Protests will achieve nothing unless they make specific demands
Farmers across the EU are continuing their tractor protests, putting pressure on political parties in every country ahead of June’s European elections. The big question for farmers is: what exactly do they want from the politicians who make the policy decisions?
The EU Commission is feeling the heat, and the pressure is on to find ways to calm farmer unrest without raising the ire of other lobby groups.
The difficulty for the Commission is that farmers in Poland, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain and Ireland all have different demands.
Polish grain farmers want better prices for their produce; livestock elsewhere want cheap feed from Ukraine.
German farmers are unhappy about proposed reductions in diesel subsidies. In Belgium, farmers emptied lorry-loads of fruit and veg from Spain, claiming they were being used to force down the price of local produce.
As a major exporting country, Irish farmers should be concerned when there is negativity towards internal trade within the Single Market.
Dutch farmers are involved in a long dispute with their government regarding their water quality. French farmers are renowned for their militant protests, yet their access to politicians has dramatically reduced in recent years.
Irish farmers initially protested in solidarity with European farmers, but our politicians and the Department of Agriculture have remained accessible to farmers and the farm lobby, at a level farmers in most other EU countries can only dream of.
Catchy slogans such as ‘No Farmers, No Food’ or ‘Enough is Enough’ capture the mood of protestors, and going for a spin up the road in a tractor protest may help farmers feel like they’re fighting for change, but as with all campaigns, at some point, leaders have to sit down around the table and state their specific demands.
With the demise of mixed farming and a drive towards specialisation, agriculture is now so diverse, that getting a common agreement among farmers in one country is next to impossible, let alone getting agreement across Europe.
A bigger CAP budget (with fewer rules and regulations) is probably the most politically safe ambition left to look for. Even if there is a larger CAP budget, dividing it between the different sectors is fraught with difficulties.
But what do fewer rules and regulations really look like? During CAP reform, the Commission introduced fewer on-farm inspections. This was hailed as a victory by European farmers, but the Commission simply replaced some of the onfarm visits with more satellite and desk-top audits.
They had never promised fewer actual inspections.
Reducing inspections doesn’t reduce the bureaucratic workload for farmers. The implications of a financial penalty for failing to meet the requirements of any scheme will still hang over our heads.
Terms and conditions will still apply. Europe decided long ago that the spending of its tax-payers’ money needed to be closely monitored to ensure that it was being spent appropriately and to prevent fraud.
Appropriate spending is decided by Europe’s politicians, and the policies they vote in or out, not by the civil servants in the Commission in Brussels, or in Ag House.
Europe’s farmers appear to be united and supportive of each other, but soon specific key demands will have to be made, and once you move past the broad appeal of ‘too much regulation’, it will be hard for the leadership to achieve a meaningful win for all farmers.
A good example of this is the Nitrates Derogation. It is vital for some farmers, but irrelevant for the vast majority. Similarly, the Nature Restoration Law, which was voted in by Europe’s MEPs during the farmer protests, could have a massive impact on some farms and no impact on the majority.
Irish farmers have better political access in than any other country, but how that influence is used is vital. Big campaigns under slogans like ‘Enough is Enough’ are unwinnable, as there will not be a dramatic U-turn by politicians that will allow farmers to farm in an unregulated manner.
Long-term, incremental gains with sharp attention to details should be the ambition. There is no silver bullet that can propel Europe’s farmers into an unregulated utopia.
Rules and regulations are part of every workplace. If the farm orgs are more proactive in the drafting process, and specific in what they are lobbying politicians for, then we may avoid some of the practices that are more difficult to implement and manage at farm level.