Why Europe’s farmers are protesting – and the far right is taking note

The columns of tractors that have blocked roads in Germany, causing chaos in cities and headaches for commuters, are the latest wave in a growing tide of anger against efforts to protect Europe’s nature from the pollution pumped out by its farms.

 

In recent years, farmers in western Europe have fought with increasing ferocity against policies to protect the planet that they say cost too much. In the Netherlands, where the backlash has been strongest, a court ruling on nitrogen emissions in 2019 triggered furious and recurring protests over government efforts to close farms and cut the number of animals on them. In Belgium, similar fights led to convoys of tractors clogging the EU quarter of Brussels in March last year. In Ireland, which has seen smaller protests, dairy farmers angry at nitrogen restrictions marched with their cows to the offices of three government ministers last month.

 

Spain and France have not escaped. On the back of Spain’s hottest year on record, farmers took to the streets of Madrid in January 2023 after the government announced plans to restrict how much water they could take from the drought-struck Tagus river. The following month, French farmers drove tractors through Paris to protest a pesticide ban.

 

Now the fight has come to Europe’s biggest economy. After furious farmers dumped manure on the streets of Berlin in December, the German government watered down a plan to cut subsidies for diesel in farmyard vehicles. But lobby groups are pushing them to scrap the plan entirely. Joachim Rukwied, president of the German farmers’ association, said last Monday that 100,000 tractors had hit the streets for a week of disruptive protests. “Farmers today sent a clear signal to the federal government to completely withdraw the planned tax increases.”

 

For some farmers, the burden of paying for more of their pollution is a step too far after an energy crisis and pandemic that has left many struggling to make ends meet. Some say they feel overburdened by rules and undervalued by city dwellers who eat the food they grow without knowing where it came from. In agricultural giants like the Netherlands and France, farmers have expressed frustration at the pressure from governments to produce less after years of encouragement to make more.

 

Environmental activists say they do not want to reduce subsidies to farmers but instead spend them in a less destructive way. Sascha Müller-Kraenner, head of campaign group Environmental Action Germany, called for every euro of agricultural subsidy to come with ecological and social strings. “[We need] a better subsidy policy that gets more for farm income, climate protection and nature with the same funds,” he said. “Subsidies that are harmful to the climate must be phased out.”

 

Scientists, meanwhile, have pointed to the damage that will be done to farms as planet-heating pollution turns the climate less hospitable to humans. More than 80% of habitats in Europe are in poor shape, according to the European Commission, and yields for some crops have already been hit by poor soils, a lack of water and extreme weather events that are growing increasingly violent.

 

But for some European governments, the more pressing threat is the attention that farmers’ protests have attracted from far-right and populist parties, as well as radical conspiracy theorists.

 

In the Netherlands, the nitrogen crisis led to the creation of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, a rural populist party that scored big wins in provincial elections in March but came sixth in general elections in November. In Germany, the protests have gained vocal support from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and groups with more extreme and anti-democratic views. The climate and economy minister, Robert Habeck, warned on Monday of fringe groups exploiting the protests. “There are calls circulating with coup fantasies, extremist groups are forming and ethnic-nationalist symbols are being openly displayed,” he said.

 

The protests have also highlighted a split among Europe’s moderate conservative groups. In the European parliament last year, the centre-right European People’s party (EPP) led a rightwing alliance of lawmakers who narrowly failed to throw out a bill to restore nature on the grounds that it would hurt farmers. The proposal is a key pillar of the European Green Deal – championed by the European Commission president and EPP heavyweight, Ursula von der Leyen – that the centre-right grouping had previously backed.

 

Grassroots support for farmers’ protests, from campaign placards to Telegram groups, has also overlapped with conspiracy theories about issues such as Covid, climate breakdown and migration.

 

“The Netherlands was a bit of a harbinger when it comes to these protests,” said Léonie de Jonge, a political scientist at the University of Groningen who studies the far right. “This is the new kind of agrarian populism popping up in these countries.”

 

Conspiracy theories have even spread from rural farms in northern Europe to cable TV shows in the US to social media feeds around the world. Last Monday, Dutch political pundit Eva Vlaardingerbroek joined farmers on a tractor in Germany to rail against “the global elites waging a war against the hard-working people who put food on our tables”.

 

In an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last year, Vlaardingerbroek pushed a popular conspiracy theory by claiming that groups like the World Economic Forum are trying to make Dutch people eat bugs by cracking down on farms and opening insect factories. The YouTube clip – titled “Politicians know when they control the food, they control the people: Activist” – has been viewed more than half a million times. “We don’t want to be eating insects, we want our steak,” she said.

 

Similar pronouncements have been echoed by conspiracy theorists with even larger followings. In a post on X on Monday, Vlaardingerbroek described farmers as “one of the few groups in society with enough manpower to put up a real fight against the globalists who wants to radically change our way of life”. Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world and owner of the platform, who has separately endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories, replied: “Support the farmers!”

 

The German farmers’ association has distanced itself from far-right groups who have tried to influence their protests. Some farmers turned up to protests with banners on tractors that read “Farming is colourful, not brown” in reference to the brown uniforms of fascist groups. Others were pictured with makeshift gallows dangling a traffic light – a reference to the parties of the coalition government whose colours are red, yellow and green.

 

Farmers’ issues can lend themselves to far-right ideology through nostalgia for the past and “blood and soil” themes, said De Jonge, adding that there has been a “cross-contamination of different types of extremism” among some actors in the German and Dutch protests.

 

“Ideologies used to be clearly delineated,” she said. “Now they take ideas from a mixed bag of ideological snippets and paste them into this worldview.”

 

Well, 2023 didn’t exactly go to plan, did it?

 

Here in the UK, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, had promised us a government of stability and competence – not forgetting professionalism, integrity and accountability – after the rollercoaster ride of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Remember Liz? These days she seems like a long forgotten comedy act. Instead, Sunak took us even further through the looking-glass into the Conservative psychodrama. 

 

Elsewhere, the picture has been no better. In the US, Donald Trump is now many people’s favourite to become president again. In Ukraine, the war has dragged on with no end in sight. The danger of the rest of the world getting battle fatigue and losing interest all too apparent. Then there is the war in the Middle East and not forgetting the climate crisis …

 

But a new year brings new hope. There are elections in many countries, including the UK and the US. We have to believe in change. That something better is possible. The Guardian will continue to cover events from all over the world and our reporting now feels especially important. But running a news gathering organisation doesn’t come cheap. 

 

So this year, I am asking you – if you can afford it – to give money. Well, not to me personally – though you can if you like – but to the Guardian. The average monthly support in Italy is around €3, however much you give, all that matters is you’re choosing to support open, independent journalism.

 

With your help, we can make our journalism free to everyone. You won’t ever find any of our news reports or comment pieces tucked away behind a paywall. We couldn’t do this without you. Unlike our politicians, when we say we are in this together we mean it.

 

Happy new year!

 

John Crace

Guardian columnist