Morning Wire - Europe's Agricultural Uprising | Saturday Extra

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

Farmers in countries across Europe have been protesting regulations they say are hurting their business and will jeopardize the food supply. We speak to an expert in The Netherlands who breaks down France’s farmer protests. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Starting on Monday, farmers in France blocked highways around Paris and engaged in at times violent protests around the city. The demonstrations come in response to regulations and conditions, they say, threaten their livelihoods and France's food supply. The protests were suspended on Thursday after the government agreed to dispense emergency financial assistance to the struggling farmers. In this episode, we speak to an expert about the long-simmering grievances that led up to the protests and how the situation in France differs from other EU countries. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Saturday, February 3rd, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. The following is an interview I conducted with Bill Wirtz,

agricultural analyst for the Consumer Choice Center. At the time of recording, the protests were still ongoing, but they have since been paused. Bill, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. So over the past week, France has seen some very intense farmer protests. Tell us what those look like. They're very disruptive.

What we're seeing right now is that the farmers are blocking the roads in and outside of Paris, sort of now called the siege of Paris. And what the farmers are showing is essentially that without the food system, it's not possible for people to operate. So why should traffic operate as well? So it's similar to the strategy that was used for the German farmers, Well, what we've seen there with the French farmers is that, as this French tradition, you could almost say, these protests are a lot more violent.

So there's more interactions with police. There's a lot more altercations where people try and start fights. We've seen that fast food chains were broken into, big retailers were broken into and vandalized. So there's a big contrast between the German and the French protests in that sense. but ultimately the reason why they're protesting is the same. And what policies and or conditions are they protesting? So the French farmers are protesting because they are really struggling to make ends meet. If you're running a farm business these days in Europe,

it's become increasingly difficult to comply with all the regulatory burdens that are put on you, whether this is on how much farmland you're actually able to use anymore, or the environmental regulation, also all the regulations relating to pesticides, it's become increasingly stringent for many farmers in Europe. And what we've seen in the Netherlands and Germany and now also France is that a lot of farmers just don't feel like their business model has a future anymore. Now, I understand there's also been pressure from the government to bring down the price of food because of inflation.

What is the government trying to do to control or manipulate food prices? So the French government has conversations with big retailer chains and essentially trying to negotiate to bring prices of certain products down. So let's say you are a big retail chain in France and you say, oh, yes, government, we can bring the price of apples down. And then the government goes back into the media and the government says, we've managed to get the retailers to reduce their prices. But of course, what they don't say is that the retailers essentially just go back to the farmers and say, sorry, we can only pay you this much this month. So the farmers are essentially squeezed by the retailers, but at the behest of the government, in order to bring down overall price inflation. And that has sort of had these ripple effects where the government has pretended that the overall inflation will not cost anyone any money, but that is just not true. And that burden is now currently carried by the farmers in France.

Now, what about the pivot toward importing food? How is that affecting prices? Yeah, so France has prided itself for. quite a long time on being self-sufficient in terms of food production. But in recent years, and essentially for the first time, France has now had to import food. And the reason for that, and there's multiple reasons for that. On the one hand, because of the European Union agreement, France cannot erect protectionist barriers, cannot reject other foreign products from European countries coming in. And on the other hand, you know, in certain sectors, it just didn't produce

enough. In 2020, the sugar beet farmers were about to go bankrupt because the European Union had banned the use of certain insecticides and the insects were essentially eating away at the crops. And because of regulation, the farmers were not allowed to do anything about it. And so what ended up happening is that they had to import sugar beet from other countries. And so this is sort of perpetuated this situation where a country that prided itself in being self-sufficient now is dependent on imports. And, you know, the farmers are also rejecting this notion that there should be any type of free trade. They are looking at wheat imports from Ukraine.

they're looking at the trade negotiations that currently happen between the European Union and South America, and they say, well, it's unfair because these products are produced under different circumstances. These producers in Ukraine, these producers in Brazil or Argentina, they don't have the same regulatory burden than we have. So when these products enter the market, of course, they're going to be cheaper. That is sort of the political crux of the issue in terms of the supply side of the trade argument. How do the protests in France compare to farmer protests in, say, the Netherlands or Germany, Are the factors quite similar? Well, so France has many different characteristics about its protest

because the French farmers have waited a lot longer before they started protesting. You have to look at the fact that the Dutch farmers were already protesting in 2021 and later 22 against specific regulation. This is where the Dutch government wanted to bring the overall environmental emissions of fertilizers down. And farmers were being bought out by sort of a land grab program. And then the government said, we're going to compensate you for your land, just give up your profession. It's going to be better for the environment. And many farmers said, no, we're not interested.

And when the Dutch government came back and said, okay, this might not be voluntary, we might just take your land by force. Then they started protesting. In Germany, it was taxes on diesel. It was rising fuel prices. The farmer said, okay, we can't make ends meet the way we're doing this right now. And if you're now also raising the tax on diesel that we need to. for our tractors, then it's just not going to be viable anymore next year. And they started protesting.

In France, it's not a specifically pinpointed issue. It's not one specific measure. But I think the farmers looked at the examples in other countries and said, okay, we have a mounting pressure, the regulatory burden, the tax burden on our profession. It's very high. For years, we haven't really done anything about it. President Macron hasn't really done anything about this problem, except for saying, okay, here's a subsidy here and there.

And so now that's sort of taken up this example from what we've seen in Germany and Netherlands and taken to the streets. Now, where do the French people stand on this? You know, when I think about life here in the United States, the average person, especially city dwellers, I think are somewhat disconnected from where their food comes from, but in a place like France, it's a smaller country.

And if they were traditionally self-sufficient when it came to food, does that mean the average French citizen feels more connection or sympathy for the farmers? So we have to wait for reliable polling on this because it's rather early at this point, but what we've seen in Germany is that, Germany, even though they were blocking the streets,

about 80% of the population, even those not associated with the agricultural profession said that they support the farmers in their protest. In the Netherlands, it was even clearer because people ended up voting overwhelmingly for a farmer's party in the regional election that followed the protests. I expect that something similar is going to have

happen here. Again, we don't know exactly yet because the polls that have been done so far were only very small online polls. But I think, you know, when we have that data, we'll find out what the support is. But what we can see from the government's reaction is that the government is very afraid of the potential backlash they're facing here in terms of the upcoming European election next year. Because initially, Emmanuel Macron was looking at a known environmentalist as his lead candidate for the upcoming election, the European elections. And now he's sort of reconsidering that because an environmentalist just wouldn't be a popular choice with the farmers.

And if it isn't a public choice with the farmers, then it might not be a popular choice with the overall population. The French are very connected to their food system. And I think politically it's not viable for the president to continue on this route. So he's now pursuing sort of a patchwork of different policies to try and mitigate that. by saying, okay, we will set up an emergency fund for wine growers in case next year's harvest is bad. But there's no consistent plan to break with the EU on environmental policy. And I think that will have political ramifications for it.

Now, speaking of the EU overall, is it your sense that citizens across a variety of countries are souring on some of these policies that are leading to these farmer protests? Yes. What we see, I mean, because this is Europe and you have 27 member stages of the European Union, you have an election regularly happening here. So you constantly stress testing sort of the policies that happen on an EU level on the national level also. And what you see is that overwhelmingly environmentalist political parties are losing in those elections. I mean, this is from tiny Luxembourg, which is my country of origin, to countries in Eastern Europe where, you know, many environmentalist movements weren't particularly. popular in the first place. So this European Green Deal, the name, by the way, came originally from this idea of a Green New Deal in the United States. This European Green Deal, which has been

on the table for the last three years, of trying to reduce emissions by drastically reforming agriculture, drastically reforming the energy sector, that is increasingly unpopular. I mean, to the extent that for many of the pieces of legislation that the European Parliament needs to vote through, they don't even have a majority anymore because too many members of the European Parliament are afraid to be on record voting for certain pieces of legislation. So I think politically we see now the backlash of sort of the policies that Europe has been pursuing over the last few years and the reforms they have been trying to embark on. All right. Well, Bill, it's been very informative. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. That was Bill Wirtz, agricultural analyst for the Consumer Choice Center.

and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.