Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/04/belgian-farmers-spray-manure-at-police-during-protest.html
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Very well put
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Ah yes, the very reasonable position of “How dare they want to know where a third of their budget is being spent.” I’m sure that we’re all shocked at the sheer audacity of asking people not to destroy the environment in return for all that cash.
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Jokes on them, pics are happy rolling around in shit.
What really gets Dochy is when bureaucratic deadlines are imposed on him, for example if certain crops or green fertilizers need to be sown by Sep. 1.
I am sure these regulations are well meaning, but something like this is dumb. It makes a good GUIDELINE, but recent weather conditions can throw off planned harvest times or plant times. I remember visiting back home near Wichita and on the news the farmers were bemoaning, despite a terribly dry year, they got a bunch of rain when it was time to harvest and had to delay it by about a week. Lots of factors like late plant times or weather conditions can move up or push back harvest times as well. The farmers want the best yield possible, and they really don’t need to be told when to do things.
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At least here in Germany, the farmers, who are typically rather well off, and are subsidized with 30-70% of their total income, are protesting that there are attempts to roll back subsidies and reduce other privileges - like exemption of tax on vehicles, and on fossil fuels.
The tall tale of “unattainable environmental standards” is told to cover up the truth that farming is responsible for a significant contribution to global warming, but farmers do not want to be affected by measures to cut emissions, they simply do not want to do their fair share.
These “protests” are being supported and often organized by far-right activists. One example is Anthony Lee (AfD), a vocal denier of climate change who has been agitating against environmental regulation for farmers for years, who regularly boasts that his Grandfather was part of the Waffen-SS, and who is telling farmers the government wants to take away their land and build housing for refugees there
We’ve had a lot of news coverage about that shit for months now here, I’m curious why that particular and reductive framing shows up here now. The Guardian has a way more nuanced article about the topic.
Especially fucked up in this context is that these “protesters” are not showing up in large numbers, but they are bringing their machines, making the protest look much more impressive than it actually is. And they are regularly breaking the law, but not much is done by authorities. The irony should not be lost that farmers themselves were very vocal about hitting the Last Generation with the full force of the law for doing the very same things: blocking roads (just for a more noble cause, farmers are in there for their money). But opposed to the protests of the Last Generation, farmers blocking roads has already caused several accidents here in Germany.
It’s a pity he doesn’t say which regulation he’s taking about, so that we can easily check if this is actually the case.
Farmers are much like everyone else: It is not a given that each farmer with a vocal opinion has necessarily read - and understood - all regulations that affect them. My expectation of a journalist interviewing a farmer is that they actually get some context.
Framing this as a conflict between government and nature with innocent farmers caught in the middle is cute. However the narrative that about an abundance of bureaucracy where things used to be so simple, as well as the narrative about EU imposing regulation are well known populist and nationalist tropes. And farmers are not innocent bystanders, most of them did fuck all to preserve the nature they are claim to be so dependent on, if there wasn’t a direct financial incentive (through subsidies) for it.
Now if farmers were protesting that subsidies are distributed equally to farms of all sizes, and this puts undue pressure on the small farms, or that it is easier for large farms to negotiate fair prices for their products or adhere to regulation, we might even start a real dialog here. But that is not what this is about. It’s about keeping subsidies and privileges, and doing nothing in return, especially not their fair share to mitigate the effects of climate change.
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This is enshittification I can get behind!
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Inspired by whales?
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How could anyone tell?
Well, you wouldn’t want to be in front of it. The best bit of that video was where the spray of shit was countered by three water cannon jets. Hardly surprising nobody wanted to get out of their cabs, though.
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A common misconception about pigs. Pigs are rather clean animals, they do appreciate mud baths for thermal regulation and for cleaning off parasites, but they don’t typically roll around in shit, unless humans force them into small cages where they have no other option but to lie down where they shit.
IMHO referring to police as pigs is mostly an insult to a family of cute, clean and rather intelligent animals.
And indeed police will tolerate farmers violating regulation and even some abuse, because both police and farmers are on the same side, conservative to alt-right.
Just imagine a protest against climate change where the police is sprayed with manure, that will inevitably result in a large number of hospitalizations. That’s why I find farmers abusing their privileges not so funny. YMMV.
Until I see that exact regulation - if it exists at all in that form - I won’t comment on whether or not that is dumb.
You do hold farmers in very high esteem. Over here, to get rid of manure, farmers regularly bring out manure to barren fields, and outside of the growth period - even though that is explicitly forbidden because when there are no plants growing the nitrate goes straight into the groundwater.
So it appears that there are instances where farmers do need to be told when to do things, because they sometimes don’t seem to give a shit what the consequences of their actions are.
And I have doubts that the “best yield possible” is necessarily a healthy and sustainable goal in the first place
That being said, the goal of the farmers who are protesting appears to be more like “get the most subsidies possible”.
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Hear, hear!
I was about to write something similar, but you have done it much better.
Farmers protests in Europe, or any protests really, are such a fraught and complicated phenomenon that any journalist shouldn’t touch them without giving loads of context. Context such as the instrumentalisation by the far right or the history of and rationale behind farming subsidies.
Now, Boing Boing famously isn’t journalism, it’s a blog, so I’m not #disappointed in them, but it wouldn’t hurt to add a few links to more nuanced takes
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In Poland the pro-Russian far right has muscled in on protests against imports of Ukrainian grain.
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The rate at, and vehemence with, which people learn to see subsidies as prerogatives(especially the ones that are tied to being in some sort of business; for reasons slightly unclear to me it’s considered vastly more righteous to do something that’s only profitable with punchy subsidies than it is to work a job that leaves you below the threshold for public assistance) is really pretty astonishing.
This isn’t to say that there’s never anything that makes sense to subsidize under some circumstances and you should let the market sort it out, bro; but it doesn’t make watching people who would have a hobby rather than a job if not for EU subsidies screaming about being under Brussels’ brutal jackboots any more sympathetic.
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Always replace the salt of the earth term “farmers” in their political context and at these protests with the word “landowners”.
Always.
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