—ASTHA RAJVANSHI
THE BULLETIN
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF FARMERS have taken to the streets across Europe in recent weeks to protest the combined effect of poor economic conditions created by falling incomes, high costs, ongoing disruption from the war in Ukraine, and competition from cheap imports. Their discontent is further fueled by the European Union’s recent announcement of more-stringent environmental policies affecting agriculture, which they say will make things worse.
On Feb. 1, farmers from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece descended on Brussels, where they blocked roads, lit fires, and threw eggs at the European Parliament to demand that E.U. leaders do more to help.
ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM The E.U.’s proposed green policies are intended to curb the farming sector’s greenhouse-gas emissions—which currently account for 11% of Europe’s total emissions—by revamping the existing Common Agricultural Policy, a yearly subsidy system worth nearly $60 billion. The new policies, part of the European green deal, which aims to make the bloc climate-neutral by 2050, ask that farmers devote at least 4% of arable land to nonproductive features, carry out crop rotations, and reduce fertilizer use by at least 20%.
GREENING THE FIELDS Many farmers’ anger is fueled by perceived contradiction, according to 44-year-old Morgan Ody, a French farmer from the region of Brittany. “On the one hand we’re asked to farm more sustainably; on the other, we’re asked to keep producing as cheaply as possible, which puts us in an impos
