Farmers have been protesting all across Europe for weeks now. We’ve already written articles on the German farmer protests and the French farmer protests respectively. However, here at CrowdFarming, we thought it was important to state a few key points to clarify our view of these protests. 

As they progress, we are concerned that the “solutions” that are emerging are reducing or removing certain measures from the EU’s Green Deal or Farm to Fork Strategy. We strongly disagree with this. The EU is already suggesting a plan to scrap the proposal of halving the use of pesticides by 2030, and governments seem to be turning back on other green initiatives like fallow land allocation, fertilizer use limits, etc. 

However, farmers are protesting against a myriad of struggles, not just green regulation, namely: falling sales prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, powerful and domineering retailers, increasing debt, and the difficulty of competing with cheaper foreign imports, all while facing a changing climate. 

A fight that has been caused by unfairness in the supply chain is in danger of being co-opted by those who are lobbying for the slackening of environmental standards. What they are failing to see is that, if we back out of green policies now, we are just postponing the problem and making it bigger for the future.

What are farmers protesting?

Rising costs and falling prices

Farmers are spending more and being paid less. The prices European farmers received for their produce dropped by more than 9% between 2022 and 2023,  whereas the prices of inputs for EU farmers rose 11%. On top of this, farmers are beginning to witness losses of crops and reduced yields due to environmental shifts. This is putting farmers under large amounts of financial pressure, making it almost impossible for them to invest in new or more sustainable practices. 

Organic and regenerative practices — on top of proving to be more resilient to extreme weather events — depend less on external inputs such as agrochemicals, and could therefore make farmers less vulnerable to cost variations. However, they depend highly on manual work, which means we would need to attract new generations to farming to increase the human resources, solving the depopulation challenges the sector faces. In order to attract a young workforce to farming, people need to make a decent living out of it — which brings us back full circle to the need for fair pricing.

What is our take on this: 

• For farmers to reach financial stability and for farming to be an attractive sector for new generations, we must transition to a system that is less dependent on external inputs such as agrochemicals and their price variations and focuses on improving soil fertility and ecosystem resilience. 

Low revenues and the power of supermarkets and intermediaries

In the European Union, just ten supermarkets account for over half of all food retail sales.  In the UK, four supermarkets control 67% of the grocery market share, while in the Netherlands, just five control approximately 77%.

This means supermarkets hold too much power regarding the pricing of produce. They impose unfair pricing on the farmers and are part of a long and unsustainable supply chain. 

The economies of scale of supermarkets can be achieved through two methods: leveraging their huge purchasing power to negotiate lower prices with farmers, or by optimizing logistical efficiency throughout the supply chain. While the latter benefits everyone (the planet, farmers, and the economy), the former is perverse.

On top of this, they also create a system that misleads consumers and encourages food waste by only accepting produce that fits within their aesthetic standards. To be more efficient, they need streamlined processes that aren’t compatible with nature’s rhythm and changes. Farmers therefore lose an additional part of their crops due to aesthetic standards, meaning they are wasting food and earning less. Supermarkets’ stringent standards and aggressive business practices are a big part of the problem.

In Germany, the government wants to have the market power of supermarkets and the food industry scrutinised, blaming their price-setting power for the poor economic situation of many farms. Indeed, to stay competitive, farmers have to supply in large volumes. Smallholder farmers, with few economies of scale, less negotiation capacity and limited investment in inputs or infrastructure, are often squeezed out. The vast majority of the world’s farms are small-scale and family-run and yet the 1% of farms in the world that are larger than 50 hectares, control 65% of the world’s agricultural land. 

Society needs to reevaluate the true value of food and, through their purchases, decide the system they want to support.  For that, a different system needs to exist, one where farmers are paid a fair price for their produce and are not squeezed by imposed prices from retailers.

What is our take on this: 

• All stakeholders in the supply chain should come together to create awareness of the true cost of food and incentivise demand for sustainable and regional options and fair prices.

Cheap imports and trade deals outside of the EU 

Many of the farmers protesting are also displeased with the international trade deals taking place. Namely, the new proposal of a deal with Mercosur where produce could be easily imported from countries like Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This produce doesn’t face the same regulations as farmers in the EU, and there is a sense that regional (European) farmers will not be able to compete with these cheaper and less regulated products. 

Here it is essential to highlight that all EU countries are under the same or similar regulations regarding many aspects, for example, organic certifications. Here at CrowdFarming, we believe in a multi-local approach to creating a solid European food system, and all EU produce should have priority over produce from other continents. 

This new Mercosur deal is currently facing tough opposition from certain member states of the EU, particularly France and Ireland. Their criticism focuses on the amounts of agricultural imports planned to pour into the EU each year: 99,000 tonnes of beef, 25,000 tonnes of pork, and 180,000 tonnes of poultry.

Farmers are calling for the deal to be reviewed to make sure that the imported products are also following the same food safety and environmental regulations that EU farms are. We cannot impose regulations and standards on our farmers in the EU only to then import and consume produce from other continents with different standards. All the responsibility cannot fall exclusively on the farmers,  the entire supply chain must be part of the change. 

What is our take on this: 

• We must prioritise what can be produced within the region, to support our local economy and a sustainable agri-food supply chain. 
  
  

Green regulations and CAP payments 

Farmers also feel blamed for climate change and are pressured to reduce their emissions whilst still producing the same, if not more. To meet increasing market demands, farms have grown in size, become more reliant on pesticides and fertilisers, torn up hedgerows and abandoned rotations. And now these same farmers are facing regulations around chemical use and enforced fallow land, without reprieve from the production-focused food system they have been forced into.  In this sense, it is understandable that farmers are also protesting the green regulations being imposed, as they do not have the structure in place nor the financial stability to implement more sustainable practices within this current system. 

What is our take on this: 

• We firmly believe in the need to transition towards a more sustainable system. We also believe in regulations that start by incentivising, and only recur to prohibition when faced with extreme risk. For some, first comes conviction, for others, it is financial incentives that do the trick and then conviction normally follows when the benefits begin to show. With prohibition, however, it is complicated to inspire a true change of convictions. Subsidies should be oriented towards a transition, and not to a system that is dependent on it. The main question is: What are these subsidies achieving? If it is just the survival of the sector, then we think it needs to change.
  
  

Where do we stand? 

Often, the discussion around sustainability in the agro-food industry can be somewhat repetitive. To look at it from a fresh perspective, let’s imagine a European clothing brand that manufactures T-shirts while ensuring fair wages for its workers. Now, envision the market’s call for sustainability: the brand is urged to adopt eco-friendly practices, such as using organic or recycled materials and reducing water consumption. Admirable goals, undoubtedly, but these changes require significant investment from the brand. However, simultaneously, the market also demands lower prices to remain competitive against foreign brands with laxer standards. Moreover, a staggering 14% of the produced garments are discarded due to trivial reasons – perhaps a colour falling out of trend or minor imperfections from transit. This scenario not only burdens just one segment of the supply chain with all the responsibility but also illustrates an unsustainable approach that applies to the food industry. We can all tell the difference between a cheap fast fashion brand and a sustainable clothing brand, but it’s not always that simple with food.

The issues in the agricultural space need to be addressed holistically, taking into account all the aspects that make it unsustainable. Solutions are not hard to find, yet we still have far to go. Subsidies that are being removed for diesel and other agricultural inputs should become subsidies to implement more sustainable and regenerative practices. Farmers should be rewarded and incentivised to move towards more conscious farming.

So, in summary …

We’re in this together

Although some concerns, such as a plan to phase out tax breaks on agricultural diesel to balance the budget in Germany, or a requirement to reduce nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands are country-specific, the present-day protests see farmers on all sides – small-scale and organic alongside larger, commercial and conventional producers – united by their powerlessness in the face of unfair supply chains. 

It is essential that we remember who this fight is against: unfair pricing strategies, lenient international trade rules and inefficient subsidy systems. The agriculture industry — which is not only farmers —, could and should contribute to hitting the EU’s climate goals, including the legal mandate to be climate-neutral by 2050, and to be able to do so, we must all put in the work.

We are seeing it with our own eyes — unproductive soils, lack of access to water, the decline in harvests — if we don’t change the way we produce our food, we will need huge investments to artificially access nutrients and water and battle plagues. A green transition in agriculture is far from impossible, but it requires that we go back to the drawing board and rethink the whole system from scratch, avoiding short-term fixes. The agri-food space is in desperate need of a paradigm change where farmers can reclaim a central part.