As Spain joins EU farmer strikes, the bloc buckles under pressure

As Spanish farmers became the latest to join the spate of agricultural strikes sweeping Europe today, the EU appears to be bowing to pressure.

The farmers blocking roads across Spain in revolt – and brandishing placards with the words, “Our end will mean your hunger!” – have similar grievances to their counterparts protesting in the likes of France, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Greece, Poland and Romania. Suffocating EU green regulations, rising production costs, falling sale prices and cheap foreign imports are threatening their livelihoods. 

But just as tractors were causing mayhem on roads across Spain, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a major concession. 

“Our farmers deserve to be listened to,” VDL told the European Parliament, as she laid out her intention to scrap the bloc’s requirement for EU farmers to slash chemical pesticide use in half by the end of the decade. 

While the proposal was integral to the EU’s green transition, farmers say it strips them of the ability to fight the pests and disease that threaten their crops, during an already precarious time. 

The European farming lobby has welcomed VDL’s U-turn, though other policies remain in place which it says are economically unviable, such as the requirement for farmers to cut fertiliser use by 20 per cent and double organic production to 25 per cent of all EU farmland by 2030. 

Farmers are in an unenviable position. They are one of the groups worst hit financially by green policies and yet simultaneously one of the first in line to feel the effects of extreme weather events. Wildfires wiped out about 20 per cent of Greek annual farm revenue last year while the plight of Spanish farmers in Catalonia has been compounded by a three-year drought, the longest on record.

Many farmers complain that they are also caught between conflicting public demands for cheap food and climate-friendly processes. And at a time when farmers’ profit margins are already being squeezed. Agricultural costs for energy and fertiliser have risen significantly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

To make matters worse, war in Ukraine has upended trade flows, resulting in vast amounts of Ukrainian grain flooding into neighbouring EU countries such as Poland and Romania. Farmers there blame these imports for a slump in prices on local markets. 

Unfair competition from further afield is another grievance. A proposed EU trade deal with South America’s Mercosur trading bloc has been a sore spot, especially since farmers there don’t have to comply with the same strict regulations as those within the EU.

Some European governments have already taken steps to address country-specific gripes: Berlin has watered down its plans to cut farmers’ diesel subsidies and Paris has scrapped a diesel tax increase.

VDL is right that “farmers deserve to be listened to.” And addressing their concerns about food security is in the interests of the wider population. 

Yet to suggest there is a single farmer’s voice is too simplistic. 

As Matthew Syed points out, while European farmers all want more money for produce, their interests do diverge. 

The objectives of the big, industrial farms represented by the Fédération Nationale des Syndicats d’Exploitants Agricoles, for instance, often conflict with those of smaller farmers.

While roughly half of farmers wish to leave the EU altogether, the other half regard the bloc as a vital source of subsidy.

And the fact that farmers across the bloc are protesting in tandem is not to say that their sense of solidarity with one another necessarily runs that deep. Indeed, the rallying call last week from French farmers to put tariffs on all imports would pit them against other farmers on the continent. 

That said, divergent interests and the lack of a single voice won’t stop anti-establishment politicians jumping at the opportunity to claim that, unlike out-of-touch elites, they represent “ordinary farmers”. 

Populist parties are already expected to make significant gains in June’s European parliament elections. The farmer vote will be a key target.

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