Farmers across much of Europe are protesting against their governments’ anti-agriculture policies. In France, farmers are shutting down access to Paris:
Farmers set up roadblocks on eight motorways around Paris today as they made good their threat to place a stranglehold on the capital.
“The siege of Paris is under way,” said Damien Greffin, vice-chairman of the country’s biggest farming union, the FNSEA. He said the plan was to “encircle” the capital, but not to drive tractors into the centre of the city.
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Many said they would not move until the government had given in to their demands, which include an increase in the price they are paid for their produce, a decrease in red tape and the scrapping of some environmental rules.
I don’t understand how farm prices are controlled in France, but the article says France has “a law designed to ensure a fair price for French produce.” But the other items–red tape and environmental rules, which I think are the same grievance–are common to European farmers’ movements.
Macron, who is trying to stay away from the front line, is also facing criticism, with commentators urging him to allow French farmers to flout EU laws presented as unfair. French farmers say, for instance, that they are banned from using pesticides permitted in Spain and Italy.
The Left is trying to make our lives worse in many ways, one of which is raising the price of food. This is done by banning chemicals needed to grow crops cheaply (or at all), by banning or limiting animal husbandry, and by imposing environmental regulations that raise the cost of producing food. The French farmers’ most immediate concern may be the prices they are getting from supermarkets, but more broadly all of these farmers’ movements represent the interests of all of us who want to eat. The farmers are just the ones on the firing line.
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