Opinion Piece by former MEPs Isabel Carvalhais, Anne Sander and Ulrike Mueller
Decisionmakers are disconnected from their policies on animal agriculture
Article published in The Brussels Times on Friday, 12 July 2024.
Brussels, 15 July 2024 – As the 2019-2024 parliamentary term reached its end, we came together to reflect on our experiences as Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.
The past five years have been interesting to say the least, with major plans announced following the publication of the European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork Strategy and the Biodiversity Strategy. But we leave with a sense that several expectations have fallen a bit flat.
Some legislative proposals saw no follow-through or were very disappointing, some proposals due to be published have not seen the light yet, and the last-ditch attempt to ensure a Strategic Dialogue on the Future of Agriculture in Europe seems to be somewhat lacklustre for those of us watching from the outside of the dialogue.
These back-and-forth changes in European agricultural policy during the past term showed signs of ad-libbing that did not benefit European livestock farmers, indeed farmers in general.
All of this, coupled with farming groups protesting all across Europe, seem to scream very loudly something that the halls of the EU Institutions have still to fully comprehend: you can’t govern on farming and rural areas from behind a desk, or sitting in plenary. You need to get out into the fields, speak to real-live farmers, real rural communities, to understand what challenges they are facing, and what they need to make the necessary changes to ensure Europe’s farming sector achieves long-lasting economic, social and environmental sustainability.
Animal agriculture seems to be one of the least-understood areas of farming. Eurobarometer data shows that a puny 6% of Europeans have regular contact with farm animals, which is not surprising given that 85% of the global population lives within or near urban centres (FAO).
As a result, policies and strategies proposed by the European Commission have often been founded on non-scientific, biased and outdated information about the realities of animal farming, farmers and their surrounding communities.
Some politicians have a purely theoretical idea about rural life; others are deciding without clear separation between their roles as legislators and their personal interests as farmers or as actors too close to farming and livestock interests.
In the first case, you get idealistic and romanticised versions of rurality where farmers are almost taken out of the full equation; in the second case, you get economy-centred versions of rurality.
Only a few are truly engaged in understanding the variety of farming realities, small farmers, old farmers, less educated farmers, shepherds… Only a few get to understand rurality as the dynamic result of a sensitive, symbiotic (and emotional) relationship between people and nature, between people and their animals. So, at the end of the day, you get policies that are basically focused on pleasing public opinion, trends, constituents, lobbying pressures, whatever, but not on paving real ways for real and practical problem-solving.
More boots on the ground needed
During the five years we have served on the agriculture committee, we noticed a significant disconnect, sometimes very pronounced, between some people’s understanding of the realities of livestock farming in Europe today and their perceptions of it. This unfortunately leads to disconnected and often contradictory policies.
For example, when some call for more grasslands in Europe while increasingly condemning meat consumption. We need to bring common sense back into European policies, make our farms more competitive, and above all, better protect them from global competition, which sometimes hits them hard.
Imports present European and French farmers with unfair competition that they cannot compete with. We must understand the ongoing contradictions they are faced with when producing better, and in a more sustainable way, while adhering to ever-increasing legal burdens, and producing at an affordable price for our consumers. This is unsustainable, and we must find a balance.
Future members of the European Parliament must visit farms and talk to European farmers. They are very aware of what Europe has provided them over the years. But they are also very demanding of the policies being implemented and simply wish to be heard, understood, and respected for what they do: feeding European citizens.
We really hope that the new Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development will be well-stocked with politicians who are active players in farming communities or who have some experience of agriculture in all its forms and who are willing to build bridges for the sake of rural Europe.
We need those politicians to highlight the positive externalities of animal farming, which are essential for preserving our rural communities.
We also hope the Strategic Dialogue is not just a one-off political stunt. Dialogue with the rural community on a more structural basis, establishing observatories, and ensuring that any and all proposals are accompanied by an impact assessment will be essential for protecting Europe’s food sovereignty and strategic autonomy in the future.
We may be leaving the halls of Altiero Spinelli and Louise Weiss, but we’re still and will always be very proud Europeans and we still have hope that the EU will look with all due attention at the animal farming sector as an essential part of the long-term survival of the rural world.
This implies taking very seriously the discussions about which (financial, technical, educational, training) conditions the EU is actually willing to provide in the short term for animal farming. This will be decisive to ensure the continuity of Europe’s rural communities. If you have any doubt about this, just go out into the fields, and you will discover a whole new world quite different from the Brussels bubble.