European Farmers Declare War on Suffocating Bureaucracy

O ne of the government’s recurrent problems is that legislators write laws about things they do not understand. In general, they can make traffic laws, or laws about work hours, or laws about fighting crime, because at the end of the day any politician knows what a car is, held a real job at some point in his life (we hope), and at least has seen CSI. The problem begins when they start lawmaking outside their field of knowledge — such as legislating the use of pesticides in grain fields, when the scope of their familiarity with that industry begins and ends with their pack of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

Theoretically, laws affecting the countryside are usually subject to the opinion of professionals in the sector. In practice, those professionals are often only allowed to give their opinion if their proposals do not clash with the postulates of the new climate religion. European farmers and cattlemen, it follows, have been silent for a long time, watching the European Parliament, the U.N., Davos, and other elite bodies blame them for global warming, for everything from cow flatulence to the waste of water to pesticides to the nasty human consumption of meat.

After all this, their patience at being the butt of blame has worn out.  

The European rural world is now fighting back, and has been for several weeks. Riding their tractors, thousands of farmers are blocking streets and roads in cities in Greece, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Romania, and Spain. For the moment, they have achieved something historic: the first defeat of the European Green Deal, as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen recently announced the withdrawal of a controversial law meant to force a 50 percent reduction in the use of pesticides across the EU by 2030. It was not enough. The protests will continue, even as the European Commission makes further concessions. In addition, everyone has understood that von der Leyen, the main driver of the European green agenda, has only withdrawn the proposal for fear that it could cost her the European elections in a few months. Most politicians only do sensible things in the months prior to elections.

The protesters demanded the withdrawal of this law but also many other things: They denounce that sales prices are plummeting while costs continue to soar, they complain about the excessive bureaucracy and the local and community regulations that put endless obstacles before their work, and, in particular, they’re protesting against the constant restrictions that Brussels imposes on them as part of its action against climate change. Restrictions that, by the way, are not always required for products imported from outside the Union, which allows them to be offered at cheaper prices, thus hindering peer-to-peer competition. But peer-to-peer competition is a concept that does not enter the heads of most MEPs: Right or left, it does not matter; they all suffer from the compulsion for interventionism.

It is striking that many of the demonstrators display banners on their tractors against the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda, which they blame for much of the ruin they face. They also demand that EU politicians who legislate day after day on agriculture and livestock “get out of their offices and take a walk in a field sometime.” They are right to ask for it, although it would be likelier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. I have met some MEPs, and I can assure you that more than one of them believe that potatoes grow on the tops of trees, and that they sprout already fried.

The fact that farmers are taking a stand against the climate madness of the globalist elites has led many politicians and media outlets to accuse them of being “far right.” In Spain, the socialist government has told them that they do not represent the real workers, that they are just reactionary businessmen riding tractors.

But do not think that what is happening in Europe is a purely local problem. This war in the Old Continent is a battle that affects the entire West. In the United States, the U.S. farm bill is being debated in Congress these days. The Democrats have already announced that they will only vote in favor of the new bill if it preserves the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate funds. The Republicans, meanwhile, denounce the farm bill sought by President Biden as too much Green New Deal and not enough agriculture.

The ability of the Democrats to watch the European Left making a grave mistake and then fall over themselves to replicate it in the United States is impressive. Conservatives on both sides of the ocean should join with the farmers on their tractors and endeavor to plant some sense into the Eurocrats, and their imitators.

Itxu Díaz’s new book is now on sale: I Will Not Eat Crickets: An Angry Satirist Declares War on the Globalist Elite.