How does the EU programme the destruction of family farming?

In recent weeks we have experienced a revolt of farmers in 10 EU countries, including Poland-as we can see these days-also in France. But the biggest demonstrations so far have taken place all over France, where access to Paris was blocked for several days. The situation in France appears to me to be telling, and it also shows Poles - and our country’s farmers in particular - what they are in danger of, and what awaits them, if we do not fight with all our might against the liberal agricultural policy pushed through by the Brussels bureaucrats and their humble servant Donald Tusk. For our analysis will reveal that the disastrous state of French agriculture is the result not only of an absurd policy, but also of the consistent ideological will of the Union’s leaders to bring about the death of family farming - seen as a stronghold of tradition, patriotism and conservatism - in favour of industrial agriculture and agro-food industry. France continues to have the largest agricultural production in the Union (17% of the total) and gets the largest amount of CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) subsidies, €9 billion a year out of a total of 58 billion.

But until recently, France was the first exporter of agricultural products, and now imports of these products have almost reached export levels. France already imports 60% of fruit consumption, 50% of chicken, and 40% of vegetables.

A dramatic life for the French farmer

All this is the result of the decline of family farming. Every week, according to official figures, between 200 and 250 farming operations close down. The country now has only 500,000 farms, half of what it was 15 years ago. Tragically, a farmer commits suicide every second day. Indeed, the lives of French farmers have become unbearable: they work 70 hours or more a week, including Sundays; they take no holidays, a third of them live in poverty and most earn less than the minimum subsistence level, or a few hundred euros a month.

In addition, French farmers have to contend with an absurd number of standards to respect. There are more than 200 EU standards, plus an additional 150 or so set by the French state, which is apparently trying to be more papal than the pope, i.e. even more neoliberal than the EU! To enforce these standards, the state sends inspectors of various disciplines to farms several times a week. Farmers also have to call in veterinarians at their own expense in order to have the power to prove that their animals are raised in accordance with the standards. To make matters worse, in this bizarre situation where the EU’s rulers pretend to be „neoliberal” but treat farmers as slaves, drones are being sent to monitor what is happening on these farms. Who would be able to stand up under these conditions?

Some of these standards stem from the EZL (European Green Deal). Most of them have environmental goals, which may even be right in theory, but they are - as usual in the EU - pushed through in a way that is impossible to implement and especially applied in an abstract way, without taking into account the overall situation and especially the human dimension of the issue. The EZL programme states that by 2030 there will be a 50% reduction in the use of pesticides and a 30% reduction in the use of fertilisers in agriculture. By 2030, 25% of farms are to be organic. Everyone knows that all this is absolutely impossible to achieve. All the more so as there is no support to move in this direction. Indeed, individual farmers have nothing against organic production.

Some of them have even willingly converted their farms to organic farming. But at the moment this trend is failing in France and farmers are going back to conventional production because no one helped them to survive economically with organic farming! As you can see, Brussels bureaucrats, detached from reality, promoted the programme without caring about the human dimension and not ensuring economic feasibility.

One might say that the EU has nevertheless taken care of the fate of farmers by creating a CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) with huge subsidies for farmers. Unfortunately, the CAP is severely unfairly distributed. In the EU, 20% of the farmers (the rich, large farmers) own 83% of the land and get 81% of the CAP subsidies! This means that the poorest 80%, on family farms, are left with 19% of the subsidies! Admittedly, things are somewhat different in France, where rich farmers only get 35% of the subsidies. But the situation is even worse, because most CAP subsidies do not go to farmers at all, but to the agro-food industry!

French farmers refer to these main beneficiaries of the French authorities as the BASTA group, i.e. the companies Bigard (meat), Avril (oils), Saveol (tomatoes), Tereos (sugar) and Agrial (milk). This agro-food sector is the first industry in France. It has a turnover of €200 billion and profits of €10 billion a year. Nevertheless, they receive not only CAP subsidies (which should go to individual farmers) but also other French subsidies, for example from regional authorities. In addition, the BASTA group has further multiplied its profits in the last two years, among other things due to the war in Ukraine. Indeed, cheap imports from that country to France have increased dramatically: chickens by 172% and sugar beet by 400%! The consequences were, of course, tragic for French farmers … just as they were for Polish ones.

The dominance of the BASTA group is all the greater because it seeks to exploit individual farmers to the maximum. It forces them to pay ridiculously low purchase prices when, on the other hand, it demands ever higher purchase prices for agro-food products from supermarket chains (last week, in the midst of the crisis, they demanded another 5% increase). In this situation, the French farmer gets €0.40 per litre of milk (that is, below the cost of production - €0.50). And this litre is later sold in supermarkets for €1.20-1.50! And so it goes with other agricultural products. The price of an agricultural product is tripled from farmer to consumer.

The worst of two worlds: totalitarianism on the inside and liberalism on the outside. But this is not the end of the story. If the EU behaves towards farmers in a totalitarian and despotic way, it is nevertheless returning to its liberal tendencies towards countries outside the Union. The EU has already signed 42 free trade agreements with 74 countries on five continents. An agreement with New Zealand has come into force this year. A Mercosur agreement with Latin America was due to be signed, but because of the farmers’ protest, President Macron asked Mrs von der Leyen to put the matter on hold for a while. Not for long, probably.

All these agreements result in a load of cheap agricultural products coming into European countries, killing off family farming. (In fact, Mercosur’s main purpose, however, is to allow Germany to import the metals needed for the declining car industry cheaply). It is tragi-comical that the EU, which apparently cares so much inwardly about the environment and is implementing ill-considered policies that are strangling European farmers, is now allowing the unrestricted import of agricultural products from countries where these environmental standards are not respected (hence, amongst other things, cheaper prices)! In French agriculture, for example, 90mg/kg of toxic cadmium is used (mainly in fertilisers), whereas in New Zealand it is 120mg/kg, in Japan 148 or in Canada 889! But the French authorities were aware that such a policy of destroying individual agriculture could cause outbreaks. It is no coincidence that Mr Arnaud Rousseau was elected in April 2023 to head the largest farmers’ union, FNSEA. The FNSEA mainly cares about large-scale industrial agriculture and the agro-food industry. It has had the best possible relationship with the Ministry of Agriculture for years. Mr Rousseau, on the other hand, has an estate of 700 hectares, heads a number of industrial companies and, in particular, is the director of the international consortium Avril (with a turnover of €9 billion), one of the companies of the BASTA group, which the farmers are fighting against!

When the grassroots protest of French farmers, supported by genuine trade unions like the ‘Farmers’ Coordination’, the ‘Peasant Confederation’ and the ‘Movement for Family Farming’ broke out, a panic ensued. However, the powerful FNSEA managed to negotiate a few concessions with the government (for example, on the suspension of environmental standards, which is mainly in favour of industrial farmers) and the protest movement has been put on hold for now.

However, the fight is and will continue, because the survival of family farming is at stake. It is obvious what solutions would cure the situation. Not to import products that do not respect European organic standards, to direct subsidies to individual farmers rather than to industrial farmers (with a much higher rate per hectare for small farms than for huge ones), to provide subsidies so that organic farming can expand in its current initial phase, not to support the agro-food industry, which is already earning high profits. Furthermore, it would be necessary to fix minimum prices below which no products from farmers can be bought and, at the same time, to put a maximum price on the purchase of products of the agro-food industry by supermarkets. In a nutshell, protect both the farmer and the consumer.

PSL: together with farmers or with Brussels?

One doubts that the EU will go in this direction. After all, the EU is programmed with the death of family farming. It must be destroyed for ideological reasons. It is agriculture that is considered - and one can probably agree with this - to be the mainstay of tradition, landscape, moral, family and spiritual values. For those who have a materialist vision of the world and no respect for values, family farming is to be eliminated, as are family, Christian values and patriotism. As the French politician Marion Maréchal said: ‘to Brussels, farmers are the past and migrants are the future’.

In Poland, the situation is even more bizarre: the co-ruling party is the PSL, which used to be a farmers’ party. Will it continue to co-govern with the Trojan horses of Brussels and support the policy of destroying family farming, or will it remind itself that it is at last Witos’s party and that it should stand alongside Polish farmers?

A few years ago, a nice lady farmer in the south of the country showed me her excellent cheeses, cold cuts and jams and explained that she could no longer sell them legally because they did not meet European standards. However, immediately, looking at me with a smile she added: „it’s fine, you know, we managed the German occupation, we managed communism, we can manage the European Union too”.

I want to believe that she was right, that we will put an end to this current Union, that we will finally be able to build a real common Europe, a Europe of homelands, a Europe of respect for human dignity, a Europe of values. For is the value of Europe not a Europe of values? It is entirely up to us. It is up to the farmers, from France, from Poland and from other countries. But also up to all citizens. And in this regard, we can be pleased to note that 82% of the French population, despite the inconvenience of the protests, have expressed their support for farmers. I have no doubt that the same is and will be the case in Poland.

PS: In response to enquiries from friendly people, I am pleased to announce that on 31 January I received a document from the relevant office stating that I am now a Polish citizen. Great joy! A big day in my life! I will do my best to be worthy of being called a Pole. So God help me!

Bernard Margueritte

A long-time correspondent of the French press in Poland. Lives in Poland. Polish patriot.