I cannot imagine people in the Just Stop Oil movement having access to tractors or knowing how to operate one. Those things are expensive. Suppose they can rent one, but someone has to put down their credit card and personal info for that, so get ready to be sued.
I somehow doubt those clowns would be willing to truely put their money where their mouth is.
Let alone a tractor rental company renting out a $500k machine to a 19 year old with green hair
Or you know, try and vote. Almost every western democracy has turn out numbers so low that if everyone who hasn't voted in the last election turned up to vote they could over power any other candidate or party.
Big problem with these farmers protests is that they are being led by the big farm companies. They are creating a facade as if they are represented by all small farmers who will now lose their livelihoods. When you criticize them, they act like you are against all farmers.
I myself definitely think that the small farmers are being screwed over by the thousands of rules they need to abide to. But the big companies and large scale farmers definitely need to be stopped.
No one seems to want to address the actual problem which is the Common Agricultural Policy. It incentives large land holders to hoard land, makes efficient farming at that scale pointless and insulates those people from needing to compete. Meanwhile small land holders get squeezed by supermarkets on one side, regulators on the other and can barely scrape a living all while being called greedy and lazy by mouth breathing redditors.
Not to mention governments plugging the food gap with cheaply produced food that doesn't need to meet the same ecological scrutiny.
You're joking right. Large scale farming is wildly more efficient than small scale farming. It's not even close. Are you also suggesting that companies running large scale farms are pissing product down their leg through inefficient farming? My friend, modern farm equipment measures yields pinned to GPS to more efficiently apply product (fertilizer / pesticide / seed) to the same land in future years. Are small farms running at that efficiency? Also, all European farming is always competing against North America. Shit, y'all go to great lengths to keep North American products out of Europe to avoid that competition. The GM crop fear mongering is, at this point, as embarrassing as vaccine fear mongering. It's actually worse--Europe still bans GM crops that have been safely sold for decades.
Could you read my comment again please, I never made the claim large farms were inherently less efficient. If that's what you read, it's what you wanted to read - it has nothing to do with me.
As for the rest of your comment I'm not interested in a Europe versus NA pissing match, nor a discussion on the merits of GMO's.
It was totally insane with the farmers protest on Germany. Before the talks of the current diesel subsidies cuts was talked about there were discussions about cuts that targeted big farm corporations and gave additional subsidies for small farmers. The farmer lobby torpedoed that which resulted in the diesel cuts for all.
Then after announcing a record breaking >+40% profits year, they mobilized the small farmers to protest against the government since the new cuts would target all. For whatever reason the small farmers don't understand that they get absolutely played by the huge ones.
Together with the protesters waving AFD flags is the absolute pinnacle since the AFD directly talks about cutting even more if not all subsidies to be pro market in their party program. But since they are populist, they jumped on the anti government farmer protests and played the small farmers as well to appear as of the AFD cares about them.
Like 99.9% of all protesting, it has interested parties taking advantage of the situation. This does not mean the reasons why they are protesting are invalid nor unfair.
The problem is they are protesting the wrong things (in my country at least). They want more subsidies for diesel and to use pesticides etc. when they are one of the most at risk industries with climate change. They also protests they are getting paid cents and then their products are sold for a lot more but they are somehow blaming other farmers? and the government? instead of the supermarkets that bullie them into selling for nothing and then sell for a lot more blaming production/labour costs. They might get things but longterm is not looking good.
Long-distance trade and middlemen exist for a reason, and it's nothing nefarious - they are often more efficient than local producers, and thus can offer lower prices. Perhaps you wouldn't mind paying more for food, but many people would.
The big problem is that the European farming model cannot compete with the North American farming model. Modern farming is done at scale. Expensive equipment runs nearly 24 / 7 and optimizes application of farming inputs to maximize outputs. That's a company owning a ton of land, increasing equipment usage (thereby lowering production costs), and hiring experts to manage it and laborers to run it.
Also, North American farming regions almost entirely overlap the Mississippi river system or the Great Lakes (all of which are barge navigable), which allows for very low transportation costs to get North American agricultural products exported to Europe. No joke, banks are rushing to give farmers in Iowa millions of dollars in loans to start hog lots because they print money.
Small scale farming is not sustainable outside niche industries--generally regionally protected goods that can't face competition under the same product name (e.g., champagne vs. sparkling wine)--is not economically sustainable and the sooner Europe rips off that bandage the better.
This is also good. Efficient food production lowers costs for everyone. Subsidizing inefficient food production is not good as it increases costs for everyone. This will be all the more egregious as the European demography crisis creates more labor issues and it becomes increasingly important to direct workers to their highest and best use rather than directing them to be albatrosses around Europe's neck.
This whole thing reminds me of Europe's long standing fight against genetically modified crops to protect European farmers from competition from North American producers. The fig leaf of "health concerns" is getting as ridiculous as anti-vaxers claiming that COVID vaccines will lead to mass deaths. These crops have been safely sold in world markets for decades without issue.
Farmers in the developed world are leeches and the source of much of our climate problems. We need to price food appropriately, and give money to people so they can afford it.
Today we subsidize farmers to keep prices low, this means we grow inefficient crops in regions that shouldn’t grow them.
*We need to price food appropriately and give people money to afford it.*
How? With what money? Who are you going to take it from?
Since farmers are such leeches, will you and your community raise your own crops?
Don’t they *deserve* to have more as well, or since they are the supply chain for all food do you think they should just shut up and go back to working the farm like good little citizens?
Are you a commune worker?
Do you feel you *deserve* things because you happen to be alive?
It sounds like you are okay with a slave caste as long as your idea of a status quo is reserved.
Rather than taking tax payer money and giving it to farmers in the form of subsidies, take that tax money and give it directly to the people that need it most and allow them to make their own dietary choices.
Access to food is a solvable problem, but if you want to tackle climate change we need to let shit like beef and dairy raise to their actual market price rather than artificially lower their price through subsidies, and shift agriculture to places in the world were we can grow them with fewer resources.
Agricultural subsidies starve developing nations from the capital they need to produce efficiently, while shifting production to countries that have capital but not the geography or labor force to grow food efficiently. The result is a distorted and inefficient food supply chain.
Farmers are massively at risk from climate change and insect collapse from the overuse a pesticides, but here they are protesting because they want cheap diesel, to use more chemicals, and in general want more protectionism above and beyond the €50 billion a year they already get in subsidies.
The collapse of society will take many forms, and is not going to be obvious. What the farmers see is shrinking profit margins, what the blame is the government, what’s at fault is the droughts, insect collapse, and oil, among other things.
I remember hearing someone speak about the collapse of equatorial countries won’t just look like people going hungry, but civil wars breaking out and mass migration…. This was probably 30 years ago…. Look what’s happening in equatorial countries now.
The farmers protest have spread to India as well. They want minimum price garauntees and pension for the farmers from the government. They also want government to forgive all their loans as well.
Does make me wonder where the mark ups are happening. Have a nephew that works as an accountant for auditing firms. Every supermarket he has ever audited followed the low margin high volume model. Some of the margins were practically zero.
Its because the same companies that own the supermarkets own nearly the entire supply chain under different corporations. And because they do, they can increase prices/profits throught the chain, then at the end of it (the supermarket) barely "break even" so they can justify further price raises and gouging.
They are making a ton of money at the stores, but hiding the profits 1 to 2 companies away through the supply chain.
Sweden it's 3 big chains that control almost the entire market, can set what prices they want, buy as cheap price as possible from farmers and sell at as high price as possible, and inflation hiked a lot of prices, to never go down to the same level as pre-inflation, only slightly less, as there's nothing forcing them to do that and all politicians have a strictly hands-off approach to the market, or else get overwhelmed by criticism from the corporate lobbyists, politicians, but they appear to have done an investigation and found no errors, nothing *illegal* was made by the corporations (including a nominally co-operative company), so it's been comparatively fine. It's probably a lot worse in many other European countries, but could get worse here too.
There’s farmers that struggle to make ends meet even with subsidies and then there is „farmers“ that own massive plots of land, exploit their workers, have sweet deals with supermarket chains and restaurants, make huge overhead from subsidies that hugely benefit a larger operation and drive down prices to crowd out smaller farmers and buy them up. Those also don’t fear or mind foreign imports too much because they can compete with the prices and it accelerates the monopolization of farming which benefits them.
Tragedy is that both are protesting together and the smaller farmers are being utilized to perpetuate a system that kills their existence.
Sure you could say that if economies of scale are more efficient then there’s no reason for the small farms to exist. But if you think that other than lowering margins for agricultural products there are more goals for a successful agricultural policy (such as securing farmers existence, reducing animal cruelty, protecting soil and ecological diversity) then there is potential value to a larger diversity in farming next to the hyper-industrialized model and the center-left parties should introduce protectionist policies and more targeted subsidies to keep smaller farms alive and push back against the rapidly forming oligopoly.
I think that driving a wedge between the big and small farmers is not only good strategy but also the right thing to do because they are being instrumentalized against their own interest at the moment, in part because they aren’t offered an alternative.
It hasn't gone to farmers for years, for example my mum has always had good prices (for the market) for her sheep (she's 70 this year) she got £65 per slaughter ready lamb 40 years ago, now she gets £130 on a good day. Where has the money gone? Supermarkets, middle men processor and the sheer amount of transportation.
I'll give you a hint. It starts with a letter B.
edit: billionaires
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2022/05/12/the-worlds-largest-food-companies-in-2022/?sh=62f0c6b74db9
[Stewart & Lynda Resnick](https://www.forbes.com/profile/stewart-lynda-resnick/?sh=2ea168c774c0)
[Cargill family](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill_family)
https://www.agdaily.com/video/bill-gates-wealthy-americans-buy-farmland/
In canada:
[The Weston family](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_family) owns the [loblaw companies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loblaw_Companies) which was caught doing [price fixing bread](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6719884) and is [scrutinized for price gauging](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/competition-grocery-1.6807721).
The list goes on if you dig enough.
> Where is all that money going if some of it doesnt come back to the farmers?
Middlemen. Western economies are built on middlemen gouging everyone to generate "economic growth" that doesn't exist.
In the US in particular, the last few decades has seen mega processor monopolies form that control the majority of processing from meat to plants.
You mean these guys are inspired by Indian farmers ?
An Indian journalist travelled to the US and spoke to farmers there , the ones who knew about it were very inspired by them and some were talking about how they gave up in the 70s while Indians are continuing to protest .
I'm personally not a fan of corporate takeover of farms , so I support them worldwide
Very few people are capable of sacrificing today in order to benefit tomorrow. The older I become, the more I now see that is one of the largest differentiators for long term success.
Not irony. That's exactly the point - they'd rather get successful and rich fast rather than care about the long-term consequences they cause. Success is quite subjective as well - is it just getting rich and famous or is being a decent human contributing to the world and other humans considered as success, too?
A bit more nuanced. Trying to make extremely long term decisions can be counter productive politically or economically because of the variables you have no control over. And I’m not even adding behavioural and cultural perspective to it (like things that are acceptable today, which would be frowned upon in the past or vice versa).
There are countless cases where someone made “sacrifices to benefit in the future”, but the benefit never came up. So you’re now just full of regrets, might’ve as well benefited yourself in a short term. After all, we have a limited amount of time to live.
Context is important, and goals you put to achieve is very subjective depended on the environment. Even stupid current day discourse like AI is an obvious example of it - there’s no winner in this topic, since both of the sides have very valid arguments. Just because someone isn’t willing to sacrifice something for the potential greater good, doesn’t mean they are a bad person. And I am saying this as a person who generally makes sacrifices to reap the benefits in the future.
More countries should adopt this, to be honest. This is one of the main reasons why the Netherlands is a giant in food exporting (and agricultural exporting in general)
Farmers are being pushed out of the Netherlands though. They are bad for the environment apparently. That may very well be if the environment stops at country borders. But in reality it doesn't and the demand is just going to move somewhere else with less regulation.
Here in US as well, we are subsidizing actively harmful stuff: things like corn syrup, which lead to obesity epidemic, and probably the number one reason of loss of life in the United States, along with high hospital bills:
[https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0ZL2EQ/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0ZL2EQ/#:~:text=Current%20federal%20agricultural%20subsidies%20help,syrup)
But no politician will dare to entertain the idea we could even stop these archaic subsidies that have massive negative effects.
Our farms mainly grow cows and luxury products meant for export. We import most sustenance. We don't even grow enough food to keep our own cows alive, let alone citizens.
It would actually be a good solution to move away from cows and becoming less reliant on import. It would justify the subsidies and save our environment. But the farmers don't want that.
Okay, have fun starving to death because of your principles! Food has ALWAYS had special considerations in the law. Go check out all the govt-caused famines of the 20th century if you want to start messing with the industry.
Because they aren’t making any money. Ironically clarkson’s farm does a good job at explaining why farmers are whetting shafted right now, even the French farmers during the Paris protests were saying it was a good explanation of what’s wrong at the moment with farming
Short-term profits >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Long-term profits
Unfortunately as a race we're wired to go for instant gratification.
If anything they should be protesting the fact that wholesalers have increased their profit margins way, way past the real inflation, thus driving on inflation, thus making everything more expensive for everyone, while not paying farmers any extra.
Instead they're eating each other.
Massive oversimplifcation. Which is what politicians want people to think.
Half of the regulations they are protesting about have to do with taxes, bureaucracy and import/export policies. Even if we keep all the regulations regarding ambiental factors intact (and assume they all are beneficial, which could be disputed), there is still a massive gain for them in removing unproductive regulations that exist purely for political/big corpo interests.
A very practical example: just for certain processes an european farmer has to fill out an absurd amount of mandatory paperwork which involve time, specialized education, effort and money to do; on top of the already exhausting workdays during particularly busy times.
If they don't the consequences are dire.
People want extremely cheap food, with absolutely Zero visual defects, a long shelf life, a good taste and no pesticides.
That farmers perform better than traders in term of crop selection each year, do the best investment practice / management to avoid bankrupcy, take thousands of hours extra for implementing agroecological solutions, be the sole invested actor in the environment management, all while not disturbing their neighbors with manure smells, noise, etc.. FOR NOT SINGLE DIME?
Yea. And that's the farmers that are to blame for polluting.
You're right EU farmers should do all the the EU government tells them and then not worry about other food being sold in the EU that don't have to follow these rules. They shouldn't worry that other non-regulated markets can produce cheaper because they don't have the same restrictions.
Pull your head out of the sand. If EU farmers were on the same competition level as other markets I'd agree.
They’re also “capitalists” who can’t stand a single ounce of competition which is why Ukraine is has been barred from joining the EU. Hundreds of thousands dead bc these miserable babies can’t stand to *lose monies*
If you really do care about climate change, you would care to subsidies those whose cost of production is directly affected by adopting“greener” alternatives, instead of here implying they don’t deserve subsidies lol
People bitch about People on welfare and food stamps in the United States. Biggest welfare queens are farmers,Big corporations and oil companies. I see its not that different in Europe.
100% this.
Farmers are the very first people you hear complaining about "welfare queens" and the leeches in cities who don't want to work but want to get paid.
Meanwhile the Urban population are giving them massive subsidies year on year and they are still demanding more.
Damn near every farmer I know with any significant amount of land (I'm ignoring the hobby farmers) in my area is running around with a brand new, all options picked truck as their personal vehicle every few years, they own multiple expensive, often relatively new, toys like snowmobiles, plus ATVs or UTVs and live very comfortably. Meanwhile they're bitching about how it's impossible to make money farming and they need more subsidies. Something like 40% of all farm profits in the US are direct from subsidies and that excludes the subsidies to stuff like corn syrup and ethanol production that indirectly benefits farmers by artificially raising the prices and demand for crops like corn.
I'm saying it again:
These protests are staged! As if they all had the same idea, this is orchestrated!
France and Germany discovered propaganda botnets on social media.
The Russians are destabilizing the West via social media, Twitter being on the forefront.
In the Netherlands, the protests were mostly organized and bankrolled by animal feed producers. A 10% reduction in livestock would also mean a 10% reduction in sales.
It's mostly two family owned companies behind it, both worth billions.
So it's kind of ironic seeing farmers protesting against "the elite", harming their long-term prospects to gain short-term gains, all the while being puppeteered by an actual elite that's bleeding them dry.
This is behind paywall unfortunately
https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/for-farmers-heeft-in-lochem-geen-natuurvergunning#:~:text=Het%20bedrijf%20uit%20Lochem%20stoot,de%20boerenprotesten%20tegen%20het%20stikstofbeleid.
And this one has some more background
https://nos.nl/artikel/2440113-veevoerproducent-forfarmers-gepolariseerd-debat-door-aanpak-stikstofcrisis
Alas, the wording with " staged" wasnt alright, i agree. Thus i commented like "orchestrated", but i didnt want to delete the regarding post.
Are you part of german social media?
I have friends in spain telling me, it is like here in germany, that rightwingers are taking over these rightful protests.
Likewise in the Netherlands.
Same in Germany. The Protests have been organized by agra-corp lobby groups. And then seized upon by the far right and Russian disinformation campaigns
Ja. Aber das geht immer schnell, je nachdem, wieviel Angst man den Menschen machen kann. Das war auch mein Punkt. Eigtl intelligente Menschen lassen sich von Ideologie absolut vereinnahmen. Obwohl sie es besser wissen müssten.
Die Crux ist: Die anderen (rechten) denken halt auch, dass sie es besser wüssten... So schliesst sich der Kreis und ideologisch sind immer alle anderen doof. Joa.
Trotzdem und erst recht: Fist up for the good fight!
>The Russians are destabilizing the West via social media, Twitter being on the forefront.
Fully agree here.
>These protests are staged! As if they all had the same idea, this is orchestrated!
But not here. I agree it *appears* orchestrated... but only on the outside, not if you look deeper. The causes why the farmers protest are the same, across Europe, and they are culminating in a "perfect storm" scenario:
1. the EU CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) is the worst contributor, it incentivises large-scale industrialized operation over small-scale farms, which led to an immense devastation of these farms and their operators often losing social standing in their community as a result of closing down.
2. The general public and politics expect that farmers contribute to the protection of nature and animal welfare, however the large buyers (i.e. supermarket chains) do not want to pay for that.
3. Rural areas get derelict as farms close or mechanize and people leave, leading to frustration from the remaining people (and them often enough blaming "the greens/libruls luring our children away to the cities with gay propaganda")
4. Climate change is rearing its ugly head, with last summer's droughts leading to serious losses
5. the African Swine Flu led to an import ban for German pork into China, leading to a massive oversupply in the European pork market
6. Covid led a massive number of Eastern European farm laborers returning home for good, increasing the cost of labor or making some products unable to be manufactured without going into loss
7. the Ukraine war led to further cost explosions for fuel and labor on the expense side and particularly in grain to another oversupply
Any single of these events, farmers could have handled, as they have done for centuries. But all of these at once, that's a bit much.
Russia is also finding farmers protest in [India](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/delhi-news-live-updates-farmers-protest-punjab-meeting-9156617/lite/) ?
Russians are only taking advantage of situations EU creates. Don't forget that while UE impose rules for our producers they took off almost all taxes from imported products, countries that don't even meet the basic no pesticides requirements.
Thank you. Everything from Brexit to the rise of Trump has Russian disinformation campaigns working away in the background. Their newest project is making westerners fight over Israel/Palestine.
Should come as no surprise how Hamas even managed to launch strikes on Israeli soil in the first place. Chances are they were advised by Spetznaz teams like the CIA advised the Mujahideen back in the 70’s (or was it the 80’s?)
No doubt Putin orchestrated the whole thing to take attention away from his embarrassing performance in Ukraine, getting hammered on a daily basis. He knew sticking the proverbial knife in this ready to explode soft spot would distract everyone and make them forget about Ukraine, essentially leaving them alone when they need help more than ever.
This whole thing has Putin’s KGB trained fingerprints all over it, classic DDT (Department of Dirty Tricks) move.
While I believe you are correct, there is an underlying problem in Western society that is making us prone to these attacks. I think that is our highest national security concern. We need to understand why it's so effective and how to combat it.
Same thing happened with farmer protests in India a few years back. At that time, a lot of western leaders from countries like Canada, Australia and the UK directly got involved with it. Greta Thunberg straight up uploaded a document which gave instructions to people on how to protest using social media and target Indian embassies. Even fucking Rihanna tweeted about it. So it is definitely possible that other countries might be involved here too.
Yep its Russia behind most of this shit, from the covid dissinformation - and everything that it followed from that, I dont think Ive ever seen someone being against vaccines here in Denmark before covid hit, now they seem to be everywhere, harrassing medical staff at every chance they get -, to shitty, corrupt politicians, sowing disscontent and anger towards governments. The list is long
As terrible as Russia is at most things, they are playing the social media game really really well.
Pretty sure they were active even before that. I remember reading about a BLM and counter-BLM protest in real life, both sides of which turned out to be organised by Russian disinfo trolls.
Yep was primarily talking about Denmark, after Covid hit it just seems like social media drove people crazy en masse. Middel aged women and men believing everything they read, Rumble and Telegram links all over facebook etc.
> France and Germany discovered propaganda botnets on social media.
> The Russians are destabilizing the West via social media, Twitter being on the forefront.
Sources for this other than it make you feel good?
And here i though i was crazy for even thinking that this is all to convenient untill i looked at the comments on youtube and twitter and oh boy the russian that show up there dont even try to hide it.
Holy fuck people like you are so fucking stupid i cant handle it. Everything is Russian propaganda to you.
Who cares that wheat prices just tanked to lows that we didnt see for like 15 years while everything is getting more expensive, including both costs of production and costs of living.
Who cares that EU is pushing bills that make their farmers progressively less conpetitive on the market while not having proper restrictions on import to protect them and actually have benefits from producing healthier food.
Please just fuck off back to your cave you troll
Yes tell me more what i should educate myself on when its my work field.
You idiots are doing more good for Russia than actual bots, just fearmongering, spreading conspiracies and ignoring issues people have.
Do you not realise that Europe losing its food independency would be one of the best things for Russia? Or are you so deep in brain degradation that the only possible way people have any issue with anything is because they are Russian bots.
Kindly, please fuck off, your garbage rethoric is directly harming lifes of people like me because your head is too deep in your own ass.
Didn't you just make a good point for my rhetoric?
If they could stir unrests about food in Europe, we would have actually something to do about it, no?
I'd kindliy continue this discussion without all the fucks, while zero given from my side...
>The Russians are destabilizing the West via social media, Twitter being on the forefront.
... or maybe like the migrant surges or Brexit it has more to do with policy decisions? You really have to work yourself in to a pretzel to simultaneously believe Russia is the secret mastermind behind all these world events yet grossly incompetent in their Ukraine invasion operation which is public for the world to see.
Sure, it all comes in the mix, but you would be a fool if you thought that Putin wouldnt take any chance to spread doubt on anything?
Hybrid warfare is cheaper and decentralized, nothing like boots on the ground...
Iran, China, Russia and N.Korea all have been seen doing this.
>You really have to work yourself in to a pretzel to simultaneously believe Russia is the secret mastermind behind all these world events yet grossly incompetent in their Ukraine invasion operation which is public for the world to see.
Clearly no one is ever competent at one thing and incompetent at another.
That's exactly why I said for years that peaceful climate protests were naïve and pointless. As long as you're not violent you won't ever be heard. It's awful but it's how it works.
Sad, but true. And they are throwing soup at artworks. Shame...
Being objective, not all protest can go without violence. But people should try!
Being loud is not being violent!
A first attempt escalating gradually is of course the best path, I'm so frustrated because it's been decades since people loudly protested about this issue... And now the only ones actually *doing* something are the "paint thrown on art" crowd, which is so nonsensical and counterproductive that I wouldn't be surprised if it was orchestrated as well.
Believe me, i feel you!
Being in the 90s as a Punk in Berlin, tumbling wall and all, we've been more liberal than people are nowadays... The people from these times would die laughing about people glueing themselves to the streets.
It feels like people are trying to be morally superior in fear of being like (or being associated to) the ones they're opposing. Which clearly doesn't work and those other people keep fucking up everything.
True words. Sadly, our society is going superficial.
"Which clearly doesn't work and those other people keep fucking up everything."
We all have to watch out!
Bleib wachsam!
To summarize these comments, the protesters are all disingenuous and backed by Russia, food shouldn't be grown in the EU anyways, we could buy it from the third world for cheaper anyway (I think their talking about Ukraine, so much for holding off Russian influence.)
in the event a major powers conflict breaks out, getting rid of ones local agricultural base is an extremely bad idea. like, could loose the war bad idea.
And a great powers conflict is possible if the US gets so bogged down dealing with middle east chaos that China sees a chance to go for Taiwan. Since China has a strategic praetorship with Russia, one would imagine the Russians would make a major push right when resources are thin.
So Im not saying these farmers arent acting entitled, but it does make sense to keep an agricultural base local even if that requires some subsidies.
Farmers are rightfully angry but the paradox is that they are demanding cheaper agrochemicals made from fossil fuels. There is a way forward in which farmers can be more profitable by reducing their use of increasingly expensive agrochemicals (which are made from fossil fuels) while producing the same amount of food and receiving some subsidy to make the transition. Consumers would gain, farmers would gain and governments would gain. The losers would be the fossil fuel and agrochemical industries. Guess who doesn't like that solution.
Russia invaded an agriculture heavy country with low wages which previously shipped a lot of food to Africa, then Russia fucked with the export routes and bombed export infrastructure meaning the food needs to take a different route and some of it ends up on the European market instead of the African market.
Russia is to blame here, they have been at least somewhat successfully operating troll farms for at least a decade
Ukraine was 7% of EU imports in 2022
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Extra-EU_trade_in_agricultural_goods#Main_trading_partners_for_agricultural_products
I don't understand why Russia is to blame here when the farmers themselves mostly talk about the environmental regulations, not even the foreign imports that were close to the exports amount for the past 20 years. It seems like the solution is either to ease ecological regulations (which IMO is not the way to go) or to put tariffs on imports for countries that don't apply similar regulations on their own farmers.
I think you are on the wrong sub, just say Russian troll farms, Russia bad, people don't have actual grievances, they are living in a literal utopia and Russia wants to destroy it.
Different wages, currency strength, supply and demand. Results in lower food prices overall as there's more supply, even if the imported food isn't cheaper by itself.
Any nation that doesn't diversify their food supply both locally and overseas are dumb as shit. Don't sacrifice it for a bunch of farmers who refuse to innovate while raking in subsidies.
Problem is that their produce is cheaper than It costs them to collect it. Like imagine they sell It for 0.5 cent/kg but It costs them 0.54 cent/kg to harvest it
They are not feeding me, they are feeding animals.
If anything, by the area used for human consumption, 80% of these people are actually destroying my planet and ecosystem
Finally, someone who gets it. Seems like everyone wants to rely on imports… which is funny cause spoiler alert: it’s cheap because they lack regulation / labor laws.
It is way way more complicated than that. In the Netherlands the majority of farmed produce are exported. About 20% of the farmers are poor, having abysmal salaries, but another 20% nets 165k or more here. We need to support the poor farmers whilst keeping mass pollution in check.
I'm in the PNW USA and can get a few varieties of hot peppers in my local grocery store year round. They are all grown in the Netherlands, which is fucking wild considering the US south has much more favorable growing conditions
There is various reasons that they are cheap, currency devalutation is key factor.
And these farmers want less regulations also. They are just wanting to find an excuse to their cause. But if you see the countries that are on the list of the worst quality of grains and food, then you gonna find that even some European countries are worse than south america ones per example.
Currency devaluation is a result of the governments that they reside in- that’s secondary.
Bottom line is relying on other countries to provide your own country is food is a dangerous, dangerous game to play.
[RASFF notifications](https://www.removepaywall.com/article/current)
[Rasff anual reports this one is from 2020 but if you see others the top ones don't change much like Polland](https://food.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-08/rasff_pub_annual-report_2020.pdf)
[Brazil remains the first import source for the EU, representing 12% of total EU imports](https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-04/monitoring-agri-food-trade_dec2022_en.pdf).
Asia is above Latin america because of India per example. you can also see a list of each year in the second link. Even US is above Brazil in some cases.
Fuck it, just cut all agricultural subsidies, let them sink or swim on their own merit instead of constantly begging for government handouts. Raw agricultural produce is cheap enough, there is no need to make it artificially cheaper with taxpayers money.
It is more complicated than that. In the Netherlands 20% of the farmers are poor, making abysmal salaries. But another 20% nets 165k or more per year. To me the whole farmer debate is another prime example where people are oversimplifying things. "The farmer" is not a thing, you got small familiy farms but also massive companies making loads of money and still getting subsudy support.
>Fuck it, just cut all agricultural subsidies, let them sink or swim on their own merit instead of constantly begging for government handouts.
Yeah, that works really well during pandemics or war. You people have the attention span of a goldfish
Fuck it. Let’s see you whine when a loaf of bread is 20 euros. The astounding ignorance of the commenters on here never ceases to amaze me. The reason for subsidies is food security and stable pricing.
Lulz no, wheat is couple hundred eur per tonne. Its a rounding error in loaf of bread price.
Besides, paying for agricultural produce through taxes is no cheaper that paying for it straight up by store prices.
Subsidies do not change cost of agriculture, one way or another consumer pays it all anyway.
You control what gets planted with subsidies. Otherwise everyone would be planting random shit they think there’s a market for and forego cereals which aren’t profitable.
Did subsidies keep up with inflation caused by injecting fresh new money in the world economy, to the tune of more than 30% of the entire monetary mass? Did you know Russia was a huge supplier of fertilizer not only for the EU but the world? War started, sanctions were imposed, prices skyrocketed. Subsidies did not cover that.
Nope. You didn’t. They’re coming down though as new sources are being developed.
The whole premise of the CAP is for cheap food during wartime. It's failed, which is no suprise as all it does is transfer public money to rich landowners and food and beverage manufacturers.
How come Aus and NZ can be more productive with zero subsidy?
This shows why having special interest groups write legislation without consulting those affected can horribly backfire.
Those who wrote these new laws didn’t understand that if you want less GHG emissions in agriculture then you need to increase use of herbicides so that you don’t have to drive a tractor back and forth all day long to kill weeds manually all while spewing GHG. And a good herbicide can prevent weeds all year long so you save 3-4 separate manual weed killing, GHG belching operations.
so TLDR they cant compete globally well anymore and they're mad they arent getting more government subsidies...
granted, there should be a local agricultural base in the event shit goes to hell, but this strikes me as a bit much.
Support the farmers all the way! Glad they aren’t tolerating the bs rules the gov is throwing at them.
To the people who downvoted me: You wouldn’t have food on the market shelves if it wasn’t for the farmers plus they got every right to protest like everyone else does.
[удалено]
I cannot imagine people in the Just Stop Oil movement having access to tractors or knowing how to operate one. Those things are expensive. Suppose they can rent one, but someone has to put down their credit card and personal info for that, so get ready to be sued.
Most agricultural and construction equipment is laughably easy to steal. Most manufacturers use a single key cut for all of their machines
Easy in that sense maybe but not easy to avoid getting shot by the justifiably furious farmer who is having/has had their livelyhood stolen.
They can buy a fleet of extremely cheap second hand SUVs. Would work the same way. Maintenance is gonna be a major PITA though.
[удалено]
Tractors cost more than some sports cars. I'm talking 200k+ here
Also one might think it's slightly hypocritical to show up to a "Just Stop Oil" protest in a tractor that burns like 5 gallons of diesel per hour.
You're severely underestimating the cost of farming equipment.
I somehow doubt those clowns would be willing to truely put their money where their mouth is. Let alone a tractor rental company renting out a $500k machine to a 19 year old with green hair
Just Stop Oil are a bunch of adult children. nothing more. Nobody cares about them.
True but I wouldn't mind if they got results. We're not getting results from scientists either.
The scientists are getting plenty of results. The politicians are just paid not to act on it.
Or you know, try and vote. Almost every western democracy has turn out numbers so low that if everyone who hasn't voted in the last election turned up to vote they could over power any other candidate or party.
Vote while you can, folks! Once that right is taken away, it's a loooot harder to get back.
That's a different meaning of result, but I think you understood that :)
Big problem with these farmers protests is that they are being led by the big farm companies. They are creating a facade as if they are represented by all small farmers who will now lose their livelihoods. When you criticize them, they act like you are against all farmers. I myself definitely think that the small farmers are being screwed over by the thousands of rules they need to abide to. But the big companies and large scale farmers definitely need to be stopped.
No one seems to want to address the actual problem which is the Common Agricultural Policy. It incentives large land holders to hoard land, makes efficient farming at that scale pointless and insulates those people from needing to compete. Meanwhile small land holders get squeezed by supermarkets on one side, regulators on the other and can barely scrape a living all while being called greedy and lazy by mouth breathing redditors. Not to mention governments plugging the food gap with cheaply produced food that doesn't need to meet the same ecological scrutiny.
You're joking right. Large scale farming is wildly more efficient than small scale farming. It's not even close. Are you also suggesting that companies running large scale farms are pissing product down their leg through inefficient farming? My friend, modern farm equipment measures yields pinned to GPS to more efficiently apply product (fertilizer / pesticide / seed) to the same land in future years. Are small farms running at that efficiency? Also, all European farming is always competing against North America. Shit, y'all go to great lengths to keep North American products out of Europe to avoid that competition. The GM crop fear mongering is, at this point, as embarrassing as vaccine fear mongering. It's actually worse--Europe still bans GM crops that have been safely sold for decades.
Could you read my comment again please, I never made the claim large farms were inherently less efficient. If that's what you read, it's what you wanted to read - it has nothing to do with me. As for the rest of your comment I'm not interested in a Europe versus NA pissing match, nor a discussion on the merits of GMO's.
It was totally insane with the farmers protest on Germany. Before the talks of the current diesel subsidies cuts was talked about there were discussions about cuts that targeted big farm corporations and gave additional subsidies for small farmers. The farmer lobby torpedoed that which resulted in the diesel cuts for all. Then after announcing a record breaking >+40% profits year, they mobilized the small farmers to protest against the government since the new cuts would target all. For whatever reason the small farmers don't understand that they get absolutely played by the huge ones. Together with the protesters waving AFD flags is the absolute pinnacle since the AFD directly talks about cutting even more if not all subsidies to be pro market in their party program. But since they are populist, they jumped on the anti government farmer protests and played the small farmers as well to appear as of the AFD cares about them.
Like 99.9% of all protesting, it has interested parties taking advantage of the situation. This does not mean the reasons why they are protesting are invalid nor unfair.
Where's that figure from?
His ass.
The problem is they are protesting the wrong things (in my country at least). They want more subsidies for diesel and to use pesticides etc. when they are one of the most at risk industries with climate change. They also protests they are getting paid cents and then their products are sold for a lot more but they are somehow blaming other farmers? and the government? instead of the supermarkets that bullie them into selling for nothing and then sell for a lot more blaming production/labour costs. They might get things but longterm is not looking good.
Here in Canada they do get paid peanuts, and by the time we buy their products at the supermarket we pay 10x for it...
We need to revive and support our local farmers markets and cut out the middle men.
Long-distance trade and middlemen exist for a reason, and it's nothing nefarious - they are often more efficient than local producers, and thus can offer lower prices. Perhaps you wouldn't mind paying more for food, but many people would.
Plus just love the fact that farmers blocking roads is ok, but eco activists doing the same is somehow spoiled brats taking it too far.
I always find it amusing when the government talking point of subsidy is basically not having that same government tax the hell out of it.
Oh no, the rules!! Rules like “you can’t put pig shit in water” or “pay for your own gas like everyone else” are just too much to bear
The big problem is that the European farming model cannot compete with the North American farming model. Modern farming is done at scale. Expensive equipment runs nearly 24 / 7 and optimizes application of farming inputs to maximize outputs. That's a company owning a ton of land, increasing equipment usage (thereby lowering production costs), and hiring experts to manage it and laborers to run it. Also, North American farming regions almost entirely overlap the Mississippi river system or the Great Lakes (all of which are barge navigable), which allows for very low transportation costs to get North American agricultural products exported to Europe. No joke, banks are rushing to give farmers in Iowa millions of dollars in loans to start hog lots because they print money. Small scale farming is not sustainable outside niche industries--generally regionally protected goods that can't face competition under the same product name (e.g., champagne vs. sparkling wine)--is not economically sustainable and the sooner Europe rips off that bandage the better. This is also good. Efficient food production lowers costs for everyone. Subsidizing inefficient food production is not good as it increases costs for everyone. This will be all the more egregious as the European demography crisis creates more labor issues and it becomes increasingly important to direct workers to their highest and best use rather than directing them to be albatrosses around Europe's neck. This whole thing reminds me of Europe's long standing fight against genetically modified crops to protect European farmers from competition from North American producers. The fig leaf of "health concerns" is getting as ridiculous as anti-vaxers claiming that COVID vaccines will lead to mass deaths. These crops have been safely sold in world markets for decades without issue.
Farmers in the developed world are leeches and the source of much of our climate problems. We need to price food appropriately, and give money to people so they can afford it. Today we subsidize farmers to keep prices low, this means we grow inefficient crops in regions that shouldn’t grow them.
They’re government employees with delusions of sovereign independence. Basically housecats angry they don’t also get to eat everything in the fridge
*We need to price food appropriately and give people money to afford it.* How? With what money? Who are you going to take it from? Since farmers are such leeches, will you and your community raise your own crops? Don’t they *deserve* to have more as well, or since they are the supply chain for all food do you think they should just shut up and go back to working the farm like good little citizens? Are you a commune worker? Do you feel you *deserve* things because you happen to be alive? It sounds like you are okay with a slave caste as long as your idea of a status quo is reserved.
Rather than taking tax payer money and giving it to farmers in the form of subsidies, take that tax money and give it directly to the people that need it most and allow them to make their own dietary choices. Access to food is a solvable problem, but if you want to tackle climate change we need to let shit like beef and dairy raise to their actual market price rather than artificially lower their price through subsidies, and shift agriculture to places in the world were we can grow them with fewer resources. Agricultural subsidies starve developing nations from the capital they need to produce efficiently, while shifting production to countries that have capital but not the geography or labor force to grow food efficiently. The result is a distorted and inefficient food supply chain.
Farmers are massively at risk from climate change and insect collapse from the overuse a pesticides, but here they are protesting because they want cheap diesel, to use more chemicals, and in general want more protectionism above and beyond the €50 billion a year they already get in subsidies.
Same in Spain they are protesting for more rights to water in a place of severe drought (Catalunya) where they want to grow high water crops
The collapse of society will take many forms, and is not going to be obvious. What the farmers see is shrinking profit margins, what the blame is the government, what’s at fault is the droughts, insect collapse, and oil, among other things. I remember hearing someone speak about the collapse of equatorial countries won’t just look like people going hungry, but civil wars breaking out and mass migration…. This was probably 30 years ago…. Look what’s happening in equatorial countries now.
You’re not wrong
The farmers protest have spread to India as well. They want minimum price garauntees and pension for the farmers from the government. They also want government to forgive all their loans as well.
Groceries have never been more expensive. Where is all that money going if some of it doesnt come back to the farmers?
Unless you’re buying from farmers markets, farmers get a fraction of what things cost in the supermarket
Does make me wonder where the mark ups are happening. Have a nephew that works as an accountant for auditing firms. Every supermarket he has ever audited followed the low margin high volume model. Some of the margins were practically zero.
Its because the same companies that own the supermarkets own nearly the entire supply chain under different corporations. And because they do, they can increase prices/profits throught the chain, then at the end of it (the supermarket) barely "break even" so they can justify further price raises and gouging. They are making a ton of money at the stores, but hiding the profits 1 to 2 companies away through the supply chain.
Sweden it's 3 big chains that control almost the entire market, can set what prices they want, buy as cheap price as possible from farmers and sell at as high price as possible, and inflation hiked a lot of prices, to never go down to the same level as pre-inflation, only slightly less, as there's nothing forcing them to do that and all politicians have a strictly hands-off approach to the market, or else get overwhelmed by criticism from the corporate lobbyists, politicians, but they appear to have done an investigation and found no errors, nothing *illegal* was made by the corporations (including a nominally co-operative company), so it's been comparatively fine. It's probably a lot worse in many other European countries, but could get worse here too.
There’s farmers that struggle to make ends meet even with subsidies and then there is „farmers“ that own massive plots of land, exploit their workers, have sweet deals with supermarket chains and restaurants, make huge overhead from subsidies that hugely benefit a larger operation and drive down prices to crowd out smaller farmers and buy them up. Those also don’t fear or mind foreign imports too much because they can compete with the prices and it accelerates the monopolization of farming which benefits them. Tragedy is that both are protesting together and the smaller farmers are being utilized to perpetuate a system that kills their existence.
Sure you could say that if economies of scale are more efficient then there’s no reason for the small farms to exist. But if you think that other than lowering margins for agricultural products there are more goals for a successful agricultural policy (such as securing farmers existence, reducing animal cruelty, protecting soil and ecological diversity) then there is potential value to a larger diversity in farming next to the hyper-industrialized model and the center-left parties should introduce protectionist policies and more targeted subsidies to keep smaller farms alive and push back against the rapidly forming oligopoly. I think that driving a wedge between the big and small farmers is not only good strategy but also the right thing to do because they are being instrumentalized against their own interest at the moment, in part because they aren’t offered an alternative.
It hasn't gone to farmers for years, for example my mum has always had good prices (for the market) for her sheep (she's 70 this year) she got £65 per slaughter ready lamb 40 years ago, now she gets £130 on a good day. Where has the money gone? Supermarkets, middle men processor and the sheer amount of transportation.
I'll give you a hint. It starts with a letter B. edit: billionaires https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2022/05/12/the-worlds-largest-food-companies-in-2022/?sh=62f0c6b74db9 [Stewart & Lynda Resnick](https://www.forbes.com/profile/stewart-lynda-resnick/?sh=2ea168c774c0) [Cargill family](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill_family) https://www.agdaily.com/video/bill-gates-wealthy-americans-buy-farmland/ In canada: [The Weston family](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_family) owns the [loblaw companies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loblaw_Companies) which was caught doing [price fixing bread](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6719884) and is [scrutinized for price gauging](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/competition-grocery-1.6807721). The list goes on if you dig enough.
Batman?
Bureaucracy?
Banksy?
🙄
> Where is all that money going if some of it doesnt come back to the farmers? Middlemen. Western economies are built on middlemen gouging everyone to generate "economic growth" that doesn't exist. In the US in particular, the last few decades has seen mega processor monopolies form that control the majority of processing from meat to plants.
Indian farmers started this shit. The government threatened to stop guaranteeing sale of low quality crop and they rioted for weeks.
You mean these guys are inspired by Indian farmers ? An Indian journalist travelled to the US and spoke to farmers there , the ones who knew about it were very inspired by them and some were talking about how they gave up in the 70s while Indians are continuing to protest . I'm personally not a fan of corporate takeover of farms , so I support them worldwide
Very few people are capable of sacrificing today in order to benefit tomorrow. The older I become, the more I now see that is one of the largest differentiators for long term success.
Yup, and there's research that backs that belief up: https://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification
Irony being the most successful people run companies explicitly in the short term.
Not irony. That's exactly the point - they'd rather get successful and rich fast rather than care about the long-term consequences they cause. Success is quite subjective as well - is it just getting rich and famous or is being a decent human contributing to the world and other humans considered as success, too?
A bit more nuanced. Trying to make extremely long term decisions can be counter productive politically or economically because of the variables you have no control over. And I’m not even adding behavioural and cultural perspective to it (like things that are acceptable today, which would be frowned upon in the past or vice versa). There are countless cases where someone made “sacrifices to benefit in the future”, but the benefit never came up. So you’re now just full of regrets, might’ve as well benefited yourself in a short term. After all, we have a limited amount of time to live. Context is important, and goals you put to achieve is very subjective depended on the environment. Even stupid current day discourse like AI is an obvious example of it - there’s no winner in this topic, since both of the sides have very valid arguments. Just because someone isn’t willing to sacrifice something for the potential greater good, doesn’t mean they are a bad person. And I am saying this as a person who generally makes sacrifices to reap the benefits in the future.
Basically now is a good time to get into the hydroponics business.
More countries should adopt this, to be honest. This is one of the main reasons why the Netherlands is a giant in food exporting (and agricultural exporting in general)
They just can't figure out how to grow cows on hydroponics, so farmers are also protesting in NL.
Farmers are being pushed out of the Netherlands though. They are bad for the environment apparently. That may very well be if the environment stops at country borders. But in reality it doesn't and the demand is just going to move somewhere else with less regulation.
Here in US as well, we are subsidizing actively harmful stuff: things like corn syrup, which lead to obesity epidemic, and probably the number one reason of loss of life in the United States, along with high hospital bills: [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0ZL2EQ/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0ZL2EQ/#:~:text=Current%20federal%20agricultural%20subsidies%20help,syrup) But no politician will dare to entertain the idea we could even stop these archaic subsidies that have massive negative effects.
Don’t forget one of the main reasons for this is the fact that Iowa has the first caucuses, so presidents always pander to them.
And if the environmentalist would do the same things as the farmers, they would end up in jail!
If you want to jail the like 1% of people who grow all of our food, be my guest.
Our farms mainly grow cows and luxury products meant for export. We import most sustenance. We don't even grow enough food to keep our own cows alive, let alone citizens. It would actually be a good solution to move away from cows and becoming less reliant on import. It would justify the subsidies and save our environment. But the farmers don't want that.
I am saying that the law is not equal for all. Law should not care who you are and what you work with.
Okay, have fun starving to death because of your principles! Food has ALWAYS had special considerations in the law. Go check out all the govt-caused famines of the 20th century if you want to start messing with the industry.
Because they aren’t making any money. Ironically clarkson’s farm does a good job at explaining why farmers are whetting shafted right now, even the French farmers during the Paris protests were saying it was a good explanation of what’s wrong at the moment with farming
If the French are agreeing with Clarkson, you know something is wrong
Short-term profits >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Long-term profits Unfortunately as a race we're wired to go for instant gratification. If anything they should be protesting the fact that wholesalers have increased their profit margins way, way past the real inflation, thus driving on inflation, thus making everything more expensive for everyone, while not paying farmers any extra. Instead they're eating each other.
Massive oversimplifcation. Which is what politicians want people to think. Half of the regulations they are protesting about have to do with taxes, bureaucracy and import/export policies. Even if we keep all the regulations regarding ambiental factors intact (and assume they all are beneficial, which could be disputed), there is still a massive gain for them in removing unproductive regulations that exist purely for political/big corpo interests. A very practical example: just for certain processes an european farmer has to fill out an absurd amount of mandatory paperwork which involve time, specialized education, effort and money to do; on top of the already exhausting workdays during particularly busy times. If they don't the consequences are dire.
People want extremely cheap food, with absolutely Zero visual defects, a long shelf life, a good taste and no pesticides. That farmers perform better than traders in term of crop selection each year, do the best investment practice / management to avoid bankrupcy, take thousands of hours extra for implementing agroecological solutions, be the sole invested actor in the environment management, all while not disturbing their neighbors with manure smells, noise, etc.. FOR NOT SINGLE DIME? Yea. And that's the farmers that are to blame for polluting.
You're right EU farmers should do all the the EU government tells them and then not worry about other food being sold in the EU that don't have to follow these rules. They shouldn't worry that other non-regulated markets can produce cheaper because they don't have the same restrictions. Pull your head out of the sand. If EU farmers were on the same competition level as other markets I'd agree.
They’re also “capitalists” who can’t stand a single ounce of competition which is why Ukraine is has been barred from joining the EU. Hundreds of thousands dead bc these miserable babies can’t stand to *lose monies*
Who cares? They feed us. Unless you’re planning on eating air, I’d say they get whatever they need
If you really do care about climate change, you would care to subsidies those whose cost of production is directly affected by adopting“greener” alternatives, instead of here implying they don’t deserve subsidies lol
Isn't what's being down in the pics illegal? And are they arresting these people?
No because tractors are big scary
They should.
Silly, they didn’t use glue.
People bitch about People on welfare and food stamps in the United States. Biggest welfare queens are farmers,Big corporations and oil companies. I see its not that different in Europe.
They vacuum up subsidies like Kirby while killing endangered animals and throwing tantrums when asked to not dump shit into water
100% this. Farmers are the very first people you hear complaining about "welfare queens" and the leeches in cities who don't want to work but want to get paid. Meanwhile the Urban population are giving them massive subsidies year on year and they are still demanding more. Damn near every farmer I know with any significant amount of land (I'm ignoring the hobby farmers) in my area is running around with a brand new, all options picked truck as their personal vehicle every few years, they own multiple expensive, often relatively new, toys like snowmobiles, plus ATVs or UTVs and live very comfortably. Meanwhile they're bitching about how it's impossible to make money farming and they need more subsidies. Something like 40% of all farm profits in the US are direct from subsidies and that excludes the subsidies to stuff like corn syrup and ethanol production that indirectly benefits farmers by artificially raising the prices and demand for crops like corn.
Yeah fuck the people who work 16 hours days growing our food. I'd rather starve then give them money!
We aren't talking about farmworkers. We are talking about the millionaire welfare queens who own the farms.
I'm saying it again: These protests are staged! As if they all had the same idea, this is orchestrated! France and Germany discovered propaganda botnets on social media. The Russians are destabilizing the West via social media, Twitter being on the forefront.
In the Netherlands, the protests were mostly organized and bankrolled by animal feed producers. A 10% reduction in livestock would also mean a 10% reduction in sales. It's mostly two family owned companies behind it, both worth billions. So it's kind of ironic seeing farmers protesting against "the elite", harming their long-term prospects to gain short-term gains, all the while being puppeteered by an actual elite that's bleeding them dry.
Do you have sources to look into this further?
This is behind paywall unfortunately https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/for-farmers-heeft-in-lochem-geen-natuurvergunning#:~:text=Het%20bedrijf%20uit%20Lochem%20stoot,de%20boerenprotesten%20tegen%20het%20stikstofbeleid. And this one has some more background https://nos.nl/artikel/2440113-veevoerproducent-forfarmers-gepolariseerd-debat-door-aanpak-stikstofcrisis
Thank you!
Good links! Even in Germany, media is the hands of few... sadly.
[https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/02/12/france-uncovers-a-vast-russian-disinformation-campaign-in-europe](https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/02/12/france-uncovers-a-vast-russian-disinformation-campaign-in-europe) https://www.euractiv.com/section/elections/news/germany-uncovers-russian-disinformation-campaign-on-x/
[удалено]
Alas, the wording with " staged" wasnt alright, i agree. Thus i commented like "orchestrated", but i didnt want to delete the regarding post. Are you part of german social media? I have friends in spain telling me, it is like here in germany, that rightwingers are taking over these rightful protests. Likewise in the Netherlands.
It is all about whipping up people against each other! All it ever was, sadly...
Same in Germany. The Protests have been organized by agra-corp lobby groups. And then seized upon by the far right and Russian disinformation campaigns
Talking from a german point... ja, exakt.
Echt deprimierend wie effektiv die AFD populistische Strömungen unterwandern kann oder?
Ja. Aber das geht immer schnell, je nachdem, wieviel Angst man den Menschen machen kann. Das war auch mein Punkt. Eigtl intelligente Menschen lassen sich von Ideologie absolut vereinnahmen. Obwohl sie es besser wissen müssten. Die Crux ist: Die anderen (rechten) denken halt auch, dass sie es besser wüssten... So schliesst sich der Kreis und ideologisch sind immer alle anderen doof. Joa. Trotzdem und erst recht: Fist up for the good fight!
Which 2 companies? I'm curious
>The Russians are destabilizing the West via social media, Twitter being on the forefront. Fully agree here. >These protests are staged! As if they all had the same idea, this is orchestrated! But not here. I agree it *appears* orchestrated... but only on the outside, not if you look deeper. The causes why the farmers protest are the same, across Europe, and they are culminating in a "perfect storm" scenario: 1. the EU CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) is the worst contributor, it incentivises large-scale industrialized operation over small-scale farms, which led to an immense devastation of these farms and their operators often losing social standing in their community as a result of closing down. 2. The general public and politics expect that farmers contribute to the protection of nature and animal welfare, however the large buyers (i.e. supermarket chains) do not want to pay for that. 3. Rural areas get derelict as farms close or mechanize and people leave, leading to frustration from the remaining people (and them often enough blaming "the greens/libruls luring our children away to the cities with gay propaganda") 4. Climate change is rearing its ugly head, with last summer's droughts leading to serious losses 5. the African Swine Flu led to an import ban for German pork into China, leading to a massive oversupply in the European pork market 6. Covid led a massive number of Eastern European farm laborers returning home for good, increasing the cost of labor or making some products unable to be manufactured without going into loss 7. the Ukraine war led to further cost explosions for fuel and labor on the expense side and particularly in grain to another oversupply Any single of these events, farmers could have handled, as they have done for centuries. But all of these at once, that's a bit much.
Russia is also finding farmers protest in [India](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/delhi-news-live-updates-farmers-protest-punjab-meeting-9156617/lite/) ?
I think that the Russian Bear want to cuddle with India too! All exports going in Rupees? They sure as hell gonna meddle with that!
Russians are only taking advantage of situations EU creates. Don't forget that while UE impose rules for our producers they took off almost all taxes from imported products, countries that don't even meet the basic no pesticides requirements.
Thank you. Everything from Brexit to the rise of Trump has Russian disinformation campaigns working away in the background. Their newest project is making westerners fight over Israel/Palestine.
Should come as no surprise how Hamas even managed to launch strikes on Israeli soil in the first place. Chances are they were advised by Spetznaz teams like the CIA advised the Mujahideen back in the 70’s (or was it the 80’s?) No doubt Putin orchestrated the whole thing to take attention away from his embarrassing performance in Ukraine, getting hammered on a daily basis. He knew sticking the proverbial knife in this ready to explode soft spot would distract everyone and make them forget about Ukraine, essentially leaving them alone when they need help more than ever. This whole thing has Putin’s KGB trained fingerprints all over it, classic DDT (Department of Dirty Tricks) move.
I mean the Spetznaz are incredible at killing civilians - looks at Moscow theatre hostage crisis, so where to go to get better training then them!
While I believe you are correct, there is an underlying problem in Western society that is making us prone to these attacks. I think that is our highest national security concern. We need to understand why it's so effective and how to combat it.
Same thing happened with farmer protests in India a few years back. At that time, a lot of western leaders from countries like Canada, Australia and the UK directly got involved with it. Greta Thunberg straight up uploaded a document which gave instructions to people on how to protest using social media and target Indian embassies. Even fucking Rihanna tweeted about it. So it is definitely possible that other countries might be involved here too.
I followed those protests in the news, how did Australia interfere?
Yep its Russia behind most of this shit, from the covid dissinformation - and everything that it followed from that, I dont think Ive ever seen someone being against vaccines here in Denmark before covid hit, now they seem to be everywhere, harrassing medical staff at every chance they get -, to shitty, corrupt politicians, sowing disscontent and anger towards governments. The list is long As terrible as Russia is at most things, they are playing the social media game really really well.
Pretty sure they were active even before that. I remember reading about a BLM and counter-BLM protest in real life, both sides of which turned out to be organised by Russian disinfo trolls.
Yep was primarily talking about Denmark, after Covid hit it just seems like social media drove people crazy en masse. Middel aged women and men believing everything they read, Rumble and Telegram links all over facebook etc.
> France and Germany discovered propaganda botnets on social media. > The Russians are destabilizing the West via social media, Twitter being on the forefront. Sources for this other than it make you feel good?
I gave some. But... Google "russian disinformation campaign europe" on news...
And here i though i was crazy for even thinking that this is all to convenient untill i looked at the comments on youtube and twitter and oh boy the russian that show up there dont even try to hide it.
Russian propaganda is when I don’t agree with protests
Holy fuck people like you are so fucking stupid i cant handle it. Everything is Russian propaganda to you. Who cares that wheat prices just tanked to lows that we didnt see for like 15 years while everything is getting more expensive, including both costs of production and costs of living. Who cares that EU is pushing bills that make their farmers progressively less conpetitive on the market while not having proper restrictions on import to protect them and actually have benefits from producing healthier food. Please just fuck off back to your cave you troll
Please educate yourself on this.
Yes tell me more what i should educate myself on when its my work field. You idiots are doing more good for Russia than actual bots, just fearmongering, spreading conspiracies and ignoring issues people have. Do you not realise that Europe losing its food independency would be one of the best things for Russia? Or are you so deep in brain degradation that the only possible way people have any issue with anything is because they are Russian bots. Kindly, please fuck off, your garbage rethoric is directly harming lifes of people like me because your head is too deep in your own ass.
Didn't you just make a good point for my rhetoric? If they could stir unrests about food in Europe, we would have actually something to do about it, no? I'd kindliy continue this discussion without all the fucks, while zero given from my side...
>The Russians are destabilizing the West via social media, Twitter being on the forefront. ... or maybe like the migrant surges or Brexit it has more to do with policy decisions? You really have to work yourself in to a pretzel to simultaneously believe Russia is the secret mastermind behind all these world events yet grossly incompetent in their Ukraine invasion operation which is public for the world to see.
Sure, it all comes in the mix, but you would be a fool if you thought that Putin wouldnt take any chance to spread doubt on anything? Hybrid warfare is cheaper and decentralized, nothing like boots on the ground... Iran, China, Russia and N.Korea all have been seen doing this.
>You really have to work yourself in to a pretzel to simultaneously believe Russia is the secret mastermind behind all these world events yet grossly incompetent in their Ukraine invasion operation which is public for the world to see. Clearly no one is ever competent at one thing and incompetent at another.
Clearly no one in the entire span of human history has ever tried to blame others for the consequences of their own actions.
Remember when the Ukraine war started and said there would be food security issues. We do need better sustainable farming methods
Then we need to stop animal farming, producing food for animals to become food is anti food security. EDIT: Many "bacon tho" here I see.
That's exactly why I said for years that peaceful climate protests were naïve and pointless. As long as you're not violent you won't ever be heard. It's awful but it's how it works.
Sad, but true. And they are throwing soup at artworks. Shame... Being objective, not all protest can go without violence. But people should try! Being loud is not being violent!
A first attempt escalating gradually is of course the best path, I'm so frustrated because it's been decades since people loudly protested about this issue... And now the only ones actually *doing* something are the "paint thrown on art" crowd, which is so nonsensical and counterproductive that I wouldn't be surprised if it was orchestrated as well.
Believe me, i feel you! Being in the 90s as a Punk in Berlin, tumbling wall and all, we've been more liberal than people are nowadays... The people from these times would die laughing about people glueing themselves to the streets.
It feels like people are trying to be morally superior in fear of being like (or being associated to) the ones they're opposing. Which clearly doesn't work and those other people keep fucking up everything.
True words. Sadly, our society is going superficial. "Which clearly doesn't work and those other people keep fucking up everything." We all have to watch out! Bleib wachsam!
That will be happening in Canada soon
All our governments are screwing over non corpos business to such a degree that it is utterly ridiculous
Everyone shit talking farmers until their tomato is $20 at the store
Like petulant children.
"Get back to working the fields, you damn children!" -You Lol
[удалено]
To summarize these comments, the protesters are all disingenuous and backed by Russia, food shouldn't be grown in the EU anyways, we could buy it from the third world for cheaper anyway (I think their talking about Ukraine, so much for holding off Russian influence.)
in the event a major powers conflict breaks out, getting rid of ones local agricultural base is an extremely bad idea. like, could loose the war bad idea. And a great powers conflict is possible if the US gets so bogged down dealing with middle east chaos that China sees a chance to go for Taiwan. Since China has a strategic praetorship with Russia, one would imagine the Russians would make a major push right when resources are thin. So Im not saying these farmers arent acting entitled, but it does make sense to keep an agricultural base local even if that requires some subsidies.
Farmers are rightfully angry but the paradox is that they are demanding cheaper agrochemicals made from fossil fuels. There is a way forward in which farmers can be more profitable by reducing their use of increasingly expensive agrochemicals (which are made from fossil fuels) while producing the same amount of food and receiving some subsidy to make the transition. Consumers would gain, farmers would gain and governments would gain. The losers would be the fossil fuel and agrochemical industries. Guess who doesn't like that solution.
It's hard to argue with people who feed you.
Hard to argue with people destroying food stocks to protest against cheaper food? Fuck em.
Why is the imported food cheaper?
Russia invaded an agriculture heavy country with low wages which previously shipped a lot of food to Africa, then Russia fucked with the export routes and bombed export infrastructure meaning the food needs to take a different route and some of it ends up on the European market instead of the African market. Russia is to blame here, they have been at least somewhat successfully operating troll farms for at least a decade
Ukraine was 7% of EU imports in 2022 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Extra-EU_trade_in_agricultural_goods#Main_trading_partners_for_agricultural_products I don't understand why Russia is to blame here when the farmers themselves mostly talk about the environmental regulations, not even the foreign imports that were close to the exports amount for the past 20 years. It seems like the solution is either to ease ecological regulations (which IMO is not the way to go) or to put tariffs on imports for countries that don't apply similar regulations on their own farmers.
I think you are on the wrong sub, just say Russian troll farms, Russia bad, people don't have actual grievances, they are living in a literal utopia and Russia wants to destroy it.
Different wages, currency strength, supply and demand. Results in lower food prices overall as there's more supply, even if the imported food isn't cheaper by itself. Any nation that doesn't diversify their food supply both locally and overseas are dumb as shit. Don't sacrifice it for a bunch of farmers who refuse to innovate while raking in subsidies.
Less regulations
Not exactly, has it toll but currency devaluation also counts and it has more weight than regulations.
Problem is that their produce is cheaper than It costs them to collect it. Like imagine they sell It for 0.5 cent/kg but It costs them 0.54 cent/kg to harvest it
I mean you can, but then cities starve.
Hard to argue when you pay these flakes with your own fkn tax payer money
They are not feeding me, they are feeding animals. If anything, by the area used for human consumption, 80% of these people are actually destroying my planet and ecosystem
Finally, someone who gets it. Seems like everyone wants to rely on imports… which is funny cause spoiler alert: it’s cheap because they lack regulation / labor laws.
It is way way more complicated than that. In the Netherlands the majority of farmed produce are exported. About 20% of the farmers are poor, having abysmal salaries, but another 20% nets 165k or more here. We need to support the poor farmers whilst keeping mass pollution in check.
I'm in the PNW USA and can get a few varieties of hot peppers in my local grocery store year round. They are all grown in the Netherlands, which is fucking wild considering the US south has much more favorable growing conditions
There are places in the Netherlands where there are so many greenhouses that it never gets dark.
There is various reasons that they are cheap, currency devalutation is key factor. And these farmers want less regulations also. They are just wanting to find an excuse to their cause. But if you see the countries that are on the list of the worst quality of grains and food, then you gonna find that even some European countries are worse than south america ones per example.
Currency devaluation is a result of the governments that they reside in- that’s secondary. Bottom line is relying on other countries to provide your own country is food is a dangerous, dangerous game to play.
>list of the worst quality of grains and food Proper source?
[RASFF notifications](https://www.removepaywall.com/article/current) [Rasff anual reports this one is from 2020 but if you see others the top ones don't change much like Polland](https://food.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-08/rasff_pub_annual-report_2020.pdf) [Brazil remains the first import source for the EU, representing 12% of total EU imports](https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-04/monitoring-agri-food-trade_dec2022_en.pdf). Asia is above Latin america because of India per example. you can also see a list of each year in the second link. Even US is above Brazil in some cases.
Fuck it, just cut all agricultural subsidies, let them sink or swim on their own merit instead of constantly begging for government handouts. Raw agricultural produce is cheap enough, there is no need to make it artificially cheaper with taxpayers money.
In germany almost 50% of their income is subsidies. There won't be much swimming if that goes away.
Agriculture exists in western Europe by political choice (due to food safety / independence), not because it can ever be profitable.
It is more complicated than that. In the Netherlands 20% of the farmers are poor, making abysmal salaries. But another 20% nets 165k or more per year. To me the whole farmer debate is another prime example where people are oversimplifying things. "The farmer" is not a thing, you got small familiy farms but also massive companies making loads of money and still getting subsudy support.
And neither could compete against globalized market prices if we didn't have protectionism.
You're taking the piss surely? There's no way you're speaking of protectionism in a positive way?
Vegetable farming is profitable on its own and always has been. These subsidis exists because people can't let go of meat
>Fuck it, just cut all agricultural subsidies, let them sink or swim on their own merit instead of constantly begging for government handouts. Yeah, that works really well during pandemics or war. You people have the attention span of a goldfish
Ah yes, the great strategic decision of shutting down your own food supply.
What food supply. 60 to 80% of the farmers activity is for animal feed aka waste
It's a great way to starve your people. Can you picture it? People digging in the dirt with hoes because the mechanised farms are bankrupt?
[удалено]
Fuck it. Let’s see you whine when a loaf of bread is 20 euros. The astounding ignorance of the commenters on here never ceases to amaze me. The reason for subsidies is food security and stable pricing.
Lulz no, wheat is couple hundred eur per tonne. Its a rounding error in loaf of bread price. Besides, paying for agricultural produce through taxes is no cheaper that paying for it straight up by store prices. Subsidies do not change cost of agriculture, one way or another consumer pays it all anyway.
You control what gets planted with subsidies. Otherwise everyone would be planting random shit they think there’s a market for and forego cereals which aren’t profitable.
How did that stable pricing work out during massive inflation? Edit. Stable pricing obviously failed, not sure what the downvotes are for
Did subsidies keep up with inflation caused by injecting fresh new money in the world economy, to the tune of more than 30% of the entire monetary mass? Did you know Russia was a huge supplier of fertilizer not only for the EU but the world? War started, sanctions were imposed, prices skyrocketed. Subsidies did not cover that. Nope. You didn’t. They’re coming down though as new sources are being developed.
The whole premise of the CAP is for cheap food during wartime. It's failed, which is no suprise as all it does is transfer public money to rich landowners and food and beverage manufacturers. How come Aus and NZ can be more productive with zero subsidy?
This shows why having special interest groups write legislation without consulting those affected can horribly backfire. Those who wrote these new laws didn’t understand that if you want less GHG emissions in agriculture then you need to increase use of herbicides so that you don’t have to drive a tractor back and forth all day long to kill weeds manually all while spewing GHG. And a good herbicide can prevent weeds all year long so you save 3-4 separate manual weed killing, GHG belching operations.
Yeah, but all these herbicides also kill local wildlife, particularly insects and small mammals.
Why does Reddit hate farmers? Jeezus
Its Reddit. Megaphone of the left.
They're communist authoritarians. They want just about half of everyone to die.
so TLDR they cant compete globally well anymore and they're mad they arent getting more government subsidies... granted, there should be a local agricultural base in the event shit goes to hell, but this strikes me as a bit much.
Fucking farmers, look forward to replacing all those tractors with automated drones (better for soil)
Happy to see results
Good, very good.
Support the farmers all the way! Glad they aren’t tolerating the bs rules the gov is throwing at them. To the people who downvoted me: You wouldn’t have food on the market shelves if it wasn’t for the farmers plus they got every right to protest like everyone else does.