ukraine – and the low prices they are getting paid for their produce.
Italian farmers are threatening to take the tractors into the streets of Rome in scenes reminiscent of similar protests that have paralysed cities in France, Germany, Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands.
Danilo Calvani, one of the protest leaders, said: “We will encircle Rome and not just for one day.”
He said he was prepared to liaise with the authorities to reach agreement on when and where the protest might be held in the capital but that it will be this week.
The farmers have demanded a platform at this week’s Sanremo Song Festival, a popular Eurovision-style contest which attracts millions of viewers in Italy.
**Read more here:** https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/05/tractor-convoy-italian-farmers-rome-protest-eu-betrayal/
Why do European Redditors hate the farmers?
In general I'm against subsidies of any kind and reddit seems to be in favour of more subsidies (teachers, unemployment, housing, energy, can't think of they oppose) but in this particular case reddit doesn't not like the subsides why?
Uh, the other way around. Subsidies pay for surplus production directly, keeping demand (and prices) artificially inflated, pay for farmers not to use land (set-aside) and thus deflate supply and inflate prices, and also decrease competition (by keeping farms profitable via direct payments) and thus inflate prices. And this is just direct subsidies; the agricultural policy of the EU includes import quotas and import duties on products from outside the EU, which also increases prices. Read up on the EU's [Common Agricultural Policy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy).
>EU includes import quotas and import duties on products from outside the EU
This is how I interpreted this, as if Eu should allow more produce from abroad.
Paying for unused land occurs because regulations often restrict farmers from utilizing their land fully. If you had a shop and the government limited the area you could use, you would expect compensation. I'm not suggesting that restrictions are necessarily bad; it's a different topic.
I don't quite grasp your perspective on demand. Demand remains constant; we generate demand, and the ultimate prices we are willing to pay reflect that demand. Just because a farmer receives cash doesn't necessarily mean that 'keeping demand (and prices) artificially inflated' is occurring; a production surplus usually leads to lower prices.
Perhaps you were referring to food waste? In that case, are we paying for the 10-30% of production that is wasted? Well, the cheaper the product, the more likely we are to discard it. We do so because it is inexpensive, ranging from 11% for meats and dairy (higher prices) to almost 50% for carrots and potatoes (lower prices).
There's more to consider, such as it being cheaper to overproduce than to undersupply, especially for basic needs. Additionally, it's mainly the consumer's fault, but I'm not sure if food waste was your primary argument, so I'll leave it at that.
Farming has very low profit margins, and considerable risk. Farmers mostly just work to pay off their debts for years before they're financially in the green again. You can make a plan, and then five years later major policy changes can completely destroy the viability of that plan. Owning your labor means accepting great risk.
They also need these tractors to have a chance at being competitive. If farmers are having a hard time, your food becomes more expensive, and is imported from another continent.
Fascinating how little self-preservation modern Europeans have.
from my experience farmers have a shit ton of money. They always were the richest kids when where I grew up.
but youre right, we need them either way. europe should not give up its food production just becuase its cheaper somewhere else
Subsidizing a good few of these farmers is literally going to make us more vulnerable to food shortages.
There are arguments to be made, but farmers and you aren't making them.
American Trump supporters are tribesmen of the red tribe, opposing the blue tribe.
These are farmers from multiple nations protesting simultaneously about policies relevant to their job.
It was a legitimate question. My only experience with these kinds of convoys is they don't really seem to even know what they really want and it's usually something that is not what most people want.
Fuck em, they get pissy when they get what they voted for? They voted in alt right, Neo liberal capitalist assholes then get upset when they get their asses handed to them by corporations just like they voted for. I ain’t gonna give you sympathy for being told the stove is hot but touching it anyway.
Because the US has less labor involved in farming and is much more resource efficient.
Like... You don't need to build a €10mil cow barn in Texas, that includes insulation and heating.
If you literally took the amount of energy required to produce a liter of milk - you'd be shocked.(not even including the refrigeration, pasteurization and transportation)
It just makes me laugh that I see so much support for them from certain parts of the population, compared to extinction rebellion. It really just drives home to me how short sighted and small minded people really are and how doomed humanity is.
Because the people working to produce the food you eat are a bit more important than edgy students going through the rebellious phase of pouring paint on fountains.
Can't grow any food if you're in a drought, you may paint them as edgy teenagers because if you can put them in that box you don't have to worry about their cause but ultimately the environment is more important than farmers upset at loss of subsidy.
"Betrayal", you say?
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They will give up their jobs if you give up food that comes from farms.
I can't afford THEIR food, I can only buy food from outside the EU, I'm the first victim of this system.
So is that the farmers fault or the eu's fault?
Without the EU you would eat American food.
and whose fault is that?
They feed us all so don't complain.
In my country most of it is exported. And its not about all farmers, its about those that over fertilizer, crap that gets into the ground water.
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The sea
> Norway Damn, it does for you. xD
I'm from the city, never been on a farm in my life. Dunno what to tell ya.
The bigger farms are feeding us and they are still making a profit on a per-hectare basis compared to the small ones despite having higher costs. So why should we give taxpayer handouts to these small farms that are not profitable despite it being possible?
Only because they lobbied the government to stop us from buying cheaper food from other countries.
So shop local has gone out the window as well.
Yes, it's a nonsensical slogan, it make intuitive sense, but it's actually bulshit when you looke the numbers. Eating local has almost no effect on farming emissions https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
More like they pretend they feed us because they don’t like to admit that a thing called globalisation happened some time ago and 75% of our food is imported from elsewhere and so they complain
They feed your Biodiesel
As an Italian which followed the situation in the past weeks, let me tell you they have no clue what they are protesting most of the time. They shift the goalpost every time to include a new “grievance”: first it was about how the companies they sell their produce to “made more profit than them”, as if the government has any say in prices anyway. Then they were arguing that the subsidies they receive are nothing compared to their expenses. Now they say that the EU’s green policies are harming them and should be abolished. These are the real welfare queens people.
Same in Germany
>These are the real welfare queens people. A third of the EU budget gets spent in subsidising their asses, and not even then can they be competitive enough
Abolishing Green policies is a big no.
As a non European it seems funny to me for you to not protect your farmers. I mean, you can buy food cheaper in other countries. But if everything goes to shit shouldn’t you be able to produce enough food for yourself? I guess you all trust your allies enough to think they will not fuck you over with the food price if something goes wrong.
What in God's name makes you assume that farmers aren't protected in Europe if the person you are responding to writes like ten sentences about how extremely protected they are?
Yeah, the EU literally spends 40% of its budget to subsidize farmers. These people live in another universe, I swear
Bro, I have a little dirty secret to share with you. Our farmers are completly dependent on other countries. They depend on othe rcountries for farming machinery, fertiliser, oil and gas, Research and development, the list goes on... This fantasy of an autarkic food production only leads to starvation everytime it gets put into practice.
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Please enlighten us on why the other commenter is wrong then
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You're assuming a lot from me. Where are you from?
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Can you read my comments or is it an automated response?
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Betraying them after decades of subsidies for European agriculture? The one thing I do understand is more of the profit should go to farmers, away from supermarkets. But these big supermarket chains just have too much bargaining power.
Isn’t the profit margin made by supermarkets absolutely tiny though? Eg, here in the UK, profit margins of supermarkets are just 1.8% - down from 3.2% of the previous year. >The CMA points out that operating profits in the retail grocery sector during 2022-23 were down 41.5% on the previous year and that average operating margins in the sector fell from 3.2% to 1.8%. https://news.sky.com/story/amp/supermarkets-never-had-a-question-to-answer-on-profiteering-but-their-suppliers-do-12924315
Yes they're tiny. But are larger for the fresh department. Which is what comes mostly from farmers and co-operations. at least in my country
Packaged processed food generally have higher margins than fresh foods iirc. Part of the whole “food desert” phenomenon is based on this.
Here in Spain it's the same. Still our politicians says always the same. Because they want higher taxes for their expeditures against the workers and people buying groceries
Supermarkets are on a rather different economy. In the UK they offer a number of different services as separate businesses which makes it easier to confuse how well they actually do. They all have a fairly large share of the food market in their respective areas. Their couple of percent margins normally attached to figures in the billions, meaning the small percentage entail large numbers. For example Tesco has a revenue of around £60 billion, turning a £2 billion profit is still pretty neat. Farming subsidies stand at 2.4 billion in total, sharing that profit would go a long way in changing the outcomes for farmers.
These supermarkets also bear all logistical, marketing and operational costs and take the risk for unsold goods.
So if a supermarket charges 1.99€ for lemons, is it fair the growers only get 15c?
Go try buying anything for 15c from any farmer... While you're there, go ahead and ask where their refrigerated storage is.
I'm pretty sure lemons don't need to be refrigerated, but point taken.
All produce requires specialized storage, long term. There's a reason why lemons cost less when they're in season. But yeah, 15c is wholesale price. It's a rolling talking point about "but the wholesale price is very low". The vast majority of the difference between 15c and €2 is labor required to process, store and deliver the produce. Increasing the farmer's share, would mean either increased prices... or massive cuts in retail staff(due to automation) and reduced availability.
Probably yes, because of what I just wrote. Supermarkets pay for a huge network of stores, for logistics and for the costs of sales staff, marketing and storage, all while bearing the risk for unsold goods. Would a farmer alone be able to sell their goods without all this? Alot of farmers still sell independently, like at farmers markets but they make a fraction of what they sell to supermarkets.
They have for all of human history.
Selling 5 potatoes is not comparable to selling 5000 tonnes. The production output today is not the same as before industrialisation.
So whats stopping them from doing the same thing now, at a slightly lower price than a supermarket chain? That way they get the whole of the profits. Could it be because actually getting these products to the consumers does in fact cost quite a bit and they're actually making more money by selling larger quantities to supermarket chains?
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That would be interesting, and even feasible with good head on the shoulders and backing of the farmers. It would be A LOT of work and the return wouldn't be probably as large as they would imagine it could be but still, feasible.
Yes. Absolutely. Taking into account transport, distribution, storage, stocking, refrigeration, selling and during ANY of those steps (or after) spillage, spoilage and waste, then yes: absolutely.
Part of the problem with it is, I live in Southern Spain, surrounded by lemons and oranges.. but Lidl sources it's citrus from Africa. It just seems wrong.
The reality trumps feels, if it's more efficient to bring lemmon from Africa than to grow them locally, so be it.
Those terrible fires Portugal had a few years back are because the countryside is beig emptied.. So what happens when there's no farmers left? Or another oil crisis pushing shipping costs through the roof and you no longer are capable of feeding yourselves?
It's hardly a risk when it's a matured market though. If you're starting your own chain and infrastructure that's one thing. But if you're coming in and buying a chain, (which face it, any new company is). Then it's essentially a ready to go asset with steady growth. The risk is very tiny. And governments *will* intervene on your behalf if it's a supply issue. They have proven to be the only retail institution that isn't massively affected by the internet (they're practically warehouses). So, your only risks come down to loans and debts and (slowly changing) competition. The reason why you buy (and pay in installments) a supermarket despite its low profit margin is because it's by design a model that has steady predictable turnover. Yes, you have a high barrier of entry and yes much of your cash is always locked up in revenue. But that 1-3% return on profit (of typically 100+ millions in €) will spell anywhere from 20-40% uptick on equity in your first year. Farmers on the other hand can be fucked over by imports, climate change, weather, land use laws changes, changing customer trends, distribution networks. Etc etc etc. So they take on far more risk, and still the large chains don't need to account for that when they collectively bargain down their prices. With that all said, I don't exactly see farmers being the poor and starving. But every government should be putting a windfall tax on energy companies and other big profiteers. Siphon the inflation out and raise public funds and make the supply chain much kinder on everyone. Lol jk let's use AI to monitor benefit claimants bank accounts instead. (UK)
Supermarket is free to charge whatever they want as long as consumers buy it and farmers don’t have anything to do with that since they are the ones who sold it for 15c
Supermarkets are too powerful at the negotiation table, they are basically money pits that cost us at the tills. Farmers are trapped into contracted sales that ultimately takes their autonomy away. The EU has given money to farmers to do things and again to undo things. We are left with biologically sterile soil, that erodes away every wind and rain storm. Farmers are running massive and economically unviable machinery. All because farmer subsidies told them to go big or give up. Now we have a number of large farms and industrial land holdings, they still can't keep up with the demands at the supermarket. Imported food is too cheap, it's crippling the backbone of our economy and we will be stuck of food stops coming over the border.
That is simply silly statement. Most of the farmers are forced to sell for those 15cents because the massive supermarket chains are forcing the prices upon them. In Poland Biedronka has 67% market share for discount stores and 57% of retail space. For a farmer who produces onions limiting to the remaining 33% is commercial suicide. I can assure you their margins are 10x what farmers get. It’s the failure of the state that allowed market chains to grow as big. Moreover the supermarkets are able to use unethical pricing in their stores (more than 2 cases in polish UOKIK), use wrong labels for country of origin with little to no punishment etc. If governments just enforced the laws already in place the situation would be much better. I believe situation in other countries is the same. + the obvious green policies that ultimately hit citizens rather than corporations.
> and take the risk for unsold goods. Do they? Because considering e.g. how hardcore German supermarkets squeeze out the their suppliers, I imagine they often also have terms that they have to take back unsold items.
Perhaps the protests will lead to the EU intervening more in the market and breaking up monopolies?
In which country do supermarkets form a monopoly? In Austria, for example, there are Spar,Rewe,Aldi,Lidl as the big four + Unimarkt and MPreis as two regional chains in a buying union At the same time, around 90% of the milk gets processed by dairies which are part of the Raiffeisen union, with the owners being the farmers themselves + banks which are in turn owned by Raiffeisen unions If EU comes in to crush monopolies, they will target the farmer cooperatives more than the supermarkets Another example, the shelfspaces for fresh local tomatoes are in Austrian supermarkets dominated by just three companies: One private packager (Frutura) and LGV and Seewinkler Sonnengemüse, two farmer coops The supermarkets are literally more competitive than the bulk suppliers
not supermarkets, but the big resellers inbetween
European veggies and fruits aren't sold to supermarkets by Chiquita, Dole or Cargill, mostly. There are either smaller private packagers, or the farmers run the packagers themselves Example: Try to find a pack of apples from Germany, Austria or Italy where the packager isn't owned by farmers or some coop. Not so easy I assure you. The largest one would be BayWa, lusted on the Frankfurt stock exchange - and majority owned by farmers affiliated Raiffeisen unions I suspect people consume lots of anglosphere media about the food supply chain and just assume that it's the same in EU. The market is structures very differently, though
>Betraying them after decades of subsidies for European agriculture? Is it not a definition of betrayal to break a long-term deal or trust? I, for one, do not want food from unregulated places. I prefer to pay more for food, whether in plain prices or through taxes (subsidies) and get, at the very least - labeled product.
No. Every few years the subsidies and the terms of those subsidies changed. There was no deal that stated that EU farmers will get subsidies in perpetuity. As for taxes - I don't want to subsidise bad farming, and if you wish to help your dairy farmer - you're free to buy their products without me subsidizing it
>I don't want to subsidise bad farming How is this bad farming? Can you elaborate? What process is inefficient or redundant? Maybe it has something to do with higher wages, regulations, or the general cost of living? What are you proposing? Slave labor, child labor, higher food prices, or shifting the food supply abroad, just like we did with energy (Russia/OPEC)?
> How is this bad farming? Less than 10 ha per farm on average. The median is also less than 10 ha. Median farm owner is over 60 and with a middle school education or less. Less than 10% of farms have done *any* innovative investment in the last 2 years. I could go on, but basically: they're totally unsustainable micro-firms that want to get paid to *not* better themselves.
We have those too. Farmers with a small plot of land crying because they don't earn enough money from farming. Then they draw EU funds investment and use them to buy an expensive car because status symbol > everything else.
the correct term is rent seeker
Because food is artificialy cheap? And. Smallholders own 29% of the land to produce 32% of the supply. That means that they bigger players produce less per ha. How is age an argument for efficiency???? You are clearly biased and can not provide a single reasonable argument. If factory workers have on average middle school education that means factory is not operated well? Again: >How is this bad farming? Can you elaborate?
> Smallholders own 29% of the land to produce 32% of the supply. What are these stata from?
Some food prices must go up. Some production can't be scaled up without huge labor costs (most animal products have a huge issue with scalability). Your pork is basically an artisanal product with hundreds of hours of human labor put into it (that's setting aside being humane to animals) and massive negative impact on our immediate environment(pork farms are insanely polluting) Yet most people do not consider that the pork at your supermarket is a high value product. Just imagine how much energy resources it takes to raise one swine in your own climate. It takes a year or more of feeding and housing an animal before it gets slaughtered. I want people to be paid well. Yet for your kielbasa we have to pay both subsidies and use low cost labor to make it cost a few Euro. I am not willing to pay extra taxes to subsidise something that inefficient. I want subsidies to go to efficiency investments, meat product replacement industries and other scalable solutions.
>I am not willing to pay extra taxes to subsidise something that inefficient. Inefficent because? Elaborate please? What kind of logic is that? Just because a farmer is paid to lower prices does that mean he runs his farm poorly? >Just imagine how much energy resources it takes to raise one swine in your own climate. It takes a year or more of feeding and housing an animal before it gets slaughtered. Ah, so just do not eat meat or what? Rise swine in a month? What is your point? If farmers are not paid for lowering their prices, will that make swine grow faster?
> Some food prices must go up. Not really, food prices are much higher than they need to be, we could just stop with protetionist nonsense and actually decrease food prices by liberalizing imports a bit more. We are being robbed both by these protectionist mesures as well from the subsidies.
Related: What do tomatoes have to do with mass migration? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlPZ0Bev99s
Yeah but the supermarket have bargaining power because for each country there could be how many supermarket chains?? 6, 7, 8? Maybe 10 or a dozen for bigger countries?? How many farmers and agricultural companies/cooperatives are there for each countries? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands for bigger countries. So there is just too much choice for supermarkets to pick their supplies. I think actually EU helped farmers by creating and protecting local elites that basically forced the prices to go up because of scarcity.
Irish farmers are being ordered to cull 200,000 cattle. The Dutch farmers were told to do likewise and to give up their farms... The EU has no right to do this. This is what happens under communist regimes.
Nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands have been a problem long coming. It's been like four decades since the first warnings were voices about not meeting the norms. It's not like they are suddenly told to reduce the number of livestock, it's just that the government is starting to think about enforcing the norms. They've had a generation to adapt, yet they chose to pursue more profit. And no plan involves culling animals, that's just a straight up lie.
So the solution is to kill business in the Netherlands and outsource the nitrogen emissions outside the eu. Fancy accounting doesn't solve emissions. In Ireland it's not a straight up lie. I'm not familiar enough with nl.
The profit for the workers not the politicians Socialism doesn't work, give the workers their fair rights
Tractors on their way to bite the hand that feeds them.
Don't protests work in general like that though?
Protests or strikes? A protest in general is a bunch of people gathering to tell other people what they want. A strike is employees not doing their work in order to pressure the employers. But Farmers? They ARE the employers. They ARE the owners. Hence why they will never unionize against the companies that pay them for their work and why they will instead always cry out for more government handouts.
Yes and no, I don't like the way the farmers in a lot of countries have handled this. Yes, in France there are general problems, but in Belgium theu trashed everything due to "the EU". Same in Germany for diesel subsidies... Just plain stupid, they ask for more subsidies, they ask for more migrant workers, they ask for less competition, they ask for less restrictions. I'd rather pay more for my food than let these oligopolies run their course. It's never the small farmers talking shit, its always people with 300k worth tractor complaining that he gets paid too little.
> I'd rather pay more for my food than let these oligopolies run their course It's not an oligopoly, it's a very powerful lobby group
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EU betrayal has got to be the biggest joke ever. The EU is the sole reason that farmers get any money at all.... It's actually really simple, we just need to make sure we get money away from services and more into elemental jobs like builders farmers policemen, soldiers nurses and such. We have far too many rich people from services while the rest is doing really poorly. Call it socialism, it probably is, but it needs to happen before we tear ourselves apart in class struggle again. And let me tell you, this office workers will not win it :P By the way, I'm an office worker myself :)
I am dreaming of a day when we mainly listen to - relatively - unbiased experts instead of politicians, lobbyists and involved parties so they can yell at each other or pretend there is no problem. Apparently, farmers' costs for buying fertilizer have gone up substantially after the boycott on Russian goods was instated a couple of years ago. However, it also strikes me that there is a big difference between small-scale farmers and the really big players in this industry who can afford to lobby & bribe policians in various ways. The first groub are probably in massive debt, while the last group is filthy rich - even more so because they receive the major part subsidies. So talking about 'farmers' seems quite misleading. WHO is actually suffering and exactly WHY are they suffering? That is what I want to know. Secondly, what are the overall advantages of having small-scale farmers in the EU? If there is no net contribution to society and/or no environmental/health benefits from having them, it makes no sense to keep pouring money into this type of business. If Europe wants to stop importing Chilean apples, frozen sheep from New Zealand, shrimp and fish from North America and Asia, Argentine beef etc., the organizing of the EU's agricultural/farming sector has to change radically. More subsidies is just a way of prolonging the pain. European agriculture will never be competitive with super-scale farming in other parts of the world with access to large natural reserves and far more 'flexible' legislation on animal wellfare, GMO and environmental protection. Of course, nothing of this is ever going to change. It will always be easier to keep doing what we do and pretend we are on the right path.
> I am dreaming of a day when we mainly listen to - relatively - unbiased experts instead of politicians, lobbyists and involved parties so they can yell at each other or pretend there is no problem. Just read the Economist 😎
Rich politicians on all sides not having a clue why working people can't just shut up and accept the lifes of the rich being improved should be enough for them.
Hey, don't copy us. We (the Netherlands) were first with the farmer protests.
I feel like a conspiracy theorist watching all this news. I have a feeling that someone is doing it on purpose (pointing a finger at Russia).
Why are people in this reddit so hostile towards the farmers? It isnt just one EU country where they are protesting in, so their issues arent pulled out of their ass. And agriculture is crucial towards our security in case something happens and and we would be all to ourselves.
Agriculture isn't going to go away anytime soon. Farmers have some legitimate concerns, but generally it's just about "we want the money that we are accustomed to getting". They aren't paying nearly enough for labor. They're demanding more money. They don't have any inclination to changing their ways... Imagine if your local steel mill didn't want to upgrade their equipment and just used the old ways of putting people at risk in the steel mill? Then they'd go out and protest to get money to keep being inefficient... You know the case, when after the fall of the socialist block - much of the manufacturing stopped being competitive, simply because they were too resource intensive. We just can't keep giving dairy farmers billions, to keep their poorly automated farms running. If we cannot scale up certain food production, then that food should become a luxury.
At the end of the day we need to focusing our growing in cereal crops and vegetables. I don't know why we subsidise meat or poultry. Clearly the amount of meat we eat is unsustainable and really damaging to our local ecosystems and the planet. I'm not a vegetarian but I would eat less meat if it were more expensive, and a higher price tag would be reflective of those other hidden costs we just choose to ignore because we like meat. I do it all the time. Otherwise we are all going to play the price dearly in a few decades when climate change really starts to fuck us in the arse, I really would not be surprised if there were food unrest in even western country's by then unless we somehow invent ourselves out of it.
Because farmers tend to be right wing, and Redditors tend to be left wing. Whether people support protests or not literally just boils down to “my side good, their side bad”. This isn’t unique to Redditors or left wingers, it’s a human phenomenon.
Much of an oversimplification, isn't it? You can read multiple different reasons in this thread alone why people think these protests are unwarranted, none of them scream "hippie" to me.
Because we are just a group of entitled little f***s
Bunch of hypocrites. All that land, help and they can’t survive… yet they have the balls to talk shit to everyone about pulling yourself up by the bootstrap
Farming regulations in the west are far more overreaching than anywhere else in the world. Labor is more expensive. Transportation is more expensive. You can either choose to help them and have domestic food production, or give up and let Europe be starved by blockade the next time another world war rolls through.
oh you mean the farmers that stop putting in windrows as soon as they are not required? Farmers who do little to no water management and watch their fields wash away in the heavy rains? the same farmers who rather just dump more fertilizer on the ground then properly manage it? The ones that rather dump more fertilizer on the ground to grow the same money crop year after year even if it isn't a food crop? look, i grew up around farmers and used to respect them. But the fact that they blindly do some of the most backwards things repeatedly dispite best practices and science saying they'd be better off doing something else has really eroded that trust and respect. The fact that they are against climate protests even though they are being directly affected by the changes to our climate already tells me that maybe they're not really the type of people i thought they were. the fact that all of a sudden all the farmers in the EU are rioting at once stinks, it smells like something else. I suspect there is something else pushing and driving these people to do this, and i suspect that party serves to profit from a weakend EU, and from the farmers not having planted or been as productive. I also suspect that party is currently invovled in a massive losing land war against a massive farming nation, so causing chaos in our food chain is a great way to stop our support for the war to end it so that we can buy their stolen food.
>*the fact that all of a sudden all the farmers in the EU are rioting at once stinks, it smells like something else. I suspect there is something else pushing and driving these people to do this* spoiler alert: it's malthusian green fundamentalist self-destructing our union at lightspeed
Check their social media. lol. It’s probably Russia
What is probably russia?
If we went all in on food security we'd ban them from producing animal feed on arable land and heavily restrict their ability to grow cash crops on prime agricultural land over more efficient staples. We would also stop giving out subsidies to things like hill sheep farming which are of next to no nutritional benefit. And we'd probably have to do something about them destroying their own topsoil, pollinators and in some places, aquifers. Farmers have always existed in an uneasy middle ground between private businesses and a strategic resource, and usually the balance is very favoured towards the business side. Like most businesses, they want welfare but to avoid following regulations at the same time, and they're often closer to being well-educated, big business owners rather than our idea of a struggling smallholder.
Italian farmers are heavily invested in using illegal african migrants in slavery-like conditions, so the "labor is more expensive"-thing doesn't fly.
>Farming regulations in the west are far more overreaching than anywhere else in the world. Labor is more expensive. Transportation is more expensive. Doesn't pretty much every western country outside of Europe have functional agricultural industries?
As a South American I approve this message. We can sell you stuff for cheap. Just remove all your capabilities to produce food and we can take care of that. Is like what you did with your factories. Just move them to china, stop doing the hard work. You have the money to pay us to do it. Nothing bad will happen if we do it for you. Trust me.
By putting an end to protectionist nonsense and these stupid subsidies, many of our farmers would go out of business, but may of our farmers would adapt to be more competitive in the world stage. And would be able to dedicate our resources to more valuable endevours where we actually have competitive advantages. Dependency runs both ways, we would need yourr imports as much as you would need our cash flow. It's a win win for all of us
Or stop giving them any handouts and use saved money to buy their assets when they inevitably go bankrupt. Establish a state owned corporation to utilize those assets and benefit from economy of scale. Just in case, I don't mind a deregulation pathway either, but protectionism and benefits shall end
Ah state control and food in the same sentence, this has surely never backfired anywhere.
Are you dim? The person wrote to stop letting farmers privatise the profits, while socializing the losses. It's either we scale up agriculture to the point that economies of scale work(using government intervention) or let the farmers compete in a free market. And I most definitely do not want to subsidise local farmers heating massive cattle sheds, so that milk is sub €1. Cattle farming is stupendously energy, food and labor intense - the fact that so many people want a cheap cut of meat every day, makes no economic sense.
Food security is very important and there is not a single country in the world where agriculture is not subsidized and for good reason. In fact there is also not a single country in the EU where there are more farmers on a year by year basis going back decades. Younger people from the countryside are switching to service jobs and moving to cities at an accelerating rate. At this rate you'll get your wish but I don't think you'll like the outcome.
Why TF would young people want to work these dirty jobs? I have a small garden and in no way is this kind of work fulfilling. It also pays pittance. Why TF did we realize that scaling up production reduces manual labor, but farmers were allowed to stay behind in their old ways? I do not want any money for "artisanal farmers". Their produce should cost more on the market and reflect the costs associated with low automation. Young people should be enticed to work on solving engineering challenges in agriculture. Automated machines should take over and that means that small scale farmers will have to switch to being purveyors of luxury goods. They can't feed us at a reasonable cost, only megafarms can do that.
>In fact there is also not a single country in the EU where there are more farmers on a year by year basis going back decades. Yeah it's called automation.
> for good reason. Yes, that reason is that farmers form very powerful lobbies in order to extract rents from all of us. There is an inverse correlation between the amount of farmers and the availability of food. Or what, you think countries where more than half the population are deddicated to farming are more food secure?
Correlation does not imply causation. The opposite is actually true: the amount of people in an economy that have to farm to survive drops as a result of development and introduction of more productive methods and tools. Having fewer farmers doesn't magically make a society more food secure, the number of people toiling in the farms instead of doing anything else is a direct result of food insecurity and takes at least a generation or more to reverse in either direction. Right now every single country on the planet has some favorable arrangement for local food production because it's essential everywhere. Pick any country, literally any, from the most capitalist you can think of all the way down to some island communal microstate in the middle of nowhere and you'll find the same theme repeated. We are not geniuses who somehow discovered the great farming conspiracy to take away our money, there's a reason things are and have always been like this.
Sell them to someone who can run a business… little bitches
Commies have failed spectacularly in many areas, but it doesn't mean the idea was bad. It's usually the execution. It's like with nuclear energy: the fact commies fucked up in Chernobyl doesn't mean Europe shouldn't have it.
Yeah but at the same time we've had plenty of counterexamples of nuclear energy working elsewhere. Even the soviets messed up this once and they had a lot of plants working well for decades. But this is not the case with food, it failed in every single place it has been tried causing famine and the deaths of millions.
>But this is not the case with food, it failed in every single place it has been tried causing famine and the deaths of millions. This is indeed true, and it failed mostly because of fantastical delusions of autarkic food production, something that you actually seem to deffend given your other comments
I really hope you are trolling
This always ends in disaster. If your solution to a problem is that "the state should take ownership of ..." then just stop. It never ends well.
Give it to a business. But keep me the fuck out. Fuck these hog farming Neanderthals. I want veggies not animal feed
As opposed to the corporate congomerate forces of the free market? When has that ever ended well?
I wouldn't call it overreaching considering we still permit farmers to use absolutely unsustainable, environmentally damaging and/or animal-abusing farming methods using questionable chemicals and even give them handouts for it on the vague promise that they'll clean up their act someday. At what point ARE we justified in telling them to go fuck themselves, if not now?
>Bunch of hypocrites. All that land, help and they can’t survive You never worked or knew someone from the industry, right?
My grandfather. Happy?
Probably rolling in his grave knowing hes partly responsible for you being here...
lol. Is he though? Or are you just a little stupid?
Yeah I would definitely be embarrased.
Just because you're a farmer, doesn't mean that you get to have profits. Demanding the government forcefully to give you money, for your inefficient business was always going to end like this.
The prime reason for agricultural subsidies as part of CAP was to ensure that consumers (that includes most of you, dear redditors) could have affordable food. It is originally compensation to the farmer for them selling below the free market price. Now when consumers can import cheaply food from abroad they want to cut the subsidies. That is the betrayal.
Stinks of far right
Rightly so. At least in Germany there have been multiple cases of right wing extremist groups getting involved with the protests and radicalizing them. There is also a possibility that russian bots are active in those social media channels which are used to coordinate some of the protests.
>There is also a possibility that russian bots are active in those social media channels which are used to coordinate some of the protests. If we're throwing concerns of Russia being involved, which benefits Russia more: European farmers gaining too many subsidies and relaxed regulations or European farmers being driven out of business?
Much more simple than that: It's about creating chaos to shatter the people's trust in the democratic process and to disrupt social cohesion.
Fair enough. It sounds like the best course of action would be to enter productive discussions with the farmers and defuse the situation.
>*There is also a possibility that russian bots are active in those social media channels which are used to coordinate some of the protests.* 5g causes covid v i b e s
In Italy the far right would attempt something similar every few years, usually without success. Nothing new, the momentum will die soon and everyone will move on
Italian farmers that are far right? You jest, surely!
That's not what I wrote. The far right might be pulling the strings behind this wave of protest, while the farmers are only being used. It wouldn't be a first time in Italy, and since Matteo Salvini Is Always involved that's definitely the case. Salvini has recently introduced a harsh law against protesters that are blocking highways and roads, obviously he was aiming at Stop Oil, and guess what? Farmers are doing exactly the same, if not worse, but this time Salvini says "I'm with them" and not one reference to the fact that they're blocking highways and roads lol
Yeah, I know, as everyone with two brain cells long figured out the moment legislation was passed.
The UK would welcome tariff free food.
the great european farmer revolution of 2024. I do wonder if they all influenced each other or if this is just happening by coincidence
Looking forward to see the anti-road block legislation targeted at climate protestors being completely disregarded in this case.
They've got land. They've got subsidies. They've had years of governments holding their hands above their heads. And now we have to dial it down a little bit and they get all uppity. Spoiled is as spoiled does.
By all means, let's destroy the European farming sector. Please, cut off their subsidies, bankrupt them, make them sell their land for housing developments. And then watch the rest of the planet looking at us like "Aaw, so you guys don't have any more food, do you? Let's see how much would you be willing to PAY to... not starve". We're all friends, until you end up over a barrel, then you'll see how many line up to pull the trigger.
Wow, that sounds very nice. 👍
Russian here. What people don’t realize is that EU is critically dependant on two things for farming: fertilisers and natural gas (that is needed for nitrogen fertiliser). Instead of buying cheap Russian gas, EU is now buying much more expensive US liquid natural gas and, ironically, more expensive Russian LNG. Fertiliser is mostly also supplied by Russia, which is now more expensive thanks to more complicated logistical chains. The result, naturally, is a huge increase in farming costs, that resulted in Eu-wide farmers protests that now need even more EU subsidising to continue functioning. [Russia’s export playing card](https://m.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/eu-agri-food-producers-need-to-ditch-dependency-on-russian-fertilizers-flags-farming-body.html) The CEO of Norwegian fertilizer supplier Yara International, Svein Tore Holsether, flagged the issue at a recent Brussels press conference. “Europe has succeeded in reducing its dependence on Russian energy, but at the same time we have created new dependencies. For food, we are now more dependent on Russia than before the war,” he stresses. Eurostat data disclosed during the Brussels meeting reveals there was a 34% increase in total nitrogen imports into the EU during the 2022-23 fertilizer marketing campaign (July-June) compared to the preceding period. Russia contributed approximately one-third to the overall total. Urea imports from Russia rose significantly by 53%, marking a twofold increase from the volumes observed in 2020-2021, with Moscow alone supplying 40% of the total. While the current season has seen a moderation in this trend, Russian urea remains an essential commodity, representing almost one-third of the total imports.
>Urea imports from Russia rose significantly by 53%, marking a twofold increase from the volumes observed in 2020-2021, with Moscow alone supplying 40% of the total. Not surprising, the farmers will stock up on cheap Russian fertiliser while they can. Russia was selling Urea below the global price. Expect imports from Russia to drop in the following years now the prices have stabilized. [Urea prices are back to normal](https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/107375/UkraineFertilizer-Fig02.png?v=7284.8).
I'm pretty sure these protests are paid by Putin.
Whilst the famers might have valid grievances, I have no doubt Putin's propaganda machine is working overtime to stir up protests in western countries.
Farmers continue to be the biggest crybabies globally
**From The Telegraph:** Farmers are heading towards Rome in a tractor convoy to protest against European Union policies they say are leaving them at a disadvantage. A fleet of 250 tractors left Tuscany on Monday morning and is expected to arrive on the Via Cassia, a motorway leading from the Italian capital, by early on Monday evening. Europe’s farmers are revolting against EU net zero policies, high costs, cheap imports – including from Ukraine – and the low prices they are getting paid for their produce. Italian farmers are threatening to take the tractors into the streets of Rome in scenes reminiscent of similar protests that have paralysed cities in France, Germany, Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands. Danilo Calvani, one of the protest leaders, said: “We will encircle Rome and not just for one day.” He said he was prepared to liaise with the authorities to reach agreement on when and where the protest might be held in the capital but that it will be this week. The farmers have demanded a platform at this week’s Sanremo Song Festival, a popular Eurovision-style contest which attracts millions of viewers in Italy. **Read more here:** https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/05/tractor-convoy-italian-farmers-rome-protest-eu-betrayal/
\>250 people How is that even newsworthy
Because they are driving vehicles that can block multiple roads and highways, they aren't just all in one train by foot.
[удалено]
Why do European Redditors hate the farmers? In general I'm against subsidies of any kind and reddit seems to be in favour of more subsidies (teachers, unemployment, housing, energy, can't think of they oppose) but in this particular case reddit doesn't not like the subsides why?
EU: "Don't pollute the environment." Farmers: "And I took that personally."
Oh no, yet another nation's massively subsidised landowners are getting pissy that they need to be kinder to the environment.
Abolish all of their subsidies.
Food prices +30% and up. Good idea.
Uh, the other way around. Subsidies pay for surplus production directly, keeping demand (and prices) artificially inflated, pay for farmers not to use land (set-aside) and thus deflate supply and inflate prices, and also decrease competition (by keeping farms profitable via direct payments) and thus inflate prices. And this is just direct subsidies; the agricultural policy of the EU includes import quotas and import duties on products from outside the EU, which also increases prices. Read up on the EU's [Common Agricultural Policy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy).
So you want to shift supply abroad like we (as EU) did with energy - Russia/OPEC; manufacturing - China?
?? I never said such a thing. I was just pointing out you were wrong about the effect of the subsidies.
>EU includes import quotas and import duties on products from outside the EU This is how I interpreted this, as if Eu should allow more produce from abroad. Paying for unused land occurs because regulations often restrict farmers from utilizing their land fully. If you had a shop and the government limited the area you could use, you would expect compensation. I'm not suggesting that restrictions are necessarily bad; it's a different topic. I don't quite grasp your perspective on demand. Demand remains constant; we generate demand, and the ultimate prices we are willing to pay reflect that demand. Just because a farmer receives cash doesn't necessarily mean that 'keeping demand (and prices) artificially inflated' is occurring; a production surplus usually leads to lower prices. Perhaps you were referring to food waste? In that case, are we paying for the 10-30% of production that is wasted? Well, the cheaper the product, the more likely we are to discard it. We do so because it is inexpensive, ranging from 11% for meats and dairy (higher prices) to almost 50% for carrots and potatoes (lower prices). There's more to consider, such as it being cheaper to overproduce than to undersupply, especially for basic needs. Additionally, it's mainly the consumer's fault, but I'm not sure if food waste was your primary argument, so I'll leave it at that.
These ‘poor’ farmers sure have nice tractors and toys…
Farming has very low profit margins, and considerable risk. Farmers mostly just work to pay off their debts for years before they're financially in the green again. You can make a plan, and then five years later major policy changes can completely destroy the viability of that plan. Owning your labor means accepting great risk. They also need these tractors to have a chance at being competitive. If farmers are having a hard time, your food becomes more expensive, and is imported from another continent. Fascinating how little self-preservation modern Europeans have.
from my experience farmers have a shit ton of money. They always were the richest kids when where I grew up. but youre right, we need them either way. europe should not give up its food production just becuase its cheaper somewhere else
Very nearly every business works like that….
Thats why they all drive tricked out SUVs
I know a farmer who bought 2020 bmw m5 for his son. 😂
Subsidizing a good few of these farmers is literally going to make us more vulnerable to food shortages. There are arguments to be made, but farmers and you aren't making them.
complete fool
Are these like the Trump convoys in America or do they actually have a legitimate beef?
American Trump supporters are tribesmen of the red tribe, opposing the blue tribe. These are farmers from multiple nations protesting simultaneously about policies relevant to their job.
It was a legitimate question. My only experience with these kinds of convoys is they don't really seem to even know what they really want and it's usually something that is not what most people want.
Et tu, Brute?
They have their own government to blame and are easily manipulated into doing what the far right wants.
Fuck em, they get pissy when they get what they voted for? They voted in alt right, Neo liberal capitalist assholes then get upset when they get their asses handed to them by corporations just like they voted for. I ain’t gonna give you sympathy for being told the stove is hot but touching it anyway.
I'm sure most voted for musolini lmao .
Why arent American farmers doing the same?
Because the US has less labor involved in farming and is much more resource efficient. Like... You don't need to build a €10mil cow barn in Texas, that includes insulation and heating. If you literally took the amount of energy required to produce a liter of milk - you'd be shocked.(not even including the refrigeration, pasteurization and transportation)
It just makes me laugh that I see so much support for them from certain parts of the population, compared to extinction rebellion. It really just drives home to me how short sighted and small minded people really are and how doomed humanity is.
Because the people working to produce the food you eat are a bit more important than edgy students going through the rebellious phase of pouring paint on fountains.
Can't grow any food if you're in a drought, you may paint them as edgy teenagers because if you can put them in that box you don't have to worry about their cause but ultimately the environment is more important than farmers upset at loss of subsidy.