By Vijay Jayaraj

Europe’s picturesque landscapes, adorned with sprawling croplands and pastures, have long been part of the continent’s agrarian identity. However, a wave of farmer protests has intruded on this peaceful scene and extended into cities.

From the rolling hills of France to the windswept plains of Poland, farmers have driven their tractors onto the streets, united in a fight against a threat to their livelihoods. Last week, thousands of French farmers blocked roads in outskirts of Paris, in an act that has been dubbed the “siege of Paris.” The city of Toulouse, home to 800,000 people, was cut off from the rest of France due to protests.

Likewise, in cities across Belgium, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Germany, farmers have blocked roads and conducted targeted protests at public buildings. Tractor convoys, road blockades, and impassioned speeches reflect the agricultural community’s deep frustration with attempts to reduce farmlands and ban fertilizer use.

This week, the protest spread to Spain and Greece. Spanish farmers blocked freeways and access to ports. Greek farmers dumped apples and chestnut in the city of Thessaloniki as a sign of protest. Farmers in majority of EU states have now joined the protest.

The primary policy target of farmers is a so-called Farm to Fork program that seeks to halve pesticide use, reduce fertilizer use, cut by at least 10% agricultural areas and mandate a conversion of 25% of the European Union’s agricultural land to “organic-only” farming. The initiative also includes removal of subsidies for agricultural diesel used in tractors and machinery.

Farmers argue that all these policies jeopardize their livelihood, make EU agricultural sector less competitive to non-EU markets, and undermine the rich agricultural heritage that has defined European societies for centuries.

Behind all this is the EU’s climate change agenda’s obsession with reducing harmless industrial and agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases, which include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. Farm to Fork is a subset of the bigger European Green Deal and Net Zero programs.

France’s largest farm union, FNSEA, says it wants a change in the “very philosophy of the Green Deal which assumes degrowth.”  “French farmers are united in their opposition to absurd, extreme and unworkable environmental policies,” said the president of Coordination Rurale, a French farming group. “Those in power do not spare a thought for the impact of these policies on the livelihoods of farmers, the food security of the nation and the cost-of-living crisis facing ordinary people.”

The farmer unions have a point, and a serious one. Reducing the use of fertilizers would require employing more land for agriculture, but the EU’s green policies intend to decrease the amount of farmland. This amounts to forced agricultural suicide that threatens hunger, death, and societal collapse.

Shaken by these protests and to appease the farmers, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced minor concessions to their Farm to Fork program earlier this week. Though media outlets celebrated it as a success for the farmers, the concessions are too insignificant, and are temporary measures to end the continent-wide protests.

In her speech on Tuesday, the EU president von der Leyen shockingly blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Climate Change for the farmers’ protests, when the primary reason for the farmer protests was the EU Commission’s policies, under her very oversight. It is important to remember that the EU president is not directly elected by the people of EU, yet has been bestowed with authority to impose life-crippling and farm-destroying policies on millions of Europeans.

Thomas O’Reilly of the Brussels-based The European Conservative says, “no matter the rhetoric coming from the Commission (EU), the Green Deal is at the heart of EU climate policies, and nothing they will let go of without a fight. Neither, it seems, will Europe’s farmers, who are fighting for their lives.”

In other words, the fight goes beyond the immediate use of land and fertilizers and to the well-being of generations to come. Farm to Fork won’t be resolved until there is an end to the Green Deal and Net Zero programs.

The European agricultural crisis is a warning to citizens of other governments planning to adopt similar policies for agricultural production to avert a non-existent climate crisis.  So-called green policies would kill the greenest parts of our world as they destroy ordinary people’s dream of a decent life with access to basic necessities for living.

This commentary was first published at Townhall on February 10, 2024.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia.  He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.