The European Union commissioner for the European Green Deal has left, a farmers’ party has taken control of the Dutch senate, French president Emmanuel Macron says regulatory changes shouldn’t be rushed, and the EU’s largest political group is openly opposing reform plans that had been years in the making. It is not looking good for the farm policy reform that the European Union had been promising.

Legislation in Europe either dies a quiet death or goes out with a lot of fanfare. The “Farm to Fork” strategy by the European Union is on track to do the latter. Its flagship proposal to halve the use of pesticides by 2030 and set aside 10 percent of agricultural land to protect biodiversity has hit a brick wall: Austria, Poland and Hungary are stalling negotiations, possibly dragging them out until the European elections next June. The pesticide reduction element of the plans formulated in the Sustainable Use of Pesticide Regulation has faced opposition for practical and political reasons.

Early on, farmers’ groups opposed the law because it would undermine Europe’s food production industry. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture did an impact assessment on Farm to Fork, it found that it would significantly increase agricultural prices and even contract the European economy. That was before the economic effects of COVID-19 had manifested itself fully and before the war in Ukraine had started. Still, the European Commission held firm throughout the mountain of criticism; Green Deal Commissioner Frans Timmermans even said, “We’ve gotten used to food being too cheap.”

Last summer, Netherlands farmers upended European politicians’ illusion that agriculture as a policy area could simply be swept under the rug. Large-scale protests by farmers addressed the issue of nitrogen emissions, which the Dutch government sought to cut to follow EU rules. Livestock farming, responsible in part for those emissions (as is construction and aviation), was explicitly targeted by a buy-out program seeking to reduce by almost a third the number of livestock farms in the Netherlands. Despite that, in their anger, farmers burned hay balls and blocked access to airports, public opinion was on their side. In the recent senate elections in the Netherlands, the Farmers’ Citizen Movement became the strongest party, now set to have a significant say in the policymaking of the country.

The political happenings in the Netherlands served as a wake-up call for political parties across Europe, specifically those on the center-right who had traditionally counted on the support of farmers and now see themselves threatened by the emergence of single-issue farmer parties in elections. Other than protesting, Dutch farmers have shown there is a political angle for them to embark on and that farmers as food providers have a much higher public standard than previously recognized.

Timmermans is now exiting his job to run for prime minister. Given his record on environmental policy, it’s hard to tell whether Dutch voters will give him a chance.

Farmers certainly won’t. 

Meanwhile, the center-right European People’s Party is pitching itself as the farmers’ party, even warning that farmland reductions could lead to “global famine” and put “farmers out of business.”

While the last European elections in 2019 gave more leeway to environmentalists, who have tried to implement ambitious targets, it looks as if the realities of the COVID pandemic, the economic troubles that have ensued from it, and the war in Ukraine will be preventing them from following through with their plans. It is likely that we’ll see a shift to the center and center-right and by that standard, a different agricultural policy.

One positive change that has been announced and will land on the negotiating table of the next European Commission is the authorization of gene-edited crops. Until now, the commercialization of new genomic techniques in food production has been virtually impossible. But with those legal changes, Europe will finally catch up to the technological realities of the United States and Canada.

From the perspective of European strategic autonomy, the fact that the Farm to Fork strategy is likely to fail is good news because Europe cannot afford increased food dependence. Both animal feed and fertilizer imports were coming from Ukraine and Russia until the war upended the reliance Europe had on both countries. Reducing the environmental effect of farming by reducing the size of the sector cannot be a forward-looking strategy for Europe.

Originally published here

In 2016 and 2020 , farmers overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump for president. The track record of his administration justifies the choice, as Trump appointed agency directors who reversed unnecessarily strict Obama-era regulations on chemical crop protection products that are essential for fighting pests and preserving yields. 

Now, with President Joe Biden nearing the end of his term and having gone back to much of the Obama years of the Environmental Protection Agency opening the floodgates on pesticide regulation while injecting large green stimulus into the farm sector, where is agriculture as an issue in the national debate?

Much of the presidential debates involve rehashing points of the last two presidential terms. Gun rights, immigration, and the conduct of Trump during his time in office are certainly important topics, but the impact of farming policy on consumers cannot be understated. In recent years, matters such as repeated fires at livestock farms (which killed half a million farm animals in 2022), the increase in farm pests due to climate change, supply shortages and higher costs due to hurricanes , the nationwide herbicide shortage , and 5% food price inflation hitting consumers all contributed to a less resilient farm and food system in the United States.

Meanwhile, the debates on the 2023 Farm Bill once again focus mostly on SNAP benefits and eligibility , leaving aside a much more opportune conversation on the productivity and independence of the farm system. What are practical solutions to the fertilizer shortage during a sanctions regime on Russia? How much of a role should the government have in conservation or organic agriculture through farm subsidies? Is it reasonable that the U.S. continues a long array of court battles over pesticides when decisions over authorizations should instead be made in Congress after advice from scientific bodies? These are questions that aren’t being asked to presidential candidates, even though once in office, the president has a key impact on those matters through his or her agency appointments.

It is true that farmers aren’t regarded as a significant enough voting bloc during elections. Direct-on-farm employment represented a little over 1% of total employment in 2023. That said, when we take all of the agricultural and food sectors into account, that makes for a good 10% of the total workforce, which gains exponential importance, especially in key swing states. 

It may also be that farmers have fallen victim to the effect of being taken for granted. As they overwhelmingly support Republican candidates, Democrats feel like it is easier for them to paint farming as an environmental problem rather than addressing the intricacies and challenges of modern farming and the real hardships that professionals face. This is why farmer representatives would be better served to align their interests with those of consumers.

onsumers are often unaware of the backbreaking work put into their food supply and how regulatory changes affect the prices they see in supermarkets. When appeals to an administration are made not merely to protect the interests of farmers but also of those who buy their products, that is where the voter base inflates.

Framing agriculture not merely as a niche policy issue but as one that affects purchasing power and consumer well-being can help shed more light on the views of presidential candidates, and it can pull agriculture out of its obscurity into the spotlight it deserves.

Originally published here

The Hungarian government is not planning to change its strategy of keeping the country’s agriculture free of GMOs, the agriculture ministry said on Thursday, noting that the European Union had started negotiations on the regulation of new genetic technologies (NGT).

According to a draft published by the European Commission last week, produce created using NGT would fall into two categories, the first of which would no longer be governed by current GMO regulations, the ministry said, adding that in the absence of any prior risk assessment, labelling or monitoring, organisms may enter the environment. As for the second category, licensing procedures would be made much easier, “with far less data and impact analyses than that which apply to existing GMO“. Moreover, in the case of some organisms, “follow up would be absent and any harmful effects would never be assessed.”

Read the full text here