The revenge of the real economy = In 2024, Europe's farmers dealt a righteous blow to the green elites.

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Posted on 12/29/2024 5:02:54 AM PST by MtnClimber

Europe’s governing classes have long been estranged from the real economy – from the world of production, industry and agriculture. To these green-hued technocrats, the economy appears as little more than a set of figures on a spreadsheet, to be regulated and managed towards a ‘better’, ‘greener’ future. To be redesigned according to a schedule of abstract, arbitrary Net Zero targets. All the while, the actual activity of making the stuff we need and use everyday – from energy to food – has remained out of sight and, above all, out of mind.

That was until this year, when farmers from across Europe took to the streets to protest against measures that threaten their very existence. In doing so, they finally brought this aloof political class face-to-face with the destructive consequences of their policies.

The first stirrings of this continent-wide farmers’ revolt were glimpsed five years ago in the Netherlands. The Dutch government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions by 45 per cent across all industrial sectors, in order to meet EU-approved targets, might have sounded like a no-brainer for the environment. Yet, in practice, it threatened to devastate Dutch agriculture. Cutting nitrogen emissions would mean vastly reducing the use of fertiliser and slaughtering nearly half of the nation’s livestock. Faced by such a monumental act of self-harm, Dutch farmers understandably fought back. They staged massive protests in 2019, and again in 2021 and 2022, using their tractors to block roads, railways and bridges.

These protests proved overwhelmingly popular, winning the backing of many Dutch citizens well beyond the agricultural industry. Indeed, a farmers’ upstart political party, the Farmers’ and Citizens Movement (BBB), actually won provincial elections in 2023, before picking up several seats later that year in the Dutch General Election.

Elsewhere in Europe, this latent conflict between the policies of a distant ruling class and the needs of those who work the land has exploded into political warfare.

In Germany, fury was sparked by plans to abolish tax breaks on agricultural diesel, and introduce new taxes on farming vehicles. By early January, 30,000 agricultural workers and 5,000 tractors were rounding off a week of nationwide protests by laying siege to Berlin, bringing life in the German capital to a standstill.

A couple of weeks later, French farmers followed suit. Citing the strangulating effect of EU regulations, alongside the prospect of an end to agricultural-diesel subsidies, French farmers decided to blockade Paris, Lyon, Limoges and Toulouse. Days later, Irish farmers, in a show of solidarity with their continental counterparts, staged a series of tractor and truck convoys through towns and along motorways.

At the same time, farmers in Greece were forcing roads to close in protest against the government’s inaction over weather-inflicted damage to property and crops. And in Romania, they were filling the streets with their agricultural vehicles over exorbitant fuel and insurance prices.

By the end of January, it was possible to speak of a Europe-wide farmers’ revolt. Tens of thousands of people were clogging up the arteries of their nations’ roads in protest against the policies of their out-of-touch leaders. The farmers’ specific grievances, from agricultural-diesel taxes to fertiliser limits, may have varied between countries. But there has been little mistaking the common root to their fury – namely, the EU’s green agenda.

In the name of achieving the EU’s target of Net Zero by 2050, the key commitment of the 2020 European Green Deal, national elites have been slowly choking the agricultural industry for years now. They have been issuing demands from up on high, from reductions in fertiliser use to limits on pesticides, in order to meet the EU’s decarbonisation timetable. And this year, those whose livelihoods were about to be decimated at the stroke of a regulators’ pen decided it was time to push back....SNIP

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1 posted on 12/29/2024 5:02:54 AM PST by MtnClimber

To: MtnClimber

2 posted on 12/29/2024 5:03:08 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)

To: MtnClimber

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