Making alliances to rise up against agribusiness! Takeaways from CR’s farms tour:
During the last week of January, Code Red activists went around Belgium to speak with farmers. Why did we do this, what did we learn from it, and how does it fit into a broader context of convergence of struggles? From the Alliances Working Group, we thought it was important to share this story with all of you.
(Too long? Skip to the bottom for takeaways!)
What is the Alliances WG doing?
This working group’s aim is to connect with trade unions in order to dialogue with the workers from the industries and their representatives that we are targeting. We want to build towards a shared understanding of how environmental and class struggles are interlinked.
We are all fighting against a system that puts profit maximization before equity, well-being, and environmental justice. This system is what we call neoliberal capitalism*. If we want to transform it, we must form a united front, and we must understand what the implications are for everyone. For instance, when we demand an end to the fossil industry, we demand a collective re-appropriation (a socialisation) of energy production. Decisions must be made by those who will bear the consequences.
We are still meeting with trade unionists to create spaces for dialogue, to get to know each other, and to learn from each other’s history of mass mobilization. You are invited to participate in these encounters (invitations via CR channels), or to join other spaces like the assemblies and mobilisations of Commune Colère.
In the context of the farmers’ protests that have been erupting over the past year, and inspired by examples such as Les Soulèvements de la Terre’s alliance with farmers against méga-basins in France, we thought it was high time to reach out to the agricultural complex too.
*Neoliberal capitalism rests on longer histories of oppression, including racism, patriarchy, ableism, … By putting an emphasis on the neoliberal qualities of this system, the term denotes the collaboration of state institutions and the supposed ‘free market’ that allows for unbridled accumulation of wealth by the elite few.
Breaking the narrative that opposes agriculture and the environment
The theme for #CR5 did not arise out of nowhere. It follows from a long history of peasant and farmer struggles around the world against social inequalities, and in defense of land and knowledge. But while farmers have struggled long and hard, urban people have become increasingly estranged from food production processes and its problems. Yet this topic concerns us all. How we feed ourselves and how we manage access to land, still defines how we organize our societies. From slaves in plantations, landless farm workers, underpaid migrant labor, to farmers in debt, history shows how food production has been ripe with exploitation, and controlling it is a way to obtain a lot of power. The suffering of the people working the fields runs through the entire fabric of society. Food has become a commodity, something to make profit out of – it has become dissociated from its “use-value” in favor of its “exchange-value”. Since colonization and the globalization of trade, it has become a geopolitical issue too.
In the planetary struggle for subsistence, self-determination and environmental justice, people have risen up to defend what we call food sovereignty.
For over 60 years now, European farming policies influenced by corporate lobbies have radically industrialized agriculture, relying heavily on fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides, promoting large-scale production, transformation, and retail, and concentrating land ownership. Their intentions were clearly expressed: the number of farms must decrease. And indeed, farmers are disappearing: in Western Europe less than 2 out of 10 are left since the 1960s. Agriculture is turning into a capitalist enterprise, wherein what it means to be a farmer has changed drastically. This has huge implications for everyone. And it is why recent farmers’ protests are so significant, especially for a movement like Code Rouge/Rood.
When headlines say “Farmers fight environmental norms”, the media’s simplified narrative is that farmers in the streets are angry at urban climate activists who made their job harder by influencing policy. This is an incomplete and dishonest picture. The role of agribusiness is completely erased, and so is the diversity of voices and struggles in the agricultural sector.
A sentiment shared by many farmers today is, “We constantly feel judged for how we do our job by people who have no idea about what the day-to-day and the economic pressures are.” This has to change. If we want to take our food system back into our hands, we can’t let capitalism divide and conquer. More than ever, we need to meet each other, support each other, and trust each other.
With the desire to fight common enemies and build other possible futures together, we organized meetings in more than 10 farms across Belgium and met more than 80 farmers: from small-scale biological vegetable growers, to a baker who grows his own wheat, to medium-scale conventional cattle farmers. Each time, we introduced Code Rouge/Rood and our actions. And then, we shut up and listened.
Takeaways from the farms tour
Farmers clearly expressed the complexity of the situation they find themselves in today – they are stuck between huge economic pressure and a very demanding labour, the desire to do socially essential work but getting very little recognition, the erosion of rural life and the growing distance with non-agricultural people, social isolation, the administrative burden, the feeling of being abandoned by trade policies such as the EU-Mercosur treaty…
Many statements were repeated more than once (see quotes). Despite different day-to-day experiences, many farmers agreed that something needs to change to enable farmers to make a decent living from their work, to produce quality food for local consumption, and to care for rural environments and ecosystems.
Another important topic was what agribusiness means exactly. Farmers are, to a small or great extent, very dependent on the agroindustry for infrastructure, as buyers of their produce, and for input products such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides.
It is vital that Code Red is aware of this dependency and that we are careful as to what we mean when we denounce agribusiness. The very real consequences of our actions and words cannot fall onto farmers. The possible economic impact on farmers following the action was indeed a concern, but overall many of them felt supportive of Code Rouge/Rood’s mode of action. However, due to lack of time and clarity on the location and target, active participation in the action by farmers seemed difficult.
We had interesting conversations about strategy. More specifically how to forge long-lasting alliances, using the tools available to us in order to achieve a different food system (unionizing, education, direct action, supporting existing alternatives and future experiments).
Lastly, it seems important to emphasize that many farmers -if not all- are victim of an institutionalized distrust in their knowledge and expertise. In the last centuries, decisions about farming have increasingly been made top-down by people and institutions that hardly -if ever- work the land themselves. And yet, no one has a more intimate, hyperlocal understanding of a farm’s fields and animals than the farmer him/herself. Decisions should be made by those who bear their consequences, and land should belong to those who work it.
Therefore, we must make a leap of faith that hasn’t been taken for a long time: give Farmers their voice back. CR should be careful not become yet another voice that takes away from farmer’s autonomy by adding to the overpowering amount of regulations and economic pressures. Overwhelmingly, all parties in our conversations felt grateful for the mutual interest and the willingness to listen without judgement. Here are some quotes that stuck with us the most. One thing is sure: we need to keep this conversation alive if we want to build broader, stronger mobilizations for social and environmental justice.
Direct quotes from farmers
“What agribusiness does is really tricky, because they need farmers. So they maintain us with our head just above the water, on the edge of drowning. But still dependent on them.”
“We talk a lot about biodiversity loss, but what I am worried about is loss of knowledge. If we want to do things properly, we need much more people to take up farming. We need better education.” / “At the same time, it is irresponsible to encourage people to start a farm now. They will never make a livelihood because of the price of land. Small farms often fail after 4 years.”
“What I liked when you contacted me, is that I did not feel judged. We sometimes feel that people who are external to the sector always have negative opinions about agriculture. It is nice to see that other people are starting to care about the problem. We will always need to eat.”
“Farmers feel like they are treated like criminals by state administration and AFSCA. All that matters to them is numbers, but it is completely disconnected from our reality.”
“When I was young, in my class of 25, 3 out of 4 kids had farmer parents. Now, my grand-children are the only ones. People now are disconnected from where their food comes from.”
“Europe is so hypocritical, it punishes farmers for using fertilizers and pharmaceuticals, but it does not close the factories that produce them – it just exports them elsewhere. We are not tackling the real problem.”
“I wondered what you radical environmentalists wanted from me, but I came out of curiosity. I am glad I came because I feel like we have more in common than I thought.”
“I met Georges-Louis Bouchez and told him there was a problem with the price of land, it has gone up by more than tenfold. He said ‘Go borrow at the bank’. I told him, the bank will never lend me, I should sell my cheese at 300€/kilo to reimburse them. He said ‘Then we should produce where it is cheaper’.”
“How do we deal with the fact that some farmers do want to make more money and don’t hesitate to grab the land of their neighbors? When we compete, we kill each other.”
“I would like it if people would understand that farming should not be an economic activity.”
“You need to understand that raw food products are not profitable for retail. That’s what gets people to come to the supermarket, but it’s all the other stuff they make money on. (…) We are the only industry that can sell products at prices below production cost.”
“The thing is it’s hard to put pressure on [agribusiness]. When I don’t want to sell milk at the price they are offering, I can keep it 3 days, and after that it is spoiled, worth nothing. They know that. In Wallonia farmers show a bit more solidarity. When they decide not to sell for a price that is too low, farmers will actually throw the milk away, but here in Flanders, often times we try to set pressure, but one farmer will break and sell his milk at the price set by the buyers. So it’s hard to put political/economic pressure in as farmers, everything we produce can spoil quickly and lose its worth, and everyone knows that [weakness]”
“Even if in private, a lot of (young) farmers feel critical of the current system, there is a huge sense of pride and it is difficult to speak about alternatives in spaces where a certain kind of masculinity dominates.”
“During Covid, we had hope because people came back to buy directly at the farm. Now, everything went back to how it was before. What needs to change for consumers to care more?” / “Should we let people starve before they understand everything we do for them?”
“How crazy is it that we have to pay to get certified organic? Instead of having to pay for doing things badly, they make us pay for trying to do them well.”
“We sometimes feel judged and attacked by consumers who care about the environment, but who don’t see how agribusiness poisons them, how it treats animals, how it exploits us.”
“70% of Belgian GDP goes to producing goods and services that are not really essential. When will we get our priorities straight?”
“The problem is not just to think differently but to act differently. Young farmers inherit farms today with an average debt of 1 million euros. Where should they start? Who is going to help?”
“I always say: no one tells a baker how to bake their bread, why is it everyone else tells farmers how to do their job?”
“Take fertilizers for example, we can only use a certain amount of natural fertilizers (manure) that my own cows produce. The rest I can subsitute with as many artificial fertilizers that are way more damaging to the environment. There’s no regulation on those and they are very expensive. I am not allowed to make my farm more circular because of incoherent regulations.”
“The problem is also that the consumers do not want to pay fair prices (…) Or they can’t pay because housing has become so expensive compared to years ago.”