European farmer protests and the political battleground around sustainable agriculture with Tim Benton, Chatham House

Recent farmer protests across Europe have highlighted the political battleground around sustainable agriculture. The absence of effective policies and support for a just transition to Net Zero is positioning farmers as political pawns who are being exploitation by people outside the farming community pushing their own agendas.

Farmers are increasingly being squeezed between decreasing margins, increasing costs, increasing regulations, less market power.  At the same time the growing politicisation of  the rural urban divide is not focused on actually addressing farmer livelihoods but is being fuelled to drive the political agendas of people outside the agricultural community.  At the same time the increasing fiscal demands of extreme weather events and geopolitical instability are in direct competition with funding for climate mitigation strategies.

Tim Benton is Research Director for the Environment, and society at Chatham House where he studies  food security and food systems and how to increase their resilience to climate change, reduce their environmental footprints and improve public health through nutrition. In his recent paper on the European farmer protests he highlighted the need for a just transition as farmers are being squeezed between increasing regulatory framework and prices they are receiving for their produce.  I recently caught up with Tim to discuss the politics around these global farmer protests,  the costs involved in managing the impacts of climate change on our economies compared, and the lack of political will to take on the necessary investment.

You can listen to our conversation here.

Transcript

Unknown 0:03

Tim, thank you very much for joining me today. I've been recently there's been farmer protests in Europe, across the EU they're spreading. It's involved farmers taking tractors into Paris, which isn't that uncommon historically, but also in cities in Germany, into Brussels and elsewhere. Could you just provide a brief or a background on what's happening, what's driving these protests and what the grievances are?

Unknown 0:36

Oh, gosh, we could spend a week just talking about that. Ash. it's broader than Europe, of course. I mean, there are far more protests in Delhi today as we speak. And the relationship between farmer farm farming as a sector, and politics is, of course, coming to the fore this year because there are so many elections going on around the world. So to a certain extent, there's an element of timing in the sense that farmers with grievances facing elections are making a political statement are broadly within Europe. There's a whole range of different things. mostly to do with the fact that farming is more difficult and perhaps less profitable, but we can talk about that later. For many farmers at least, climate changes driving volatility in terms of their yields and therefore their cash flow. A big businesses and remember most farmers are relatively small businesses. They're selling into big businesses which have the power to exert really strong impacts on the profitability. And at the bottom end of the spectrum, in terms of the kind of environmental regulation perspective, farmers are often cast as the bad people of sustainability. And of course, Europe, particularly prides itself on being world leading in terms of driving the sustainability transition. So across Europe, there is an increasing regulation and a reduction in some of the subsidies, around diesel in some countries and so on. That means that farmers feel as though they're being squeezed from the bottom, the kind of regulatory framework and squeezed on the top in terms of the sellers that they're selling into, and they're struggling looking ahead with thinking about where they're going to make profits in future whether they're not viable business. what their role is in society. You know, what the rural economy might look like what their communities might be in the years to come. So just a lot of unrest about many industrial sectors when there are changes afoot. A lot of unrest about their future.

Unknown 2:58

What you said about being squeezed between decreasing margins, increasing costs, increasing regulations, less market power. And as you said, the the most recent protests were were driven by a reduction in diesel subsidies, but I imagine that's more of the straw that broke the camel's back, rather than being the huge issue that's, yeah, this has been this has been, I guess, brewing for a long, long time. So in terms of, one of the things you also mentioned in your in your article you wrote on less on the Chatham House website, was the risk of their communities and the rural decline and the broader politics of this. How is that how is that playing out?

Unknown 3:48

Yeah, good question. So farmers are traditionally quite a dispersed community in the sense of, whilst they might belong to a union, it's not unionized in terms of the automobile sector or any of the heavy industry sectors. So there is an element of them being vulnerable to political influence from particularly the far right, but sometimes also the far left, although, you can't always distinguish the two anymore in terms of fomenting political disruption around maintaining the status quo in terms of not going through a sustainability transition. So whether it is Trump and Maga or whether it is the right wing in Europe saying sustainability is a woke issue we want to it's too expensive. We are the elite to taking control, whatever it might be, it does mean that the farmers are vulnerable, particularly in a world of social media to being corralled and their dissatisfaction with the way that things are going, becoming very much a organized political agenda by people outside the farming community. And you can see that quite a lot of across Europe, a lot of the people who are kind of whipping up some of the kind of the agitation are not people at all associated with the farming community, but they are social commentators in a way and you know, clickbait driven social media, anybody who can, you know, develop a very large following very quickly, can you know, subvert some of these these discourses where there is significant unrest? I the farming community is of course, traditionally fairly conservative. With a small site and sometimes a big sea. And does typically hold values that want to retain some form of status quo or historical things and they don't like change. So in a sense, it's a relatively straightforward thing for people who want to make political capital out of it to agitate the community and to create a stronger political voice by coordinating the dispute in a way.

Unknown 6:14

On that note, the none of these issues are going to disappear anytime soon, the pressure and the pressure on the global food systems is going to increase climate change is going to increase the need, especially on the more liberal side of politics to actually drive across the EU and elsewhere to drive solutions to climate change. That's not going to change anytime soon. And then the people who are going to try and capitalize for their own political gain on other people's struggles. That's not exactly a new playbook. either. So in terms of going forward, what options are there for policymakers for farmers for society to better manage this transition?

Unknown 7:08

Yeah, well, I'm scratching my head because that's a very good question to which there was no real answer, in the sense that if you just take the food system, the total costs from the way we produce and consume food on the environment on people's health around the world, are over 10% of global GDP. And of course, the food system is increasingly disrupted by climate change. And also, it's a significant driver of climate change. So the economic costs that are required to be fed into systemic transformation of the food system, but in parallel energy systems as well, are considerable. And the opportunity for change requires effectively some form of just transition so that farmers see their livelihood see that they have a livelihood in the future and if they invest in the future, they will have a profitable enterprise and so on. And the challenge that we face collectively, is that we don't want to invest in that sort of future. The money that would be required is simply trillions and trillions and trillions. And if you think we would, you know, pay farmers to produce different things in different ways, and make it profitable for them. That of course, has an impact on the prices of food for food for citizens. So that also then has a knock on consequences for social support for marginalized consumers and so on. global prices of food for food insecure countries in the Global South, and to actually get it right will require a lot of investment. And nobody at the moment is willing to really take on the scale of the investment that is necessary. So well. We to do so. And economically in the long run, we're going to have to do something because otherwise the volatility for the food system and for farmers, individually will increase an increasing increase and the system will eventually break. We need to find the money from somewhere but no country at the moment, is really willing to say actually, it's a system that's at fault. We are producing food in ways that are harmful and externalizing costs and therefore we ought to be farming in different ways and paying more for food. And paying farmers a better living wage, etc, etc. This kind of forces the status quo, or very incremental change are very powerful. And so, you know, in the long run, we will have to change but it might be that the system has to break quite a lot under the pressures of climate change, to enable the political space to really drive the investments that we need to.

Unknown 10:01

That's that's a big challenge and that requires policy and investment both on a national scale at scale or a regional scale, like the EU, where they have common budgets, as well as more broadly across the whole, the whole globe. It's one of the things that's interesting as well is that very few farmers I ever speak to don't think that climate change is real. They know that their seasons are changing, they know that their rainfall is less reliable. They know those things so they're in a very difficult position because they feeling the squeeze from one side they know that the environment is changing many of you know even across across the global north and the global South, many, many families have long traditions on the same land. And one of the things you mentioned is that that feeling that they're being isolated they're being stuck and being hung out to dry. How how do you see that situation and the ability to to create more effective dialogue with these groups?

Unknown 11:11

Well, I think in a sense, that's what we need to do there. At the moment. Politicians are effectively dodging the issue. I mean, a Biden said a few years ago, we can tackle climate change, no one has to change the way that they live. Which I think at one level is, you know, politically a sensible comment, but actually the reality is that we do need to change our economic systems, our energy systems, our food systems, our transport systems to tackle the challenges that are coming to us. And we need that kind of open and honest leadership. And you know, you just look at the weather in 2023. I mean, just in the US, there's something like $31 billion extreme weather events, that's just going to get worse and worse and worse and the fiscal drag that comes from not dealing with climate change in our house insurance and things like that, which is becoming an issue will be felt by everybody, let alone the volatility on food prices and availability. And of course, yes, farmers are very much caught in that vise, the horns of the dilemma. I mean, I saw one interview with a French farmer who was complaining simultaneously about the risks coming from climate change, and also the regulations that have been forced upon him as he saw rate to deal with climate change. And, of course, that squeeze is effectively a squeeze that is created by our expectations for the markets in the sense of he has to make a profit. Excuse me, and he can only make a profit by producing food in a way that is risky from an environmental perspective, from a planning perspective, and risky from an environmental degradation perspective, the business model of our food system is wrong. If we are going to have enough food to feed everybody nutritiously in a world of climate change and volatility and tackling those those issues simultaneously. So we need that kind of root and branch transformation of the way we do things. And the only way that we will take people along is if we involve them if we allow them a seat at the table when decisions are being made. If we give them the incentives that they'll have a better life beyond any just think about the coal mining sector or any other those sectors that are also threatened by some of these issues. same sorts of things have to go on. People have to be retrained re skilled. Farming is very much a vocational issue, which is often in the family and people to find themselves by their jobs. So just saying don't be a farmer anymore, doesn't work. We have to take people along but that's going to cost money and society has to be willing to pay that money to allow us to do it. And as I say if we don't pay for it if we don't find the means to do these transitions if the politics gets in the way, then ultimately climate change runs away from us and we all suffer. And you know, I suspect it will be when the pain gets big enough people will start voting for politicians who want to tackle it in ways that they're not at the moment. But that's not with us now.

Unknown 14:31

This is happening as you mentioned all across the world. There's no shortage of commentary. Here in the US about the rural urban divide, and they're growing politicization of that divide, and now people are voting and the you know, it's becoming more and more polarized. Is there any I guess, do you see any huge differences across the countries and the locations where you've been studying this? And is there any country or jurisdiction who you think is managing this better than the others?

Unknown 15:11

Well, there are there are obviously a range of different read reasons for disputes even across Europe for some places, it's diesel for others, it's pesticides, for others, it's water, and so on. And, you know, you have your own within the United States, you'll have your own set of grievances from from the farm sector. And of course, you know, the the amount of Farm Insurance that was paid out in 2023 in the US, some sort of record level, you know, everybody is kind of suffering. Everybody's facing this but the challenge really is, particularly in rich world countries. What is farming for? Is it primarily an industrial sector to contribute to the economy? Is it primarily primarily about farmer livelihoods? Or is it about the production of food, and different actors in different countries will see those balances in different ways those motivations and different ways. It's about the production of food. The majority of agriculture these days doesn't end up in food it ends up either in feed or in biofuel or other things. So there was quite a lot of scope for thinking about a food system that delivers healthy diets by changing our diets and changing our dietary composition. But that doesn't necessarily deal with the the the disputes From a farmer's perspective who just wants to be paid to grow things. You know, you could argue that the biofuels sector in the United States such a large amount of agriculture that goes into biofuels is misplaced from a kind of global public goods perspective, but it certainly makes money for farmers and it makes money for the sector and so on. So I think there's a fundamental question of differs from country to country in what you see the importance of the farming sector and therefore the political might and heft that goes into preserving it as it is or developing it in new ways. But ultimately, the issue is that farmers Well, the the the agricultural system, makes a profit at the moment from doing things in a way that ultimately is harmful to the planet. And that is unsustainable in the true sense of the world that looking ahead, decades to come. It cannot stay in the same form. But the kind of the power, incumbency issues, the cultural issues of farmers all make it very politically, socially and economically difficult to kind of drive that systemic transformation that's needed fast.

Unknown 17:58

A lot of that then comes back to governments and how they incentivize or disincentivize what farmers behave, how farmers behave, and I guess the majority of the biggest lever, it's the financial side of things. Obviously, there's a regulatory side of things. An interesting example, I spent a number of years in the Middle East and if you looked at the UAE farming sector, especially on the livestock side of things, they actually subsidized feed. So they had millions of small ruminants that were not particularly productive. Not particularly fat didn't grow very fast, but they use a lot of feed across the board in Saudi Arabia, they actually subsidize the final product. So whilst those systems weren't necessarily hugely more efficient, they did actually produce a bunch of food at the end of it. So you see that, you know, the little tweaks of where governments put their money can have big impacts on pharma behavior. On that note, do you see promise in the current dialogue that's going on between obviously Europe is many many different countries, so there's different dialogues going on in those and also at the EU level? Do you see promise in the dialogue that's going on at the moment? Or do you think it's just backing us into another corner?

Unknown 19:19

No, I think what I see is, so kind of historically, we've got to the point with cop 28. Really what we've gone from making promises, and saying we will deal with climate change to saying actually we will start dealing with climate change. And in a sense, that's what makes these farmer disputes so potent because this is where the rubber is hitting the road. If we are going to transform systems. We need to take people along with us. And we're getting to the point where that is becoming very, very clear whether it's in India or whether it is in Europe or whatever. And then of course then that begs the question of how to do it. And that's where we haven't collectively done enough thought about how do we change the system. But what we've seen over the last decade, is globally increasing inequality increasing polarization, and from a government perspective, an increasing swing to the right. And that's empowering governments just think of Trump to and what they've promised in terms of their environmental agenda. If he gets elected in November, or in the UK. We're backtracking on net zero commitments. The farmer protests are creating backtracking in the European approach to sustainability. So this is, as I say, really, where the rubber hits the road and at the moment we are failing to deliver on the promises that have been made. Over the last 10 years. And everybody is scratching their heads and saying, Well, where do we go forwards? What's going to happen to the our commitments under the Paris Agreement? Are we just going to give up and then wait for fires and the heat waves and floods and droughts and hurricanes to dismantle our economy to the point where we don't have an economy left? Are we fighting to maintain the status quo, but that status quo is not possible. That's the political battle, in a sense, it's going to play out over the next decade.

Unknown 21:32

If you've got the fact that in the UK, even labor is seeming to backtrack on its kind of promises, so when the party that's normally seen as the more environmentally conscious is also backtracking. That means it's it's very broad stream broad across across the political spectrum. And you from what you just said, it's very clear that you've got these short term immediate challenges, unhappy farmers, unprofitable farmers, and they're looking to they need to put a meal on the table for their family justice any other person does. So you feel their pain and it's humans have a tendency to revert to a short term solution. They solve the immediate side of things, and then okay, we'll deal with the other one down the track but climate changes are going to give us that opportunity or that flexibility to just kick the can down the road. How do you see that next? It's because it's very you know, there doesn't seem to be a way out an easy way out.

Unknown 22:44

No, to certain extent. You know, without trying to be kind of things Jewish. We are in a bit of a doom spiral, in the sense that as the politics becomes more polarized, and therefore the left wing is kind of forced to occupy more of a middle ground and to a certain extent, the UK labour position is, you know, as right wing as Reagan was or Thatcher was in the eighth now, as we swing to that kind of right wing populism, the inward looking competitive. You know, Trump was saying yesterday about how he's going to do deals in his self interest around bilateral rather than multilateral processes. So rather than being in a cooperative, rules based, globalized world, we're increasingly in a world where there are international tensions that are playing out in various forms. Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, trade wars, etc. And add on top of that climate impacts you've got a world of volatility, where there's a lot of international distrust, and you can't rely on supply chains because the Panama Canal is drying out. And Suez is in a conflict zone, you can't rely on supply chains. So you think about national security needs and as you think about national security needs you I'm sure you grow more at home or whatever it might be, and you trade with allies instead of potential foes because Putin was using food as a weapon of war. And what that means that the globalized economy gradually fragments into smaller and smaller bits and stops working so as the globalized economy becomes smaller, or, you know, potentially fragments looking ahead, then what that means is that when there is the next food price spike that's caused by a war in combination with climate impacts, that price signal will get worse and the cost of living issues and food price inflation will get worse. And so that will drive more securitization and more conflict from a geopolitical perspective. And until we get out of this, we don't really have much opportunity to rebuild the system in a way that is sustainable because we'll be spending so much money dealing with crises we won't have the money left to be able to build the new systems and invest in adjust transitions and so on, will be thought of at literally firefighting, left, right and center and our economies will just kind of run out of the ability to do other things. And that's particularly true in a global North global sales perspective. You know, you'd look at one of the much touted successes in inverted commas for Prop 28 in Dubai, was the we set up a loss and damage fund to help countries in the Global South now last year up to the end of September, we would tell you in Chatham House, extreme weather events, and we got up to 400, up to the end of September. And effectively any one of those events would have taken up the entire entirety of the pledges from the rich world to the poor world and the loss and damage fund. So the amount of money that we need to tackle conflicts, contestation climate impacts is growing year by year and therefore the amount of money we have left over to do the adaptation and the mitigation and the transformation to help us in the long run. becomes more difficult. So the whole world is in a situation where we have less headroom. We have more distrust on the global basis. And trade is more fragile, that looking ahead sustainability we need but I can't see where the investment will come from.

Unknown 26:45

This is not the first time in history that many of what you've just explained many events or the factors or political factors that you've just explained, have occurred. You know, the Roman Empire and also the Persian Empire or wanted to and the Ottoman Empire wanted to control Egypt because Egypt was such an amazing source of grain. So some of these these geopolitical tensions and conflicts have 1000s of years of history. How do you see I guess? The current situation being different to historical similar situations? And What lessons do you think we can learn from history?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Unknown 0:01Well, I would say the principal lesson we can learn from history is that civilizations come and they go. And there are particular examples of types of civilizations from environmental change. What is different, this time round is a environmental degradation is making things worse day by day, whether it's biodiversity loss, pollution or climate change. So that's putting more and more pressure on the Empires if you want in terms of the historic historical analogy to civilizations The second thing is that we are globally interconnected in ways that we have never been before. So, if you take almost any country, there is deep interconnections in the food system between what is produced what is eaten and other countries so events far away through interrupting supply chains or destabilizing societies, creating conflict, human displacement, etc. can create significant political disruption at home. And you know, one of the things that we talk about Chatham House with politicians is that, that there isn't a real distinction anymore between domestic policy and international policy, foreign affairs, foreign policy, because we are in this interconnected world. So that's where things different differ you know, competition between the US and China will impact everybody in the world in ways that it wouldn't have happened with Roman Emperor Empire taking over Egypt. You know, Latin America could carry on exactly the same way. That doesn't happen anymore and you know, as as we have found with the war in Ukraine, it has created a global price hike and energy problems and changed jobs and livelihoods and changed people's ability to feed themselves all over the world because of global interconnected markets. Unknown 2:06I remember many, numerous times colleagues, be that in Afghanistan or Africa or elsewhere, complaining about the fact or complaining commenting about the fact that given the global impact of the US federal elections, and how they impact pretty much every single citizen on the planet, it's very unfair, that only Americans get to vote. And as a you know, I'm a green card holder, so I'm not a citizen. But I'm in that same boat. It's this it's impacts everyone and you see that discourse be that what the installments Berg was saying the other day about NATO or elsewhere across even in the in the rich countries. You see that is, is there anything in terms of your current systems of governance and democracy and is that fit for purpose still for the world that we're living in? Unknown 3:03Well, arguably not as funny I had this conversation earlier today. I remember the going to China for the first time following the financial crisis in 2007 Eight and my host in China said, I bet you're looking within the China, which at that time was a more open more open state but still authoritarian. Because I'm not arguing for authoritarianism, but they can make decisions and enact them for their long term interest in ways that democratic or the way the way that we interpret democracy. Institutions can't because you know, we have a five year electoral cycle in China, they can have a 50 year industrial strategy and plan it all the way through and enact it. So I do think there is a question about whether is democracy in the broad sense in the way that we currently interpreted and capitalism in the economic sense, whether in the long run, they can deal with effectively existential challenges that are emerging over a long time period, because of the pain of the electoral cycle. I mean, no politician at the moment, will stand up and say to everybody, vote for me, I'm going to make your life worse and make you pay higher taxes to deal with environmental degradation that is going to happen in 10 years time or 20 years time or 30 years time. So there is a kind of short term, it's in our political system. That means it is difficult to imagine the long doing things but really for the long term benefit of humanity, and therefore all of us as opposed to the short term benefit for all our citizens and what they want. Unknown 5:17It thank you so much for sharing everything you've shared so far. Before we go is there anything you would like to add that we haven't already discussed? Unknown 5:29Well, yeah, I mean, I come I'm coming across. I'm very aware I'm coming in the process. pessimistic, old white, stale, male. And easy therefore to kind of dismiss. I do have hope and faith in humanity, and in communities to kind of wake up and smell the coffee. And decide that I'm a turkey but actually Christmas might be a good thing, in a sense that we have the wit, as humans, we have the care for our families and friends and society as a whole, to recognize the risks and deal with them. And I think, if we did deal with them, we could have economic and democratic and food systems and energy systems that made us or made our well being our health, our anxiety go away and make us much better off. The challenge is, how do we deal with the power of incumbency that at the moment, governs the behavior of the system in a way that allows change to happen with the lease payment and the most benefit and I think we can we can do it, but particularly in the media's of the second decade of the 20th century 2020s politically, maybe this is the most difficult point because the future if you're a climate, get eco biodiversity geek, the future is clear. But if you're an ordinary citizen, the future is not clear. Is climate change real? You know, is it really as Doom streches that Kai Benton from Chatham House is saying, but in five or 10 years time, I think the pendulum will swing back the other way. People will wake up and realize that they want a different future and therefore be willing to go through the disruption that will have to be because as we change our economic systems and our food systems and energy systems into something that is kind of fit for the next few 100 years of humanity as opposed to fit for the last 100 years of humanity. Unknown 7:57Tim thank you very, very much. Thanks, Ash.