Geopolitics expert: EU needs less politics, more strategy for agriculture

Ongoing farmers’ protests can be partly attributed to the lack of consideration EU society and policymakers give to agriculture in general and geopolitical terms, Sebastien Abis, director of the agricultural group Club Demeter and research fellow at thinktank IRIS in France, told Euractiv.

Over the last months, farmers in France, Germany, Belgium, Romania, Czechia, and Poland, have taken their tractors to the streets to protest, demand, and call for better policymaking.

Abis recently compared the mission of feeding the world to conquering Mount Everest, considering farmers among the main players in that endeavour.

Speaking to Euractiv about the protests, he said: “At a time when the [rest of the] world is equipping itself in terms of agriculture and food, the EU has believed that it can reduce the productive effort in agriculture. This is a geopolitical mistake.”

While noting that Europe’s political leaders have never forgotten farmers, he believes they have not devoted sufficient strategic attention to this sector.

“Farmers are back because food issues are timeless, bioenergy production is becoming essential, and the whole bioeconomy is on the move,” Abis told Euractiv.

Their anger, he said, stems from them being asked for a lot by society without necessarily being equipped with the support needed to meet the extent of our expectations.

“For too long, Europeans have given food supply for granted, they have become amnesiac. Without farmers, there can be no food security.”

Food security, the need to produce sufficient food at affordable prices, is often used as an argument against the greening of agriculture, as it would entail producing less food, with subsequent income losses.

This is a minority stance, Abis insisted. “Like society in general, there are farmers who refuse to commit themselves fully to ecological transitions,” he said. But “they are in the minority in Europe”.

On the other hand, “more and more farmers are looking for ways to make these transitions without losing out economically”, as they “want to be able to invest in innovations and find new methods and tools to produce better”.

And “they reject the idea of producing less” because “they refuse the idea of becoming degrowth entrepreneurs”.

It’s not simply a matter of producing more. Given that “climate change is likely to make it more difficult to increase yields”, the “challenge of this century is to produce as much while reducing our environmental footprint and increasing collective security”, Abis said.

Protection and openness

In the farmers’ movement and with far-right parties trying to jump on the bandwagon of the protest, as happened in Germany and Austria, there are also those asking for an agricultural exception to protect the “Made in Europe” food, such as the ones applied to trade in cultural products.

But this perspective, Abis said, is not realistic.

The EU “must not close off because” it has “dependencies” on imports and it is “still an exporter in many sectors”.

At the same time, “we must not be pierced by agricultural powers that push products onto the EU markets that are economically competitive but socially unfair and ecologically deplorable”, the researcher added.

“The EU must defend its values and interests in the world [and be] aware that not everyone on the planet wants to be like it, will follow it or place morality at the heart of its international practices,” Abis said.

When it comes to agriculture and food, he added, “this means that agriculture can no longer be a bargaining chip in EU trade agreements. On the contrary, it must be our strength, our shield, our differentiation”.

Citizens and consumers, insisted Abis, must play their role in that.

“EU consumers must be logical: supporting European agriculture also means consuming European products and accepting to pay a fair price for them.”

[Edited by Alice Taylor]

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