On February 26, the World Trade Organization (WTO) will hold its 13th ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi. While few would make the connection between the discussions at that summit and the plight of impoverished farmers around the world, there is in fact a direct and clear link between the two.
On that day, we, members of the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC), an international organization representing small farmers in 21 European countries, will protest against the neoliberal policies in agriculture that the WTO has been promoting for decades and that have led to the systematic impoverishment of farmers.
This tragic situation has been highlighted by continued protests by farmers who have taken to the streets, blocking motorways and logistics platforms across Europe since January.
These are people who produce Europe's food, whether conventionally or organically, on a small or medium scale. They are united by a shared reality: they are tired of spending their lives working endlessly without even earning a decent income.
We have reached this point after decades of neoliberal agricultural policies and free trade agreements. Production costs have risen steadily in recent years, while prices paid to farmers have stagnated or even fallen.
Faced with this situation, farmers have followed various economic strategies. Some have tried to increase production to compensate for falling prices: they bought more land, invested in machinery, took on a lot of debt and saw their workload increase significantly. Stress and decreased income have created great frustration.
Other farmers have sought better prices for their products by turning to organic farming and short distribution channels. But for many, these markets collapsed after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, through mergers and speculation, large agribusiness groups have become bigger and stronger, putting greater pressure on prices and farmers' practices.
ECVC has actively participated in farmers' mobilizations in Europe. Our members have also been hit hard by declining incomes, stress linked to high levels of debt and excessive workloads. We clearly see that the adoption by the European Union of the deregulation policies of agricultural markets promoted by the WTO in favor of large agribusiness and destructive international competition are directly responsible for our difficult situation.
Since the 1980s, several regulations that guaranteed fair prices for European farmers have been dismantled. The EU put all its faith in free trade agreements, which put all the world's farmers in competition with each other, encouraging them to produce at the lowest possible price at the expense of their own income and growing debt.
However, in recent years, the EU has announced its intention to move towards a more sustainable agricultural model, in particular with the Farm to Fork Strategy, which is the agricultural component of the Green Deal.
Farmers' organizations welcomed this ambition, but we also stressed that the sustainability of European agriculture cannot be improved without breaking with the logic of international competitiveness. Producing organically has enormous benefits for health and the planet, but it costs more for farmers, so achieving the agroecological transition requires protecting agricultural markets. Unfortunately we were not heard.
European farmers were therefore faced with an impossible mission: achieve an agroecological transition while producing at the lowest possible price. As a result, differences between agricultural organizations have clearly resurfaced.
On the one hand, large farmers and agro-industrial organizations, linked to Copa-Cogeca, want to maintain the neoliberal orientation and have therefore requested the withdrawal of the environmental measures provided for in the EU Green Deal.
On the other hand, ECVC and other organizations affirm that the environmental and climate crises are real and serious and that it is vital to provide ourselves with the means to combat them to guarantee food sovereignty in the coming decades. For us, what needs to be questioned is the neoliberal framework, not environmental regulation.
In particular, we denounce the free trade agreement that the EU has been celebrating with several countries and regions. One of them is the agreement negotiated with the Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay). A final text was drafted in 2019, but neither party signed nor ratified it.
If it comes into force, it would be a disaster for European livestock farmers, since it would cause an increase in imports of meat, among other products, from the Mercosur countries. This could potentially drive down prices, putting even more economic pressure on already struggling European livestock farmers.
Furthermore, the agreement could result in the importation of products that do not meet the same strict food safety and environmental sustainability standards that the EU has adopted.
While we are not against international trade in agricultural products, we advocate for trade to be based on food sovereignty. This means allowing the import and export of agricultural products, but on the condition that it does not harm local food production or the livelihoods of small-scale food producers.
Instead of protecting its farmers and helping them transition to agroecology, the EU has chosen to respond to the demands of large farmers and agribusiness organizations by revoking a key provision of the Green Deal: halving pesticide use. by 2030.
Some European countries have also decided to address this crisis by abolishing environmental measures while maintaining neoliberal policies. France, for example, paused the Ecophyto pesticide reduction plan, while Germany abolished its plan to eliminate tax breaks for agricultural vehicles and watered down legislation to eliminate subsidies for off-road diesel fuel.
Removing environmental regulations is a very risky option because it does nothing to permanently solve the essential problem of farmers' declining incomes. So we can be sure that farmers' protests will continue to increase in the coming years.
All of this is happening at a time when the far right is on the rise around the world. Instead of solving problems by ensuring better income distribution, the far right scapegoats minority populations (migrants, women, LGBTQ, etc.) and increases violent repression of popular movements.
In the Netherlands, farmers' anger was exploited by the right-wing Peasant-Citizen Movement (BBB) party, which leveraged anti-establishment and anti-ecological rhetoric to gain more votes. As a result, the BBB made significant gains in the provincial and national elections, increasing its seats in parliament from one to seven.
With the EU's incoherent reaction to the farmers' protests, there is a real risk that this trend will continue in June's European Parliament elections.
Farmer unions within ECVC argue that the real solutions for European farmers are policies to regulate markets and promote food sovereignty, in cooperation with Southern countries. At a time when capital incomes are skyrocketing, we as farmers support labor unions and the climate movement to demand fair incomes for all workers and coherent policies to respond to the global climate emergency.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
