Image source: confédération paysanne
What is it like to farm in the EU? What are the forces at stake behind liberal farming policies? Where do the narratives of right and left farmers’ unions intersect and diverge? What is the current state of debates on fair prices, food sovereignty, EU regulations, protest rights? On December 5th 2024, Jean Thévenot, a small-scale farmer member of the international farmers’ network La Via Campesina, shared his eye-opening perspective with degrowth.info.
Jean Thévenot: Hello, my name is Jean Thévenot, I am a small-scale farmer in the North part of the Basque Country, producing organic seeds and seedlings for home gardeners and vegetable farmers. Together with my business partner, we created our farm in 2022, in a remote, mountainous area. Since starting the farm, I’ve been involved politically with the French farmers’ union Confédération Paysanne (Conf), which defends small- and medium-scale farmers and peasant-based, agro-ecological models.
Conf is part of the international farmers’ network La Via Campesina (La Via), which is one of the biggest social movements on the planet, with more than 200 million farmers on all continents. La Via’s key struggle is for food sovereignty: the aim is to allow each territory to access fair, healthy and sustainable food, by deciding themselves what they grow and how they grow it, in a logic of solidarity between people and the planet. Even if the term has been used by different far-right actors, food sovereignty has nothing to do with nationalism or fascism.
I am a delegate of Conf in La Via – it means I work mostly at the European and international levels. Working on a farm is a big workload and finding time for political activity is not always easy. But at La Via we are all farmers talking from the field which gives us a lot of legitimacy.
Jean Thévenot: Rural areas, at least in France, are indeed more conservative. They tend to revolve around values such as work or traditions, but there is a lot of solidarity and non-commodified exchanges too. In the last twenty years, we’ve however seen that the base of far-right parties has expanded from poor cities and banlieues (suburbs) into rural areas. Political tendencies also depend a lot on each territory, their socio-economic contexts, their historical legacies.
Far-right parties actually often arrive in places where the situation is bad. Places where farmers used to be able to maintain acceptable living standards, and where now things are getting complex and tense because of free trade agreements, inflation, wars etc. People want quick and easy solutions. That’s precisely what the far-right offers: they come and claim to act directly on the problems and gain more and more influence. For instance, the French farmers’ union Coordination Rurale (CR) has right wing, almost fascist, positions in a lot of debates. They use the fact that people are angry and desperate and turn it into a political force to win elections without offering well thought-through solutions. Let’s be honest: CR is really good in communication, in TV, in shows, in pretending they are doing something. In Lot-et-Garonne, where CR has been leading the Chambre d’Agriculture for decades, even organic farmers admit that CR leaders will reliably defend all farmers, small or industrial, against administration, regulations, neighbours, or anything that might be making their work harder. But they do it in violent ways, creating oppositions between different parts of society: rural vs urban, migrants vs natives, ecologists vs farmers etc.
Jean Thévenot: Right unions such as the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA) and Jeunes Agriculteurs, far-right unions such as CR, and left-wing unions like Conf or La Via all start from a similar analysis that unfair global competition is the main origin of most of their problems. The difference lies in the solutions: we at La Via and Conf offer solidarity as the core philosophy, and propose solutions that are complex and long to implement, for example market regulations and public stockpiling, public intervention on prices etc. Whereas conservative and far-right unions offer nationalist approaches and falsely simple solutions. CR is even quite sceptical about climate change. One concrete example: at La Via we say that if a pesticide is forbidden in Europe, it should be forbidden everywhere on the planet, and it’s completely horrible that Europe is still producing and exporting it. Right and far-right unions argue that if a pesticide is still being produced and used elsewhere, then we should re-authorise it in Europe, on the false ground of fair competition. So La Via pushes farming standards upwards to be more respectful of human rights and of the environment; right and far-right unions want to lower environmental and social standards to “align” with other countries.
With the unpopular free trade agreement with the Mercosur, it’s a little strange. La Via and Conf have been the only ones fighting against it for the past ten years. Now suddenly, we’ll be electing delegates at the Chambre d’Agriculture in January 2025, and we see that FNSEA is taking the streets with violent and powerful actions against this free trade agreement. But after the elections, let me tell you that they’ll be less vocal about it, as they’ve been in favour of every free trade agreement in the past 20 years.
Jean Thévenot: At the international and European level, there is indeed a representation issue. Copa*Cogeca (the biggest farmers’ union present at the EU level that largely defends the interests of industrial farming) and other agribusiness actors get more attention from institutions than La Via, particularly in the EU. In France there is a huge difference. FNSEA was created in 1946 from the ashes of a WWII fascist union. At that time it was the only national farming union, and it was compulsory to join to get subsidies or services from the government. Only in the 1980’s did the French government open the possibility to create other national unions. Conf was created in 1987 (although regional branches already existed before that), and CR in 1992.
This historical proximity between the state and FNSEA left a legacy. FNSEA has a huge influence in policy-making and direct links with the French agriculture minister. The agriculture minister will never be able to do anything if not FNSEA-approved. FNSEA was until recently still in charge of collecting some state taxes. FNSEA and the government work together and defend the same neoliberal, industrialisation ideals. To give an example, Conf recently sent a delegation to a public event on farming to meet the agriculture minister. When the Conf delegation stepped into the meeting room, they saw the minister was accompanied by two other men. Colleagues, counsellors, secretaries? No, no! The minister answered they were the local FNSEA delegates, as if it was perfectly natural that they should be present. After the meeting, the minister stood up, thanked the Conf delegation, and went to dinner with the two FNSEA guys. It is not a detail: it means that FNSEA is the French agriculture ministry. Anywhere the agriculture minister goes, in any part of the country, they’ll be accompanied by FNSEA. Everything they’ll say and think will be recorded and checked by the local FNSEA.
Since the government sees FNSEA as an extension of itself, it will never make any repression against it. With other unions it is different. The government views Conf as dangerous, diverse leftists. We are denouncing their policies, so they want to shut us up and that’s why repression is so strong. CR endures more repression than FNSEA, with some members also arrested in demonstrations - but less than Conf. Even if CR has violent actions and methods, they remain a bunch of white, French, straight men, so they are not perceived as frightening.
Jean Thévenot: The main issue is that people who want to farm in a more sustainable and healthy way have to sell their products at a higher price and end up feeding the rich. That’s a big concern for La Via and Conf. Everywhere in the world current food prices make it nearly impossible for farmers and peasants (I’m not talking about agro-industrial farm managers here) to make any living. At the same time most of the European population, especially lower classes, simply cannot afford to double or triple their food budget. People are losing on both ends, and those benefiting are, as usual, transnational companies, retailers, transformers, who buy farmers’ production at a low price, sell bad quality food, and make big profits. In a liberal system there is no solution to this problem.
At La Via food is considered a basic human need that has to be safeguarded by the state – not a commodity. With this vision we can have at the same time farmers making a good living, and poor people accessing good food. In France one of the best policy proposals is the sécurité sociale de l’alimentation (food social insurance). The idea is a publicly-managed system where anybody can access good food, and to which people contribute based on their revenue – just like with health care. We are also in favour of supply management policies and quota systems, so as to avoid over-production, export, and the disruption of markets in Africa or elsewhere. Of course all this goes completely against the liberal logic. But it is possible, and environmentally and socially sustainable! Brazil had an interesting policy of buying food from small-scale farmers to distribute to poor people. India has a similar system, which impressively covers well over half a billion people. There are examples in the Global North too: Canada is self-sufficient for dairy, its production is controlled publicly, farmers and consumers receive and pay a fair price for their products.
Jean Thévenot: In France one might get the impression that everything is wrong. But it currently has one of the best policies for young farmers, with fairly high subsidies for young farmers compared to other EU countries, mostly thanks to Conf advocacy. These subsidies allowed my business partner and me to buy materials and machinery when we set up our farm, and even to get some extra money during the first months when we couldn’t make a living from the farm yet.
Most subsidies in Europe are paid per hectare. That’s a problem because the more land you have the more money you get, which explains why farms are getting bigger and bigger. It’s also a problem for generational renewal. But for the first time in 2023 Conf managed to change things on one specific Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidy for youth: the subsidy is paid per person instead of per hectare. It’s two of us on my farm, so we got this subsidy twice. Even if CAP is an EU policy, most payments are decided nationally, so this unfortunately only applies to France.
Jean Thévenot: Maybe the best example of what La Via does at the international level is the 2018 UNDROP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas). La Via was deeply involved in the drafting and the voting of this text. In the coming years we will work on pressuring countries and governments to nationally implement this international declaration.
There is often a big debate in activist movements about acting from inside or outside the system. The vision of La Via is that we have two legs and need both to go onwards. At La Via we are big enough to both influence institutions from within and pressure them from the outside. We demonstrate in the streets, block huge companies’ facilities, and at the same time we have people negotiating with institutions. Two weeks ago I was in the DG AGRI in Brussels with a delegation of five farmers, negotiating with the director-general. At the same time, we had roughly a hundred farmers demonstrating against the Mercosur free trade agreement just down the road. That changes the power balance!
Jean Thévenot: The logic of capitalism and neoliberalism transforms rural areas into territories of exploitation – mines, oil, industrial food production. All feeding into cities. As a result, people don’t want to stay in, or come to, rural areas. Looking at data: the average age of farmers in Europe is 57; we lost millions of farms in the past two decades. And everybody – Conf, FNSEA, CR, the French government, the EU Commission – agrees: generational renewal is internationally the main issue in farming at the moment.
Again, the difference is about the solutions we propose. Many actors push for digitalisation, basically arguing that we should replace people with robots, machines, GMOs and New Genomic Techniques. That’s the European Commission’s vision. At the same time the Commission understands that one needs people to manage all that digitalisation, so we still need young people to go into farming, and generational renewal remains a priority. The new European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food created youth councils on generational renewal in which La Via, Copa*Cogeca and all the farmers’ unions will participate. Participants will meet regularly in the coming two years and the conversations will inform European policies. That’s a good entry point and a bit of hope in all this panorama.
Copa*Cogeca’s model is based on exploitation and leaves little space for young people. La Via on the contrary has plenty to propose. First we need public services, schools, doctors etc. The question of revenue is very important: if one cannot make a fair living from one’s work, young people will not be willing to go into farming – so we need fair prices, and we need to stop free trade agreements. We need high environmental standards. We also need access to land, and if we want that then the CAP per-hectare subsidies need to change. Everything in La Via’s food sovereignty vision fits in the generational renewal conversation.
Jean Thévenot: In the past people farmed from generation to generation. Now people arriving into farming often don’t come from a farming background and start farming in a new way. There are more collective farms where farmers share the production, support each other, can take holidays etc. But there is also a very strong image of rural areas being white, straight and racist. If we want generational renewal to be possible we need to make rural areas welcoming to all people willing to farm, in all their diversity. That’s why intersectionality is important.
In my case, I’m part of the LGBTQIA+ community. In the valley where I live I was accepted as such, but in a lot of rural areas prejudices against this community are deterring people from coming. Another example is that of migrant workers. A lot of people arrive in Europe with a farming background. They have knowledge and competencies, and a lot of them want to keep farming. It’s difficult to make a living in cities, whereas rural areas desperately lack workforce, so Conf works with an association whose aim is to integrate migrant people in rural areas. It is also a way of fighting the far-right: if someone who could be racist hires someone from a foreign country, gets to know this person through work, through sharing tasks and everyday life, and discovers that this person knows farming – well this is how you fight racism!
Jean Thévenot: We have to change our view on liberty and on autonomy. For a very long time we have defined freedom as having no responsibility and no task. If we think of freedom like that, the majority of humanity will never be free so a minority can be free. I think we should replace this concept of freedom with another based on autonomy: freedom is the ability to fulfil your needs by yourself – not in an individualistic, survivalist logic, but rather in a collective way. This autonomy gives strength, legitimacy, and well-being. If we want to degrow the current agri-food system towards a more ecological one, we need to put millions of people back in the fields, and we need everyone to be at some point involved in the basic survival of their community. It’s unavoidable.
All the people I meet who quit their classic city-supermaket life to come to the countryside say that it was the best decision in their life. But they are not the majority, and come mostly from privileged backgrounds. How do we get from the current system to the desired one? How do we influence people to change their way of life so they engage again with practical activities linked with their own needs? How do we not target just privileged people but also people from popular classes? Degrowthers should engage in sociological research, try to tackle these questions, and harness the advocacy branch of the movement to foster change.
This article is part of a series on movements for social and environmental justice worldwide. Find out more and read the other pieces of the series here.
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