Farmers from different countries in the European Union (EU) have been demonstrating for weeks to draw attention to the crisis they are going through, especially in the case of small producers, and demand changes in national and European policies.
The year began with strong mobilizations in Germany, where the Government agreed to maintain some subsidies for the sector, although shortly after the focus of the protests moved to France, with major blockades in cities and roads, it spread to other countries.
If already in 2023 farmers in the Netherlands exploded against the obligation to reduce nitrogen emissions and those in Eastern Europe asked to be protected against Ukrainian cereal, this time there is widespread unrest over the requirements of the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). and low prices at origin.
Greater administrative burdens, the imposition of certain environmental practices and imports from third countries that do not comply with European production standards are other reasons that have brought tractors onto the streets in Belgium, Spain, Portugal or Italy.
In statements to EFE, the professor of Agrarian Economics at the Polytechnic of Valencia (UPV), José María García Álvarez-Coque, explains that small and medium-sized farmers, especially those who are not organized in cooperatives, “are very difficult” to face higher production costs and, at the same time, comply with environmental standards.
“They are recurrent crises in small agriculture,” says the expert, who recalls the demonstrations by Spanish producers before the pandemic.
According to preliminary data from Eurostat, agricultural labor productivity decreased by 6.6% annually in 2023, after having grown between 2019 and 2022, due to a 7.9% drop in the real value of income generated by agricultural activity and an additional 1.4% reduction in the volume of agricultural labor.
Only seven States recorded positive productivity rates, led by Belgium (31%) and Spain (11.1%), due to lower prices of fertilizers (-23%) and inputs and the increase in product prices in those in which these countries are specialized, such as olive oil (54%), potatoes (23%) or pork (22%).
Compared to the strong increases in 2021 and 2022, agricultural prices at origin rose by 2% annually in the EU, while inputs (goods and services necessary for production) fell by 5%.
Despite the slowdown of the last year, the average agricultural income in the EU was 10.1% higher in 2023 than in 2015, a period in which the agricultural labor force contracted by 18.2%, so final income was distributed among a smaller number of employed people.
García Álvarez-Coque highlights that, at the European level, there is a “concentration of one part of agriculture and an atomization of the other part, which is becoming marginalized.”
According to a report from the European Commission, in 2021 the average agricultural income per worker in the EU was 28,800 euros, after increasing in the last decade due to faster growth in the value of production in the face of increased costs and due to the drop in the number of employees.
The highest income per worker is found in the northern and western regions of the EU, in line with their highest standard of living, and if the activity is analyzed based on the size of the farms, the largest are the most productive .
Given the controversy over the rejection of Spanish agricultural products in France, the UPV professor recalls that Spain’s entry into the single market already led to border incidents in the 1980s that affected the transportation of goods, which were cheaper than French but subject to the same rules.
Lower wages at origin partly explain the greater competitiveness of products from certain European countries, a situation that is repeated outside the EU.
With the progressive trade opening of the community bloc, with an agri-food trade surplus of 58 billion euros between January and October 2023, the expert recognizes that “certain demands are not being asked of European producers or cannot be demanded of the same way to those of other countries in the face of possible claims in the World Trade Organization”.
“You cannot enter the production processes of another country; that competence of labor legislation belongs to the countries and it is not easy to impose tariffs for that type of reasons,” says the expert about this aspect of globalization.
Regarding the influence of the European Green Deal on the new CAP, García Álvarez-Coque considers that this policy was designed in a climate of “optimism” that has been overshadowed by the subsequent rise in production costs as a result of the recovery of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Added to this is that there are currently two opposing ways of seeing Europe, according to the professor, for whom the crisis of small farmers represents “fertile ground for anti-system and anti-EU movements to emerge.”
In his opinion, there must be “more sympathy” from institutions at all levels towards agricultural producers, who are not being supported enough in research and technology transfer.
García Álvarez-Coque is in favor of “being selective” in the distribution of aid and supporting those medium-sized farms that are going to be viable so that they gain competitiveness, with “fairer” policies, transparency in the market and reinforcement of agricultural insurance against climate change.
