The European countryside is on fire. The most spectacular flames are tractors collapsing France or Germany. But a big fire does not start without the forest having the previous conditions. And in the primary sector of the continent there is a deep structural unrest that has not stopped growing in recent years. An annoyance now turned into anger gestated under the cover of recent – and not so recent – political decisions.
In Spain the seeds of conflict are also planted. And it will sprout. If in Germany the spark that lit the fire was the announcement of the withdrawal of the subsidy for agricultural diesel, there is no reason to think that something similar should not happen here if the Government fulfills the promise in the same line that the minister of the ecological portfolio, Teresa Ribera, made at the climate summit in Dubai.
After all, perceived as the great demon of the primary sector, the controversial and divisive Nature Restoration law that the European Parliament approved in July by a narrow margin (336 votes in favor, 300 against, 13 abstentions), despite the previous unfavorable positioning of the agriculture, fisheries and environment commissions. The text is seen by the primary sector as a real blow to its interests and its viability.
There is an intellectual temptation to reverse the terms in which the protest has curdled. As if it were an invention of the ultra-right, to which the conventional right has joined as a drag, which has managed to hypnotize the “influential” and “simple” people of the primary sector. But this is a version that can only be bought by those who have been closest to the primary sector in their visits to the supermarket aisle.
The circuit is the opposite: from bottom to top. The European right has taken note of a real unrest and is naturally trying to take advantage of it. The equation in political terms is presented – forgive the simplification – in these terms: the right is trying to rectify some environmental objectives in favor of the demands of the primary sector, while the left, for the moment, remains faithful to the utopian postulate of zero emissions reached by 2050, regardless of the price and costs that our food producers have to bear.
These are the sparks that caused the fire. But we used to say that the forest needs certain conditions for it to catch a wild fire. And the structural one is the full conviction among farmers, ranchers and fishermen, who have been seen for some time by the administrations more as a predator than as the necessary partner to guarantee sovereignty and food security, territorial balance and conservation of the landscape Europe, if we adopt the point of view of the primary sector, aspires to become an ecologically shielded territory by shifting the environmental costs of producing food elsewhere in the world. To achieve this, it is necessary to stone farmers, ranchers and fishermen of the continent to copy bureaucracy and impossible obligations. While the European Union continues to sign commercial agreements with third countries in which these requirements do not exist.
The circle, in the eyes of the aggrieved European producers, closes with a future in which the European citizen eats African vegetables and fruit, South American fish and meat from anywhere, all produced with minimal environmental requirements and traceability.
In this anticipated future, in the EU agricultural, fishing and livestock farms have ceased to exist due to the abusive production conditions imposed by the institutions. The transversal protest that is going through Europe, and that will also take root in Spain, is born from the conviction for its members that the primary sector has become a burden. And of course, at this point they defend themselves. And rightly so, we would add.
As a corollary, the words of Pep Riera, the historic trade union leader of Catalan farmers, who received a well-deserved tribute this week in Mataró: “When Unió de Pagesos started, 8% of the working population were farmers, now we barely reach 1%”. Think of this phrase every time a politician talks to you about ensuring food security. Because without farmers, without herders and without fishermen there is no security or fists that count. It’s just chatter to make an argument when a war or any international crisis makes food even more expensive.
