Please link your souces!! I could definitely use these in the public debates happening in my home country of Denmark 🇩🇰🇪🇺 Especially the on that shows that small dcale farmers are losing financially
Hi here are the 3 main sources/reports for the whole video: EU FARM ECONOMICS OVERVIEW FADN 2018 (EU Commission) Modeling environmental and climate ambition in the agricultural sector with the CAPRI model (JRC) MONITORING EU AGRI-FOOD TRADE (EU Commission) Cheers, Hugo
Also the article named "Flasker alt sig, er der også mulighed for at jordpriserne vil stige endnu mere, lyder vurderingen fra Jens Schjerning, cheføkonom i Agrocura."
In Denmark, the soil is sold on the open market. This is all supply and demand. Some farmers have been more successful than others, but the success of the successful farmers have caused soil prices to rise.
Excellent video Hugo thanks for sharing this. I’m myself a Swedish small scale livestock farmer and have been thinking about these issues for several years. It’s just like you said, these new policies introduced last year are driving farmers in two completely different directions. In the 60s and 70s farmers were basically told to produce as much food as they could by having subsidies coupled to production. The 80s brought about a quota system limiting production to stop the butter mountains and lakes of olive oil flooding the market. The 90s brought about a shift from price support to income support, ie direct payments based on the amount of land in production. Ultimately changing the priorities of producers and leading to the 80/20 ration you mention. Now, post COP21 the union is scrambling to move the sector in a new direction and fast resulting in a clash of paradigms that we are currently seeing. Apart from the regional differences that can easily be pointed to with for example nitrous oxide limits in the Netherlands to cheap grain flooding the Polish farmers. There are deeper systemic and cross cutting concerns that I think brought farmers to the streets in this capacity. It’s the feeling of being at the end of the line. The old timers (avg age of farmer in EU is over 62 have seen it he following trend through their lifetime. Falling incomes and rising costs. inequitable pricing structures across the food chain. lack of level playing field when it comes to ag imports. dissatisfaction with european negotiations on cheaper imports. A rapidly changing international context making markets and pricing increasingly volatile and risky. Increased bureaucratic burdens and even more too down demands with no or little tied compensation. At the same time the young farmers trying to get established in the sector see a lack of future prospects, and with the insanely high capital intensive start up cost coupled with even uncertain and rapidly changing pricing structure for both input and output it’s just too risky to pursue a life as a food producer. Another salt on the wounds is the huge problem that the profits of food production don’t lie with the farmer but at the retailers and input end (fertilizer and pesticide producers). there needs to be a redistribution of profits so consumers aren’t only ones that have to bear the load of increased food prices. While farmers are loosing money the retailers downstream and input producers upstream are getting away with insane profits. All the while banks are making out like bandits on the interest payments from the debts of farmers. The problem is not the commission has proposed stricter environmental demands that are slowly creeping into the system. Many farmers do care and want to see more biodiversity on their farms and want to adapt and transition to climate resilient production methods. But to do that costs money. And the demands now posed on European farmers have been unrolled to quickly and been too ambitious with not enough proposed funding. These protests are very important because they are shaping the direction of the future EU farming policies and the farming sector. However with the looming elections this summer this is going to be an issue for the next elected mandate. It’s easy to understand why farmers have a deep sense of being stuck under the thumbs or large corporations up- and downstream dictating their costs and incomes as well the beurocrats not willing to share in the burden and risk of being a food producer. And the irony is that the people hit first by the consequences of climate change and a decrease in biodiversity, which these environmental schemes try to address is the farmers themselves. I believe they want to move in a greener direction but we are not willing to carry the entire burden and do it alone. We demand that others take responsibility for their part in making this happen for everyone. As long as the farmer feels as if they are loosing at the benefit of others, farming in Europe will never be able to be part of the solution it needs to be. That’s just a sad fact. These protests need to show everyone how sick the system is and urge everyone, from consumer to policymakers and food producers alike that we need to have a deep and serious discussion of how we realign our cultural values about food and food production. Subsidies are just one tool. The deeper work of healing our food system is a ginormous undertaking but one future generations will thank us for doing.
Globalism at work. Same can be said for many things in society now. You cannot start a grocery store, simply cause you cannot compete on scale with the large ones. And thus your grocery store will be too expensive to survive. To be able to start a grocery store, you would need billions kroners. Bombard the country in your grocery stores, so you can achieve the scale aswell. But fact is, most people do not have access to such capital. Same goes for farming these days. Im a young guy who wants to farm. But the economics dont make any sense since i dont have capital. I can borrow capital from the bank, and buy a farm. But then most of profits of my farm would go the bank, since farming is so competitive. I simply cannot compete with my local oligarch who farms our entire valley with his huge machines. All small farmers have gone, most farms are just houses now that rent out their land to the big farmers. To compete with my local oligarch, i would have to have billions of kroners. He has so much land, that if every Norwegian owned as much land. Norway would only fit 870 people. I can drive 2 hours west, all i see is his land. Norway is the world most privatly owned country. Local oligarch does forestry aswell ofc, and runs a chain of stores that sell lumber goods. Hes vertical integrated lumber, sawmill and selling points. How can i compete with that? I cannot. The few small farms that survive, are close to town so they can live off making niche/luxury products to the upper middleclass and can survive on small scale by taking a premium price, for a premium product. But they are slowly dying. As young people cannot enter the market. Housing has increased alot in Norway. My father in 87 bought a house for a total of 3.3 years of his income as a lampsalesman. If i am to buy the same house today, it will cost me 11-12 years salary. But farms, have increased more than twice as much in price as housing the past 20 years. I think for me to live my farming dream, i have to move to a 3rd world country where the global market has not reached yet. God i wish i was born 400 years ago.. Or in 200 years.. What a terrible time to be alive when society is in its puberty. This is late stage capitalism. People are getting really fed up by it. We need an universal income. We need to protect certain things from raw capitalism. Society eats worse food today, than just 40 years ago. The quality is horrible, the taste is lacking, they are void of vitamins and minerals. Why? Capitalism. Why grow tomatoes in Sweden where you have to heat greenhouses, when you can grow them in Spain. Ship them to Scotland, and when the market needs red tomatoes. You take from your pile of green tomatoes, run them into a gas chamber and woops. Red tomatoes.. Tomatoes today are bred for storage, not being bruised during transport and other factors that have nothing to do with taste or nutrition. The bread we eat today make us sick, cause its cheaper to make bread with yeast that works fast. Instead of natural yeast. The con is that the fast yeast does not break down gluten properly. And thus why we got this massive increase in gluten intolerance. Simply cause the industrial complex wants to make stuff cheaper. We need to think of a better system than capitalism. Circular economy sounds much nicer. If we had a circular economy, we would take all the fertilizer us humans poop out and take it back to the farms. Instead of sending the minerals to the ocean like we do today. Cause its cheaper to get new minerals from mining, oil and other sources than reuse what we have. Capitalism in action. Yes, making another sewage system just for human waste will be expensive. But in the longrun, it will pay for itself.. However capitalism does not like long investments like this. People are mortal and want to se return on their investment fast. A state is immortal, it can do investments a mer mortal cannot. Simply due to the timescale a nation survives. Im 37 years old want to do lots of stuff, but on my own accord. (Ive been exploited enough for one lifetime to ever work for someone again) But currenly only a drag on society, since society do not give me the options i want. I dont want to sit on an oilplatform. I dont want to be an obedient worker for someone. I dont want to work so my boss can build a cabin costing 120 millioner kroner..(Yup my last boss built this cabin while i was working there) I want to work for me and my family. Not some rich prick sitting in Switzerland. Now there would be lots of options in society for me if i was good with people, sadly i am not. So all i have is my head and my hands. My education is an "Oilworker" which society/family pressed me to do. Never worked as one except when ive been desperate for money on occasion.
@@MrDanisveunderstandable. Our system will need to evolve. I agree that it will probably be better in a few hundred years - but what exactly that system will look like nobody knows. It will probably be some form of a regulated and well understood market system that has parts that are extremely free liberal capitalism but other parts that are socialist/redistribution in nature is my guess. We probably need to better understand what to touch and how and what to leave alone completely and be free without intervening. Eric Weinstein made an interesting remark. He said the future system could be more capitalist and more socialist than today's system at the same time. You need a meritocratic system for sure while at the same time mitigating the negative pathologies we see today that make life increasingly unliveable or seemingly unfair for larger segments of the lower/middle class. I imagine it to be a mix of mexitocracy within the limit (gradient distribution not too sharp in incline). It will be a huge challenge but simply saying "circular economy" or "socialism" really says nothing and helps no one. Smart people need to work on that. I think the crypto space will yield some interesting results in time. Ai could also help with insights of how best to structure a complex system with autonomous agents. The basic thing is: The wealth we have in today's society is a miracle. We need a world where we can have similar amounts of wealth and progress while at the same time being more equitable and humane. The error that most people make is that they assume that the levels of wealth will stay the same but fairness will get better "if we just implemented" another system. The evidence so far points to the opposite: It's very hard to create wealth-creating systems and very easy to have a dysfunctional society and economy. We don't realize how fragile everything is and yet have to solve problems and make progress. We need a higher degree of upward social mobility though. I think at some point we should inevitably reach a post scarcity world though - a world where Energy has become so cheap and abundant as well as labor (ai/robots) that it should drive all costs down so much that it should be easy to cover everybody's needs. It will pose new systems levels challenges though but by that time we may have gotten a lot smarter and wiser already or be replaced with something that is (maybe a mix of biologically and technologically enhanced humans, preferably with more spiritual development or maybe super-agi, who knows.)
@@Humanaut. I agree with you alot. Yes the world will need free market to drive us. But i dont see why we need the free market everywhere. Not every sector needs to be exploited to the maximum. Specially not those essential for our human existance or essential for quality of life. A good example is food. We see what capitalism has done to food. Why do we continue down this road? Yes it has made food super cheap, it has made industrial products that can survive a nuclear winter and be made cheap. But often not very healthy, nutritious etc. Capitalism focus on one thing, and that is efficiency. But if im to be honest. Not everything needs to be super efficient. Just look at our cows. When i was a kid it took 3 years for a cow to reach slaughter weight. It eat only grass and hay that was it, it eat from the local fields. Today our cows reach slaughter weight at 2 years. They get fed soybeans from the other side of the world and feed milled feed. The cow of the old days, required very little machinery or human intervention. Once you have established a field there is almost no human intervention to keep them fed. Today there are huge operations to keep the cows fed, huge machinery plowing fields. Fertilizing, spraying, then all the transport etc. All in the name of more efficiency. While its not really needed. And makes for worse product, cause grassfed beef taste much better. Has more omega fatty acids, more minerals etc. Its jut a better beef in every way. Except efficiency. So we do all this work, to make a worse product. But a cheaper product. Just makes little sense to me. Like when it comes to power generation. This is not something so complex, thats its hard for a state to plan. Norway planned all its power generation, and funded it via the people so they would become owners. Result? Some of the cheapest electric power the world has seen. That benefit is gone now tho, that we have connected outselfs to the European grid where power generation has been mismanaged or not manged at all. Just left to the free market. Tho the owners of the cheap hydroelectric plants make a ton of money right now. It does not benefit the people directly. Like intended. I get that planning complex things should be avoided. The communist examples are good experiment on that. Pretty inefficient for a state to manage how much milk goes to a store etc. Market regulates that much better. However, we know how to use hybrid systems today. To get what we want out of a system (Planned economy) all while subjecting it to market forces. Kinda how China is running its entire modern economy. And how the nordic countries used to run, before they went all Neo-capitalistic in the 90s and on. Norway let all its industry and skills die, cause oil shot up the wage price. Norwegian business became unproductive. And Norwegian goverment did not care, and just let stuff die. Instead of protecting it while the economy suffers from dutch disease. Norway had the world 3rd most profitable IT company. It made the F-16 simulators, it had the entire swedish nuclear power generation datasystems. It supplied computing power to CERN etc. Heart of European electronics was in Norway for a littlebit. But then the oil came, and killed it all. Our system is not fragile at all, aslong as the changes are slow and minor. Its when changes happen to fast, or events that change the economy fast. Thats when our society is fragile. However, when the changes come slowly and people being informed. Then society adapts amazingly well. Like if goverment tells all its citizens, that we are slowly increasing interest rates too 6% in a 15 year period. So we can have a more stable economy void of these huge loan bubbles we finance our growth on today. Then it would have little effect on the economy. We would get slightly less growth cause people would lend less money to produce stuff we dont need. Having the interest rate on loans lower than economic growth, is not wise and makes for huge loans bubbles that will have to burst at some point. In the western economy it seems it burst every 10 years lately. Id like to smoothen the economy out by having abit higher interest rate. Yes, that will cost us abit in longterm growth. But the growth we will have, will be more real. And more robust.
@@MrDanisve Yes, I agree with you too, though I think we always need to look at all the prerequisites of a system that made/make it work and not take any of the factors for granted. I am German, and if I would ever emigrate I'd pick one of the Scandinavian/nordic countries probably. Or at the very least a European one. I think just purely from a statistical standpoint they are amongst the best countries in the world to live in. Most civilized, low crime, strong economy but a good life/work balance. But that is extremely hard to achieve, and we know this by the fact that very few countries in the world have ever achieved this and those that have achieved it have only done so for a very short period of time (historically speaking) and I think we are not even aware of all the factors we need to safeguard in order to sustain the direction of development. One thing I noticed is that we as Europeans take many good things for granted and make assumptions of about human nature that only work within our own cultural and geographical context. But due to the huge waves of (especially Muslim 3rd world/failed state) migration our systems are being stressed a lot. I think Norway has spared itself some of that, unlike other European countries. It has been established that "high trust societies" work the best and I think a high trust society enables a lot of not-for-profit common good policy thinking. But high trust societies also need to be fairly homogenous in the sense that everybody feels part of the same team and agrees to play by the same rules. Common cultural identity is needed. This has become so natural for us that we think other humans will assimilate to think and feel like us over time because "human nature is the same everywhere" but that is really not the case. So stress is introduced to the system and forces it to change/adapt. I think it's just one example of many of how external factors force our systems to change. You're probably also right that slow change allows us citizens to adapt a lot better - but I think that's a prerequisite we don't always have and is probably an impossible demand. I like the Terrence McKenna's postulation that "history is speeding up" - change is taking place at an ever accelerating rate and that often leaves very little time to react. System shocks guaranteed. One of the problem with complex systems is often the unintended consequences side and that we keep on having to tweak the economy to avoid unwanted outcomes but each time we intervene we create some new unwanted consequences / collateral damage / perverse incentives or outcomes. Some things are also short term vs long term thinking. If we try to avoid pain in the economy and artificially stabilize things that are meant to fail in order to avoid system shocks then we create a worse long-run situation overall by setting the wrong incentive structure. One example would be the bail out of too big to fail banks or businesses and the attempt to regulate them afterwards. COVID is another good example. We shut down the entire economy, essentially achieved nothing by doing it but deferred all of the debt onto future generations while transferring all of the wealth to the super rich (COVID was the largest wealth transferrence in history). If you'd let mismanaged businesses/banks collapse that would be much more painful in the short term but may be more healthy in the long run. If you'd bear the "pain of COVID" without closing down you'd have a much more sustainable and healthy long term economy. That's easy to say and hard to do though. That's why I like crypto - Bitcoin for example is a currency that you can not artificially manipulate to smoothen any sort of market cycle. Every type of change in the economy would instantly manifest itself in an unmitigated manner since the money supply side is fixed. Of course Bitcoin is only a small fraction of the economy and we don't rely on it but it would be interesting to run a simulation based purely on Bitcoin or cardano / Etherium / polkadot etc. I think each block chain is the simulation of a different economical system in a microcosm and they are competing in a darwinian fashion right now but of course not in an unregulated environment. One thing I've heard about the economy is that capitalism is good at the "how" but not at the "what". Meaning: you should tell the market exactly what you want and then let the market produce the outcome. For example: if you told the market that you want "only high quality non GMO grass fed nutrient rich environmentally friendly beef" then the market can go ahead and produce that in the cheapest way possible. But the "problem" is that people vote with their wallets. If we were all more wealthy we would buy the more expensive better quality food. In the future that might happen. If everybody had more disposable income then the whole market dynamics could/would change. But the consumer is still allowed to prioritize. Problem with the regulation is that our systems have become so interconnected globally that some things are extremely hard to regulate if they are subject to compete with unregulated parts of the market. Right now we are still subject to scarcity though. Large parts of the world are still subject to political instability, an abundance of violence and a lack of the basics. That changes what is possible but once they hopefully catch up some day it will be much easier to achieve better outcomes for all. An alternative would be to close off the European system much more but it's never really possible to isolate from the rest of the world completely - things are just so intertwined. Still I think Europe needs to recalibrate a lot. At the heart of the economical problem really lies the Power-Law-Distribution problem. Meaning everything always centralizes. Money/Power. Then those centralized forces are able to influence policy making and reinforce their own monopolistic market dominance preventing any newcomer competition by introducing one sided favorable regulations for example. I think no matter what system you attempt to establish this is a problem that always occurs and is really hard to mitigate or defend against. Maybe cycles of birth, growth, corruption and destruction are inevitable. I don't know.
7:19 if EU has to import more, can they be 100% sure that the imported food has the standards required by EU? It seems more like greenwashing and blaming other countries for emissions. Should we also calculate the emissions caused by logistics and also the environmental impact of imported food where it was grown? For example, Avocado cultivation in Chile dried up their rivers as they were diverted towards the farms.
I agree; stopping production in the EU is not going to reduce the impact on the climate, it may well, or even probably will end up being worse, so that seems a bit cynical, if you add in the huge increase in risk for the EUs food supply it becomes even less attractive.
It imports food that can't be produced (technically you can even grow bananas on Iceland, but to really small population of some village in middle of nowhere)
So you say Europe should ban avocados. Should you go to jail for owning an avocado in Europe? Because they don't grow here except maybe in some experimental way for very few people. You either delegalize some food and Liberty is important value in Europe so it can't be done without something happening. But Europe can produce it's own potatoes for example, so importing them should mean they had the same standards met during growth that EUs farmer had to meet. It can be done because EU has choice in that that's different from delegalizing potatoes
it's ok to blame europeans for carbon footprint, but it's ok to import everything from China and allowing european companies to produce cheaper goods there without any regulations
Subsidies lose their effects after a few decades because they lead to higher land prices. New farmers have to borrow more money to buy expensive land, and the interest on these loans eat up the subsidies. So in the long run subsidies don't help the farmers.
My counter to that argument is that most farm land has been in families for generations. Most people don't move out of a city and take up farming. The historical trend is overwhelmingly in the opposite direction.
The graph at 3:00 isn't actually so much about profitability / productivity as it is the fact, that family farms (by definition, almost) have a smaller unit size than the other forms of ownership. I would be really worried if a for-profit large industrial scale farm complex was unable to produce far more net value PER FARM than a small family farm. Per labour cost is likely also skewed that way due to economies of scale, but not by this much.
One thing that needs to be highlighted is that the CAP budget hasn't received additional resources for 20 years. In that time, European farmers have been expected to deliver more for less. Inflation has eaten into historical payments which represented farming activity 20 years ago. The terms like eco- services, biodiversity, and carbon farming models are used more and more, but no new funding has been purposed by the commission or member states. Always the CAP is go to mechanism to deliver and clearly that cannot be the case anymore
I got news for you... ALL WORKERS have been expected to deliver more for less. Specially in southern Europe. Why should farmers be entitled to more than the rest of us when they have always supported, as a class, the neoliberal parties that caused this problem in the first pplace?
@_extrathicc I would suggest that workers in other industries have received income increases over the last 20 years. Meanwhile, farmers in the EU are expected to produce the world's highest standards of environmental ambition, welfare, biodiversity, and quality, while other countries are placing food of lower environmental standards and questionable animal welfare standards into a market where the consumer is price sensitive. Undercutting our own farmers and leading to the potential of land abandonment and therefore food security. 5.2 million farmers exited farming from 2005 to 2020. You need to remember that sustainability has 3 pillars. Economic and social are equally as important as environmental.
Nowhere in mainstream media in UK I could see reports of these protests. These protests are extremely important and farmers fight for people's future. Although many people seem not to realise.this. Once EU destroys Europe's farming (and this is the goal), we will be getting food from Ukraine and South American countries, where there are no regulations on pesticide use, heavy metal levels in food etc. So we will be eating crappy food, probably for.the same price eventually. I will not even mention food security because it is quite obvious, that you need to have local food production, in case of some conflict or war. Please.also bear in mind that environmental reasons are just an excuse. I don't.know how anyone can believe it anymore. How is it environmentally friendly to transport the food from the other part of the world, what about CO2 emissions? And also, how is it environmentally friendly to get food from the countries where pesticides are.not controlled at all.
Of course there are environmental reasons(most likely exaggerated), but there are no real solutions. So what do they do, move the problems to somewhere else. The crazy thing is, now we all know the consequences of outsourcing our stuff. Yet many people still push for this? This is such short term thinking.
@@monobryn64 No they haven't. On the BBC yt channel there are just 2 reports on them, one from 2 weeks ago, and another from 4 weeks ago about the protests in France. Nothing about the protests in Brussels.
LOL of course you wont what do you expect? This is absolutely destroying the globalist agenda, why would their media support this in any kind of way? Forget about the MSM learn to find your own information, the internet is a great tool
Netherlands putting into EU legislation: Voluntary sell your farm land at 120% market value and sign the agreement you will not participate in the agriculture sector in the Netherlands or EU. Or later after 1 or 2 years be forced to sell to the government. In combination with their cut back on emissions by culling 200k cows forcing farmers to curtail their production making them unprofitable if not loss making. Let's see what you have to defend this government takedown of farmers whilst letting Bill Gate the largest farm land owner keep up with his acres of land purchases.
This is all part of their 4th Industrial Revolution drive which began with Covid-19: The Great Reset, which is an extension of UN Agenda 2030, which is a sub-category of UN Agenda 21. Go back to the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth from 1972, then on to the UN Vancouver Declaration of 1976 where they decided private ownership of land is dangerous and needs to be ended. Add the Club of Rome's book The First Global Revolution from 1991 where humanity is the enemy of the planet, and don't forget the Limits to Growth co-author Dennis Meadows in 2018 stating depopulation to 1 billion is their goal. Now understand that dismantling agriculture will starve billions of people to death, and you might be beginning to see the tip of the globalist iceberg.
@@uggali Existing food scarcity on this world is merely a problem of distribution. I am already talking from a global perspective, as it's unescapable. Much more people need to eat less, instead of eating more. Less in quantities and less in meat too. Reducing meat consumption would also lead to less agriculture, as a significant portion of cropland is for animal use only.
@@dalfokane k i agree with ya ffs But for whether more people need to eat less than people need to eat more i have to disagree and say there’s a lot of food insecurity out there
No, but it's not affordable, it costs more and produces twice less yield, and people who are not rich can't afford to buy it anyway, in UK Tesco market (just checked the prices ) for example the Whole organic chicken costs around 17£ vs none -organic 3.76 £ ... its huge difference... and if you reduce the price of the organic chicken then farmer can't cover his losses ... its no win situation!
@@xeanderman6688 Oh yea sorry I don't have the right to an opinion because my country wasn't a victor in the jooish made world wars so I can't tell the truth about a payed-off lier's channel.
@@xeanderman6688 Oh yea sorry I don't have the right to an opinion because my country wasn't a victor in the jewish made world wars so I can't tell the truth about a payed lier's channel.
Food security shouldn't be part of a market that can be manipulated by outside forces. Problem is the lower yields due to organic farming are expected, but exhausted soil is going to get there just as quickly.
Focusing on food security would be even worse for farmers since the EU as a whole is already producing much more food to feed itself. The current system is focused on producing a big surplus for export.
Organic farms just take longer to reach full capacity, plenty of studies show yields are comparable when you only use mature organic farms for comparison to chemical farms.
Big AG swallows hundreds of small farms by outcompeting and it makes the countryside empty of people = social fabric changes/disaster when there are no people who can sustain schools/infrastructure etc. Not even mentioning knowledge lost, to become a farmer you must be nuts, it's damm hard and it requires so much knowledge. I love farming and hope regulations/systems will leave some breathing space, but it seems we farmers need to fight for such a future otherwise someone will make ill-informed decisions on our behalf/interests.
This is happening across the western world, seems part of "Dear Claus" WEF strategy for the control. Many years ago I grew up on a small homestead farm in the UK, beef, cereal and mainly grass for hay. Most of the hay crop was sold standing to dairy farmers, the small amount of beef was feed on home grown hay and home grown cereal. Having traveled through parts of northern europe over the years I have watched the change especially in France from small farms to Agri businesses which have in the pursuit of profit ripped out hedges become massive mono culture fields using ever bigger machinery. this reduces the diversity for animals at the bottom of the food chain which in turn affects animals higher up the food chain. It is/ has happened in the UK the farm I grew up on with woods, ponds hedges, has been bought up by a farming conglomerate which has cut down the woods, ripped out the hedges filled in the ponds and made a mono culture field adjoined onto their own field. If the EU is stupid enough to encourage GM crops then the bio diversity will decrease further (norther america prairie land style) and the effect on nature will be extensive, more fertiliser and pesticides will be used, the only winners will be the company that makes/sells the seed and the pesticide. Politicians and their army of bureaucrats know nothing of farming unless they have been farmers, so instead of interfering on the grand scale, they should gently nudge in the general direction they want and leave the agricultural sector to sort itself out. In this case they should back away from their plans at speed. Looking at the size of the tractors in the protest it isn't just the small farmer who have shown up but farmers with larger acreage as well.
Excellent video as always. The solution probably lies in a combination of strategies. Not every issue can be solved immediately. We'll also need continual redjustment as food insecurity continues to rise.
In Portugal the Farmers are just protesting for more and more regular funding from the government and more governmental envolvement, and in the rest of europe they are protesting for LESS government interfeerence
Europe (the EU) does this thing where they think they can have their cake and eat it to. Life is about trade-offs, and you need to decide what you value more. The EU lost in tech, and will never recover, because of GDPR and European phobias around data privacy. You can't have the strictest regulations AND the most competitive market at the same time. For farming, pick two: support Ukraine, have strict safety standards, protect the environment and fight climate change. You can't have all 3.
@@cia5649 lol no, sorry buddy. You think SpaceX, Tesla, Microsoft, Salesforce, Apple, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, etc. are Social Media? The person here who doesn't know what they're talking about is you.
@@jeffmorris5802 Spotify, Ericsson, ubisoft, bluetooth, northvolt, Klarna, ArianSpace, ASML, SAP, Dassault Systems etc so yeah u dont know what your talking about
I also wonder what europes farmers are getting for their crops per bushel. If its like canada where folks are getting the same price for their grain that their parents or grandparents were getting 50 years earlier? yet equipment, land and input costs are 150% higher, then theres something wrong.
I live in the Spanish region of Castilla y León, an agricultural and livestock region. Our farmers and ranchers, like the rest of Europe, cannot continue living in decent conditions due to low prices and the large amount of bureaucracy imposed by the European Union. In addition to unfair competition from products that come from African countries (in the case of Spain, mainly Morocco) or Latin America. That's why I don't understand the attacks they make on us from France, blaming the Spaniards for the problems in the French countryside, when we are not the problem! Anyway, I hope that we all unite in defense of our farmers and ranchers, because without them there is no future.
Comedor de ranas aquí🇲🇫, The problem in France is that supermarkets buy huge quantities of low price greens and fruits abroad while saying to french farmers their price are too expensive. So they see goods from for exemple Spain and Morocco sold in France while their aren't. I think that's because the french farming industry is less intensive than her competitors'(Spain and Marrueco for exemple) Pero si, los franceses veen los productos españoles de la misma manera que los productos marruecos o de latam. Son productos extranjeros comprados a menor precios que los productos frances. Y piden para un control de las exportacciones. Para mi los agricultores franceses deberian intensificar sus produciones en lugar de gritar
I hope that you will not share my fate. The bank has forced us to sell the milkcows because the income off the farm was to low. Lucky my sons have jobs working with their hands. Greetings out off the Netherlands.
Long transport of food has usually a negative impact on food quality. So logically have an impact on tomatoes transport from France to Spain. Or the other way round. German newspaper "Spiegel" website just added an interesting interview on tomatoes. The expert states that the quality of tomatoes from greenhouses is low - be it from greenhouses in France or in Spain. But harvested tomatoes have to be kept a controlled low temperatures with a negative impact on quality the longer it takes. She uses only tomatoes from her own garden in Germany (summer only). And added a well known fact: for years, around 80% of tomato concentrate "made in Italy" is from China. For example tripple concentrated tomato pulp from China is imported in large barrels (1 ton), becomes "produced in Italy" simply by being canned after adding some water (and maybe some salt).
The problem is that policies seem to take into account ideology over reality. Basically, the policies have aims that do not take into account the immediate well being of citizens. The arguments tend to be, if this is not done today we will suffer tomorrow. The problem is that if people are suffering today it does not inspire confidence in policies regarding the future. If you damage someone's wellbeing today why should he trust you regarding tomorrow? The farmers are looking at the situation as existential now. Why would I leave my farm to go to some city to dump manure at some public building, incurring the costs associated with such action?
Maybe the farmers should have listened to everybody else 15 years ago when we were protesting neoliberal policies instead of blaming progressives and socialdemocrats.
Its not about parties, we have parties that brands them selfs and ideology like night and day but they keep running the exact eu policies no matter whos in charge. This is communist european union that are invading sovereing countries and governments first and then peoples wealth. People dont realise that eu is communist take over europe.
Someone educate me.... why is crop "stubble" NOT ploughed back into the land as natural fertilizer anymore? Why remove it from the ground and use phosphate dug up elsewhere? Or am I missing something?
Wait till others realize the "net 0" goal (combined with aversion to nuclear power, lack of electricians, rising power consumption etc.) will cause even higher inflation and the inability for regular people to own a car. Latest EU idea is to ban car repair. So if your car breaks after 2035 you will have to buy an expensive new EV, or at least get a "certified" replacement battery for 70% price of a new EV. Politicians in Brussels seem to live in a different world... where everyone has home with a garage (for charging, to mount solar panels on the roof etc) and can spend 40.000 euro every couple years on a new car
Sound pretty good to me. 20 years ago there were half as many cars per person in Europe and people still managed to get by. Obesity rates were also lower. Make cities more walkable and fund public transport. It would be better for the environment and health. Not everyone needs to own a car.
@@boopyvacaine reason why people move out of the city and need a car are ridiculous prices. A 19m2 "micro-apartment" is same price as an old 100m2+ home (or half a huge home) with land and maybe some buildings for garage or a workshop. Rent is also very high. I pay 550 monthly for a flat (without power or heating, it's rent+ cold water up to a limit+ garbage only) while yearly property tax on a standalone home is 600-750... Sure you need to pay monthly for garbage and save for a new roof or exterior paint/ insulation on your own, but I did the math and over the years the standalone home is much cheaper.
@@Mic_Glow The biggest rise in cars I have seen has been in cities so it’s not only about people moving to more rural areas. I have seen many able bodied people prefer to drive when their destination is only 15 minutes by foot. Rural places still benefit from having public transportation as there are many people who can’t drive, be that from being too old or young, not being able to afford a car, being afraid to drive or simply not wanting to. Also having most amenities like a grocery store or school be within walking distance would also reduce the need for a car. Also if you are saving so much by living rurally I feel like you should be able to invest in a more eco friendly vehicle or even solar panels. Most houses also have a place where you can put a charging station. Obviously climate change is happening and we have to do something about it. I am not against nuclear or repairing old vehicles but we can’t just go on how we have before.
@@boopyvacaine People who bought a home years ago now can afford solar and an EV. Those who buy now struggle to pay mortgage, if they can even afford a down-payment. Everything close-by... sort of. I have a grocery store literally in my building but everything is 20-30% more expensive than in a discount store
As a brazilian i think the thing with europe is that after ww2 they got too comfortable with not having to decide, they could have the best thing of capitalism and socialism at the same time. Now they cant anymore, you cant be competitive in every field anymore. Brazil due to its climate, soil and technology can have 3 harvest a year in the southeast and central region of the country. You can't compete with that, no one can, there is no winter, no snow, nothing... Now you either open the market and try to compensate by selling stuff in what you are good at or you close your market and have inflation and lot of subsidy... The thing is, you cant be competitive in technology, agriculture, industry all at once... China is a powerhouse in technology now, Brazil is number one food producer now, Russia has your gas suply, these players didnt exist 30 years ago, it was only EU, USA and Japan... The world is changing, you can't have the best for you in every field, its time to choose. For example, Brazil couldnt close its market to EU car companies, otherwise we would be without cars, so it was easy to bully Brasil into accepting any agreement, we couldnt say no. Now Chinese cars flowed brazil with its BYDs and GWMs, if EU doesnt open its market for brazilian products its fine, Brasil closes its market to EU products and buy from the chinese. EU has to decide, the times of having the best spot in every agreement is over.
Just like the fishermen in the past, the farmers protest things they dont understand. Notice how fishermen dont protest anymore? Because EU rules and regulations made EU waters the healthiest in the world. If farmers got their way they would farm the soil until it died and farming collapsed. Farmers are the most subsidised sector and they complain that they EU is trying to prevent soil death.
in the 1980s Denmark paid some North Sea fishers to sell their boats and get a different education. If we want to save the small farmers, then we should do the same.
They already are farming like that. The draughts and fires in southern Europe that ruins farming is due to the insane amount of pollution and climate change farmers have helped create.
EU waters are the healthiest in the world? That's a load of bullshit EU propaganda. I dont even understand where you're taking this info from. just google about how clean the Baltic sea is or whatever Greece is doing and dumping into the sea, or romania and bulgaria in the black sea and I will not even start with what is happening with the rivers in Poland and other places. I'm not against the EU but i hate reading EU propaganda
I don't think consolidation into larger farms is necessarily a bad thing. More productive farms are usually good. Yeah it sucks for smaller farmers who can't compete but... Sorry if your business model isn't competitive then you should consider liquidating your assets. The reality is that smaller farms will never be more productive than larger ones and the taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pick up the slack. I'm not a libertarian but in this case it feels like we are treating smaller farmers like some underprivileged minority that we need to help and save at all costs. When in reality they are business like any other.
True, but telling someone you must give up a 6 generation family farm because corpererste big wigs can do it cheaper is a bitter pill to swallow. Especially from a land ownership kinda take. Imagine someone saying that you must give up your house because a cooperation can rent it back to you for less. Not an apples to apples comparison, but that's how they have to feel about it. It's there entire livelihood, identity, and beliefs may be based around this little plot of land and traditional life. You may be 100% right about it being better for the wider society, but it definitely stomps out some little guys
Should be noted too that big ag and food companies have brought a lot of suffering along with their efficiency. Goverment subsided oreos haven't been the greatest thing to happen to the planet. That's a different debate altogether, thou
Farms are not "a business like any other". They produce FOOD. The lowest tier on Maslow's hierarchy. The basis of existence. Besides that, farms are one of the very few sectors where most of the factors governing production are natural. Amount of sunlight, frosts, droughts, excessive rain, storms, pests, crop disease, they all have an immensive influence on yield, much more so than the regular risks of the market, supply and demand, that other businesses face. Combine that with the fact that we need food, and it makes sense to help farmers to financially cover for some of those risks, instead of forcing them to liquidate when they have a couple of bad years due to factors completely outside their influence, and completely unpredictable ones at that. No other business that produces essential goods has to deal with these factors. Finally, economy of scale is one of the areas where farming actually gets worse the larger it gets. It may produce more food on average (although I would argue that large farms are better at generating more profit than they are at generating more food), but it also introduces large single points of failure (if disease strikes, it affects the entire farm, whereas a distributed network of smaller farms will only see a few of those affected), and much longer supply lines that are also vulnerable to failure. Smaller, more local farms can supply their immediate region instead of that region having to buy food from large farms that may be situated hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away, like now. Our current model leads to more emissions from shipping, food that is less fresh, higher prices because of higher investments and overhead, and even lower quality because crops are chosen for shelf life, ease of shipping, and uniformity rather than taste. Studies have even found that crops today are less nutritious than 50 years ago because that's not what modern day crop varieties are selected for. Modern farming needs to be subsidised, small scale, diversified, and with low environmental impact to have a future. That may not be as profitable as large scale farms, but it is better for us the people, the food we eat, and the land we live on.
The country that gives up its ability to sustain its population with food grown domestically will sit under the thumb of someone else. Food grown in Europe for Europe. And some parts exported and some like measure parts imported because 'variety'. If I must chose between climate change crying bureaucrats and politicians all rubbing their knees together and with lobbyists and having the european farmers continue strong and able to support the population and exporting. I'll chose the farmers every time. If you must blah about co2... then you reduce something else - not. the. food. supply.
Green movement have a myopic vision. Mandates makes lower yields. EU will turn to the US and Australia crowding out China, and India which will import more from Brazilwhich, leading to rainforest loss. Why are they being so shortsighted?
Europe's problem originates from excessive bureaucracy in its parliament, resulting in harm to the continent and farmers due to high taxes, forced carbon zero enforcement without a long-term plan, inflation, the effects of the Ukrainian war, and inadequate liquidity support. Meanwhile, countries like China, India and Vietnam face no penalties for importing raw materials without adhering to ecological standards, leading to unfair competition for farmers.
If you think the Parliament is the problem you either don't know who ultimately takes the decisions or you don't understand the amount of bureaucracy in other institutions.
So you're saying that, because China, India and Vietnam import low quality materials that are destroying our planet and people's health, EU countries should be allowed to do the same? What's the end goal here? Increasing agriculture profits for 30 years before the climate is so fucked that nothing will grow anymore?
But the bureaucracy is in place exactly to avoid horrible quality and non-existent ecological standards. You cannot enforce laws without administration, there's no magic way to do that. The problem is Green lunatics banned GMO's in Europe 20 years ago, despite no evidence of any harm originating from them. We can maintain yields without pesticides if GMO's are adopted. We can maintain balance with natural environments if EU's population stops growing via immigration.
The bureaucracy and administration costs in the EU are very small. In 2022, with 243 billion of total spending, the EU spent 11.5B on administration, just under 5%. Common Agricultural Policy by contrast, cost 56B, 23% of the budget.
Because they are huge landowners who only care about money, see anything thats nature as their direct enemy, and have heavy machinery that allows them to blackmail entire countries. What was the reaction again when youth for climate blocked highways? Very different then when farmers do it.... They're just living in a fantasy, not realising the world is changed, and expecting the same as 50 years ago.
Everytime you walk into the supermarket you buy something produced by your cursed farmers. I advice you to produce your own food because only then you will appreciate when you are struggling with nature.
I grew up in a farming community when at that time , just as it is now - the amount of money a farmer gets is used for a raft of expenses. For instance - repairing fences, repairing machinery, food for livestock, food for themselves, fuel, electricity and the list goes on. In the 80's a relative told one of my parents that supermarkets were buying out & taking over farms. This suggests that supermarkets have more power to dictate the price of food both to the farmer and the customer. Just because a system might be outdated doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Most farmers are look after their properties in an environmentally appropriate manner the best way they know how & are under extreme pressure. Alot of these woke/politicals/elites don't have a clue because they've never done it themselves or experienced this amount of hardship. It appears the woke/crazy environmentalist are trying to inflict a utopia & utopia doesn't exist
So we're basically subsidizing dairy and meat consumption in countries like China? What a strange strategy. Let's hope more of that giant buget goes to actually improving farming through innovation, rather than just handing out bags of money.
you are such a brain! excellent conclusion. why do chinese buy european milk? because their corporate farms sell a product of questionable quality in order to make a better profit! unfortunately, this is not an exception in China or with milk. European regulation are the gold standard in the world, but it is being misused to destroy it. by selling milk in China, you are not subsidizing the Chinese because they pay for the product.
Europe's stance on gmos is rediculous, they provide all the things they want, reduced pecticide requirements, reduced fertilizer use, and increased yields
I think the size of the farm isnt the correct way to catagorize. Instead catagorize the farms based on their ratio of output vs fertilizer and pestisides used. And then put systems in place that promote the spread of those high efficency techniques and bussinesses. You want your changes to be guided by the measurements the whole way through. Not "just take a guess then see if the fertilizer use and pestiside use went down". Its very very silly to opperate that way.
Consolidating the farm effectively means corporations taking over the market and turning farmers into tenants on their own land. We’ve seen this before.
i think about how much food is produced and then not consumed and thrown away. to try and bring that level down would greatly lower the profitability of farmers. but it needs to happen. lots of things need to happen to reduce our energy use and pollution. the amount of waste our global civilization produces, if decreased, would have severe economic impact. thats just one example when it comes to food. every time i look at our global economic organization and our species i realize we are just wiley coyote run off a cliff - we just havent' looked down yet. and when we do, forced or not, we will realize the fall and its devastation on what currently is our way of life and expectations from modern civilization. fossil fuels have created an extremely dangerous civilization that cannot last for much longer - at least not for 8+ billion people. doomed if we do - doomed if we dont. think about this when swallowing the pills of the looming energy transition that nobody is going to vote for when they realize what comes with it (less of everything... you cannot change the laws of thermodynamics). but the governance of our societies isnt left or right - its top and bottom and its about power... so i think the farmers in europe and what they are doing is just the tip of the iceberg. what a crazy time to be alive. as carl sagan said before he died "there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere, to save us from ourselves".
Well if you want to control the price of food you need to own all the farms and if you want any to own and control everything on earth you become a multi national..
This is less about the environment than it is politics and global control. 1. When has it ever been a good idea to decrease food production, especially over Nitrogen emissions 2. When did Nitrogen and GHG Emissions become more important than food? Like hello? We still need to eat, and if you don't grow/make it yourself, you still have to source it from somewhere else.
Here in Denmark we produce somewhere between three and five times more food than we need to feed ourselves. Meanwhile farmers get billions in subsidies, emit around a third of our greenhouse gasses and cause cataclysmic levels of fish death due to nitrogen emissions. Cutting back to only producing twice as much food as we need to feed ourselves seems like a no brainer.
@@tobiascornille People have a right to eat, ( its the people who get hurt, not the government), while I'm not saying we should be supporting China this way, and I'm sure China could make their own meat. But the point is, if you control the food, you control the people (Just a general statement). But more importantly, once you lose the food production, you won't get it back.
Organic farming.. really? I know organic farming is a great idea because it's good for us but you only need to look at other countries and how they have collapsed due to this policy.
5:34 So it's a huge problem buying agricultural products from Europe into Europe. What a shame. 9:16 So what more can I say about this hypocrisy of this?
Problem is that in EU, farmer bussines is about grants and other benefits, it's not actual capitalism, no real free market, government is trying to save companies and people who are bad in what they do and that completely destroyed market and now, when some cheaper ukrainian stuff enters market, they are angry because they know they can't compare with that without another grants. I kind of understand them, they didn't create this stupid system, they just live in that, but a lot of these farmers would already went bankrupt and their place could be took by someone better and more capable like it is supposed to be in free market and actual capitalism. But EU is more like socialism today, unfortunately. If farmers in Ukraine, in country which is destroyed by war are able to make it cheaper, then EU is doing something wrong, that's for sure. Another problem is what I call a "german supermarket mafia" - companies like Lidl, Kaufland etc....they don't want to pay fair prices to farmers and then they sell their products for very high prices and that's why Germany is that rich, it's a modern colonialism and slavery, we should make laws against German companies because this is already getting out of our hands, it was not such extreme in the past, but now after enrgocrisis? Companies like Lidl will pay you like 25 cents for some product and then they are selling it for 5 eur and I am not exagerrating it, it's today reality, they are exploiting their oligopol and cartel deals and this has to stop, but our government doesn't have "balls" to do something against our loved germans who "saved" us after 1989 from going bankrupt. That's 34 years ago, nobody cares what was in early 90s, they are slavers now. And I really recommend everyone to NOT support German chains if you have other option, yes, even Tesco or Ahold is better option if you can go there, just don't go to Lidl, Kaufland, NORMA etc...it's the german mafia. There is no other way how to change market than don't support them with our money, unfortunately I live in a small town where only biger supermarket is NORMA. They have nothing for high prices, I have to go there, but I already stopped buying some products which are REALLY overpriced, like everything from Haribo, like no, this went to far, don't buy anything from Haribo. Price is double or triple of 2019 price, we should not accept this. Don't support Germans if you have other option. I wish more polish chains entered our market, I would love to support them instead of germans who are already rich enough and pretending like we take more than we pay to EU, it's a lie, we literally feed them and their economy is based on modern slavery but Germans living in Germany can't see that.
Capitalism is partly to blame. Capitalism tends to maximize profits and minimize costs, which in turn, creates monopolies. Which is partly why there are less farmers.... But also why South Africa is importing into the E.U. and vice versa.... It is also why the farmland itself is so expensive and why costs are so high..... A socialist debt cancellation perhaps?
Pls understand that the money we get in subsidies, are priced into the landprice... The subsidies are turned to interest payments, after the first year. Example 1ha makes 1000 Eur profit, = a land price of 20.000 Eur, if you give the farm a subsidie of 500 euro the profit is now 1500 euro and the land price just rose to 30.000 Euro.... Subsidies are for the banks not the farmers. once a new farmer buys the land at 30.000 the subsidie does no longer support the farmers, but instead the financial sector.
Farmers actually support the tertiary and labour market sectors as both are very protected by regulation while farm gate incomes are globalized. This means the so-called subsidy is actually a rebate to help cope with the many costs businesses imposed on farmers by the nonfarm sector.
Why do not U produce profitable products? It looks like that some agriculture companies are making billions whyle some farmers are angry they are not rentable... Sell those lands, keep some for hobby if thats what you want to do.
@@kashmirha We are producing profitable products that are number 3 on the list of human needs after air and water. I ask, why can't the urban sector supply agricultural needs at a global price like farms sell under. If you think food produced cheaply is not important, stop consuming food, and thats one way to fix the problem. RIP
There is no really simple answer, but from a security perspective Europe needs to consider that if they get their food from countries that are not entirely friendly, look at what happened with Germany depending on Russia too much for gas. Sadly I feel the EU needs to keep their farmers and accept the tradeoffs, it would be really risky to rely on other countries for their food.
If you reduce your own emissions just to import from a country with lower environmental standards, not much point in the standards - is that addressed in some way, eg with tariffs on imports grown under less restrictive (ie less expensive) environmental standards?
Oh, my goodness! NITROGEN emissions!! We can't have that! After all the air we breathe and have been breathing for hundreds of years is ONLY a mere 78% nitrogen. This is a potential calamity if we don't move to cut these emissions drastically!
Holy potato 😮 There are so many factors and consequences! It's crazy. Thank you for making this oversight of the matter understandable, for someone who has a hard time seeing trhough it! Shit. I think the best I can do, is to support my local farmers, where I can.
Why don't smaller farms create co-ops and the government give them funding based on co-op size, then co-op member decide how it's divided. wouldn't they get more in funding. in the country here there are co-ops... there have always been co-ops
Most agricultural products are traded on the global market. EU farmers cannot sell their goods at rates Ukrainians, Indians or Americans can if they are going to be burdened by massive regulations with no funding to back it up. Margins are already as thin as they can get and to be profitable you need to expand either by producing more or refining your produce otherwise you might just as well sell your farm.
The government are like oppressing and controlling them treating them like slaves with their policies endanger their people to starvation and famine. It's won’t end well. Where food bread biscuit, cake, ice cream grain, meat, process food and milk in the supermarket come from first we need farmers. The supermarket and restaurants benefits not farmers
So the European citizen pays for food twice, once through taxes that support farmers and once through food that could have been imported cheaper from abroad. Nice 😂
And the result will be? Collapse of EU farming, creating food insecure and dependency on 3rd parties, lower quality foods, unemployment will go much much higher, and the GDP will go down... the list goes on and on and on... for what benefit? Lower prices for a few months until those 3rd parties decide the increase the prices...
So I went to a farmers market in EU and yes I was surprised by sticker shock. 30 euros for a kilo of cheese. Yes it is amazing cheese. But at that price it cost less to buy a slice of quiche for 17 euro at a restaurant. This is very expensive for such a poor area. I really do not know what the locals do to cope. A lot of small business were either closed or were going out of business. I find this very depressing and I feel very bad for everyone going through this .... protesting / riots are NOT the answer it only destroys the property and the hope of the people trying to get through this ....
@@Thefinalcountdown650 You are making me hungry. But yes it is expensive even from buying directly from the farmer and I like to cook and bake but I was travelling through EU so THAT delicious quiche was SOOO good and I enjoyed not having to do all the buying and cooking. I found adding a couple of different kinds of cheeses makes the quiche really tasty. Like a smoke gouda, and a sharp cheddar with regular fresh mozzarella. But making the Quiche in southern CA USA will be less expensive and maybe it is because we have so many farmers producing cheeses, but the smoke gouda comes form EU. But the baking is pretty expensive in a electric oven. The power company rates are very high so baking time is an issue and now in the summer and baking is not a good idea in 100 F temps 37 C.
I am amazed that you made no reference to the Corporate squeeze on farmers. Firstly the farmer has no power over the costs of Seeds, Fertilisers and Pesticides and secondly the farmers get the crumbs from the Processors and Corporate Retailers. Many researcher have identified these issues as being very influencial in the stimulating Farmer rage.
Right. And the "farmers unions" are part of that "game", selling overpriced seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides for maximising their own profits too. With also governments helping those big companies.
Then do without them. Ohh they can only produce 30% without the inputs? That certainly means that 70% of your production is based not on your work but on the inputs. Now again, why should the corporations subsidies your profits with cheaper inputs?
Unfortunately we waited to long to reduce our dependence on chemical fertilisers. Sure newer fertilisers such as polyhalite may help expand timeline. Ultimately were at a do or die albit just. But is still better to act sooner than later.
EU exporting food is a bad thing for ordinary EU citizens. Agriculture receives a lot of EU subsidies, which come from EU citizens. If agriculture expands to export more, they get more subsidies, they take something away from other EU citizens. Subsidies are always paid by someone and are usually a bad idea, everyone should be allowed to provide their own food supply in the EU.
Here come the corporate farmers. This is a repeat of what happened in the 90s in America. When it was over corporate Farms took over. They have made a tactical mistake.
Family-business farmers are the only guarantee to safety of food supply. Few corporations would be very much unstable and since they are profit-oriented - lower quality food.
@@badart3204 BS lol. And if it would be true, it would be another reason to end subsidies. Should we give more money to the people who already control us??😁
Thanks for explaining this complex issue! It sounds like farmers are trying to keep an old way of doing things in which they received special treatment rather than competing in a free market. Now they're throwing a tantrum cause their not being preferred by protectionist policies. The meat & dairy sector is the big problem in the situation, because it requires significantly more resources to produce their products rather than plants to feed directly to people. Usually less than 10% of plants fed to animals are converted to actual food for humans. But we could eat plants directly. Europe very well could feed the population if they were shifting to a plant based diet rather than resource intensive meat & dairy.
It's another sector that is crippled by corruption and privatisation. Food supply is is a matter of public interest, European security and fundamental existence. It should be regulated massively. Farmers shouldn't have to buy land for market prices and the the profit margins of companies between the farmers and consumers need to be capped.
Problem I see is tunnel-vision. 1. restart EU produced fertilizer makers, namely focusing on phosphates and potassium. 2. Hügelkultur & terra preta, both helped to get there from maintaining healthy forests. Also this locks in the natural nitrogen into the soil itself instead of it washing away, added bonus is locking carbon into the soil.
A poor analysis. Even for a 10 minutes summary. The only somehow good part is on EU subsidiaries - almost all for large farming groups (not necessarily "farmers"), not much left for small farms. Totally missing is the historical aspect: France (mainly De Gaulle) wanted to maximise returns for the countries farmers by getting all the subsidies they could from the "European Common Market". France had to become the main food production country for "Europe". Later other countries with important food production and lots of surface for food production joined what now is EU - with still the same approach for maximising subsidies. Other point are food markets in most EU countries - distributors have become monopolies, use common purchase organisations to get lowest purchase prices, maximise their profits on food sales; farmers were not allowed to sell directly to consumers. And farmers were not really interested in getting a larger share of sales prices - they got the subsidies from EU. Farmers unions were part of that game: most of the "farmers unions" have become big business, maximising their own profits by selling more and more pesticides, insecticides, fertilisers to farmers (even if not necessary), active only for getting subsidies. In France, many farmers are contractually bound to suppliers and buyers (pig raisers for example) - bound buying products, and bound selling their products to large companies at low prices, bad terms. The farmers have to pay for the investments, have all the work - but not the profits of their work. The EU needs major reforms - one is farming. New Zealand has done such a reform - suppressed close to all farming subsidies some 40 years ago. And their farming is now part of worlds best.
I don't understand the thumbnail. It seems to be pointing to a European farmers revolt map but what is the meaning of the colours? It can't be that one revolted and the other not, so what it is? Did I miss it in the video? 😅
Hmmm it is meant to be the countries with the largest protest movements 😅 If it is not clear then I will play around with it some more. Thanks for the feedback! -Hugo
I'm just a client, im not producing abything myself, here is ny five eurocents 1) I woudnt care dbout higher prices IF the miney would go to the farmers, but I've heard ehat are prices to buy from them and what are prices I buy those. I want to pay the farmers. Let them have nore chance to sell on their own 2) Importing from countries outside of EU is not helping climate but changing place where the pollution is. Its like I would start going to bath at my grandma place while claming I reduced water usage in ny home and I am a hero. 3) I want to buy local!!! 4) Things are hard to change if the clients wont change. This is something that hurts me the most. If clients would buy better food it would shift naturally too 5) idk my English in that topic isnt good so maybe I put my thoughts badly djdjdjf but i tried
A society completely dominated by economic laws cannot be a happy society. There is no need for more economic optimization. There is a need for more happiness for the common people. More time for family and neighbors and friends, more nature, more culture, more health, more sex, more children, more certainty of a happy and humane future.
I refuse to purchase GMOs!!!! I grow my own heirlooms!!! Government can kiss my ass!!! I raise everything I need on my land and what I don't I can live without!!!
We don’t want to find ways to increase the population and crowded conditions. Fight to the end my heros 💪 Today’s farming already has that effect and we don’t want to take it to the next level.
Please link your souces!! I could definitely use these in the public debates happening in my home country of Denmark 🇩🇰🇪🇺
Especially the on that shows that small dcale farmers are losing financially
Hi here are the 3 main sources/reports for the whole video:
EU FARM ECONOMICS OVERVIEW FADN 2018 (EU Commission)
Modeling environmental and climate ambition in the agricultural sector with the CAPRI model (JRC)
MONITORING EU AGRI-FOOD TRADE (EU Commission)
Cheers,
Hugo
@@IntoEurope Thank You, and please do it on a constant base.
Also the article named "Flasker alt sig, er der også mulighed for at jordpriserne vil stige endnu mere, lyder vurderingen fra Jens Schjerning, cheføkonom i Agrocura."
They are intentionally making it hard for farmers so that they can buy their land.
In Denmark, the soil is sold on the open market. This is all supply and demand.
Some farmers have been more successful than others, but the success of the successful farmers have caused soil prices to rise.
Well, I'm quite sure that the other continent's farmers are not exactly the beauty contest winners either.
LOL. I had to go back and read the title
😂😂
pfffff good one
.....has the title since been changed lol
@@Envy_May Yeah, revolting has been changed to Rebelling
The farmers are just protesting. Why insult them by calling them revolting? 😀
You think its "insulting" by calling it revolting.....how?
@@inkedge1519
1. it's a joke
2. use a dictionary
Because he is dog of US. And making propaganda
Only BLM riots are endorsed by the corporate giants.
@@inkedge1519 tell me your world lens is oppression vs oppressed without telling me 🤣 homie couldn't even understand the joke
Excellent video Hugo thanks for sharing this. I’m myself a Swedish small scale livestock farmer and have been thinking about these issues for several years.
It’s just like you said, these new policies introduced last year are driving farmers in two completely different directions. In the 60s and 70s farmers were basically told to produce as much food as they could by having subsidies coupled to production. The 80s brought about a quota system limiting production to stop the butter mountains and lakes of olive oil flooding the market. The 90s brought about a shift from price support to income support, ie direct payments based on the amount of land in production. Ultimately changing the priorities of producers and leading to the 80/20 ration you mention. Now, post COP21 the union is scrambling to move the sector in a new direction and fast resulting in a clash of paradigms that we are currently seeing.
Apart from the regional differences that can easily be pointed to with for example nitrous oxide limits in the Netherlands to cheap grain flooding the Polish farmers. There are deeper systemic and cross cutting concerns that I think brought farmers to the streets in this capacity. It’s the feeling of being at the end of the line.
The old timers (avg age of farmer in EU is over 62 have seen it he following trend through their lifetime. Falling incomes and rising costs. inequitable pricing structures across the food chain. lack of level playing field when it comes to ag imports. dissatisfaction with european negotiations on cheaper imports. A rapidly changing international context making markets and pricing increasingly volatile and risky. Increased bureaucratic burdens and even more too down demands with no or little tied compensation. At the same time the young farmers trying to get established in the sector see a lack of future prospects, and with the insanely high capital intensive start up cost coupled with even uncertain and rapidly changing pricing structure for both input and output it’s just too risky to pursue a life as a food producer.
Another salt on the wounds is the huge problem that the profits of food production don’t lie with the farmer but at the retailers and input end (fertilizer and pesticide producers). there needs to be a redistribution of profits so consumers aren’t only ones that have to bear the load of increased food prices. While farmers are loosing money the retailers downstream and input producers upstream are getting away with insane profits. All the while banks are making out like bandits on the interest payments from the debts of farmers.
The problem is not the commission has proposed stricter environmental demands that are slowly creeping into the system. Many farmers do care and want to see more biodiversity on their farms and want to adapt and transition to climate resilient production methods. But to do that costs money. And the demands now posed on European farmers have been unrolled to quickly and been too ambitious with not enough proposed funding.
These protests are very important because they are shaping the direction of the future EU farming policies and the farming sector. However with the looming elections this summer this is going to be an issue for the next elected mandate.
It’s easy to understand why farmers have a deep sense of being stuck under the thumbs or large corporations up- and downstream dictating their costs and incomes as well the beurocrats not willing to share in the burden and risk of being a food producer. And the irony is that the people hit first by the consequences of climate change and a decrease in biodiversity, which these environmental schemes try to address is the farmers themselves. I believe they want to move in a greener direction but we are not willing to carry the entire burden and do it alone. We demand that others take responsibility for their part in making this happen for everyone. As long as the farmer feels as if they are loosing at the benefit of others, farming in Europe will never be able to be part of the solution it needs to be. That’s just a sad fact.
These protests need to show everyone how sick the system is and urge everyone, from consumer to policymakers and food producers alike that we need to have a deep and serious discussion of how we realign our cultural values about food and food production. Subsidies are just one tool. The deeper work of healing our food system is a ginormous undertaking but one future generations will thank us for doing.
Globalism at work.
Same can be said for many things in society now.
You cannot start a grocery store, simply cause you cannot compete on scale with the large ones. And thus your grocery store will be too expensive to survive.
To be able to start a grocery store, you would need billions kroners. Bombard the country in your grocery stores, so you can achieve the scale aswell.
But fact is, most people do not have access to such capital. Same goes for farming these days. Im a young guy who wants to farm. But the economics dont make any sense since i dont have capital.
I can borrow capital from the bank, and buy a farm. But then most of profits of my farm would go the bank, since farming is so competitive. I simply cannot compete with my local oligarch who farms our entire valley with his huge machines. All small farmers have gone, most farms are just houses now that rent out their land to the big farmers.
To compete with my local oligarch, i would have to have billions of kroners. He has so much land, that if every Norwegian owned as much land. Norway would only fit 870 people.
I can drive 2 hours west, all i see is his land. Norway is the world most privatly owned country.
Local oligarch does forestry aswell ofc, and runs a chain of stores that sell lumber goods. Hes vertical integrated lumber, sawmill and selling points. How can i compete with that? I cannot.
The few small farms that survive, are close to town so they can live off making niche/luxury products to the upper middleclass and can survive on small scale by taking a premium price, for a premium product. But they are slowly dying. As young people cannot enter the market.
Housing has increased alot in Norway. My father in 87 bought a house for a total of 3.3 years of his income as a lampsalesman. If i am to buy the same house today, it will cost me 11-12 years salary.
But farms, have increased more than twice as much in price as housing the past 20 years.
I think for me to live my farming dream, i have to move to a 3rd world country where the global market has not reached yet.
God i wish i was born 400 years ago.. Or in 200 years.. What a terrible time to be alive when society is in its puberty.
This is late stage capitalism. People are getting really fed up by it. We need an universal income. We need to protect certain things from raw capitalism.
Society eats worse food today, than just 40 years ago. The quality is horrible, the taste is lacking, they are void of vitamins and minerals.
Why? Capitalism. Why grow tomatoes in Sweden where you have to heat greenhouses, when you can grow them in Spain. Ship them to Scotland, and when the market needs red tomatoes. You take from your pile of green tomatoes, run them into a gas chamber and woops. Red tomatoes..
Tomatoes today are bred for storage, not being bruised during transport and other factors that have nothing to do with taste or nutrition.
The bread we eat today make us sick, cause its cheaper to make bread with yeast that works fast. Instead of natural yeast.
The con is that the fast yeast does not break down gluten properly. And thus why we got this massive increase in gluten intolerance.
Simply cause the industrial complex wants to make stuff cheaper.
We need to think of a better system than capitalism.
Circular economy sounds much nicer. If we had a circular economy, we would take all the fertilizer us humans poop out and take it back to the farms. Instead of sending the minerals to the ocean like we do today. Cause its cheaper to get new minerals from mining, oil and other sources than reuse what we have.
Capitalism in action.
Yes, making another sewage system just for human waste will be expensive. But in the longrun, it will pay for itself..
However capitalism does not like long investments like this. People are mortal and want to se return on their investment fast.
A state is immortal, it can do investments a mer mortal cannot. Simply due to the timescale a nation survives.
Im 37 years old want to do lots of stuff, but on my own accord. (Ive been exploited enough for one lifetime to ever work for someone again)
But currenly only a drag on society, since society do not give me the options i want. I dont want to sit on an oilplatform. I dont want to be an obedient worker for someone.
I dont want to work so my boss can build a cabin costing 120 millioner kroner..(Yup my last boss built this cabin while i was working there) I want to work for me and my family. Not some rich prick sitting in Switzerland.
Now there would be lots of options in society for me if i was good with people, sadly i am not. So all i have is my head and my hands. My education is an "Oilworker" which society/family pressed me to do. Never worked as one except when ive been desperate for money on occasion.
@@MrDanisveunderstandable.
Our system will need to evolve.
I agree that it will probably be better in a few hundred years - but what exactly that system will look like nobody knows.
It will probably be some form of a regulated and well understood market system that has parts that are extremely free liberal capitalism but other parts that are socialist/redistribution in nature is my guess.
We probably need to better understand what to touch and how and what to leave alone completely and be free without intervening.
Eric Weinstein made an interesting remark. He said the future system could be more capitalist and more socialist than today's system at the same time.
You need a meritocratic system for sure while at the same time mitigating the negative pathologies we see today that make life increasingly unliveable or seemingly unfair for larger segments of the lower/middle class.
I imagine it to be a mix of mexitocracy within the limit (gradient distribution not too sharp in incline).
It will be a huge challenge but simply saying "circular economy" or "socialism" really says nothing and helps no one.
Smart people need to work on that.
I think the crypto space will yield some interesting results in time.
Ai could also help with insights of how best to structure a complex system with autonomous agents.
The basic thing is:
The wealth we have in today's society is a miracle.
We need a world where we can have similar amounts of wealth and progress while at the same time being more equitable and humane.
The error that most people make is that they assume that the levels of wealth will stay the same but fairness will get better "if we just implemented" another system.
The evidence so far points to the opposite:
It's very hard to create wealth-creating systems and very easy to have a dysfunctional society and economy.
We don't realize how fragile everything is and yet have to solve problems and make progress.
We need a higher degree of upward social mobility though.
I think at some point we should inevitably reach a post scarcity world though - a world where Energy has become so cheap and abundant as well as labor (ai/robots) that it should drive all costs down so much that it should be easy to cover everybody's needs.
It will pose new systems levels challenges though but by that time we may have gotten a lot smarter and wiser already or be replaced with something that is (maybe a mix of biologically and technologically enhanced humans, preferably with more spiritual development or maybe super-agi, who knows.)
Sounds like they knew what they were doing in the 60s and 70s
@@Humanaut. I agree with you alot.
Yes the world will need free market to drive us. But i dont see why we need the free market everywhere. Not every sector needs to be exploited to the maximum. Specially not those essential for our human existance or essential for quality of life.
A good example is food. We see what capitalism has done to food. Why do we continue down this road? Yes it has made food super cheap, it has made industrial products that can survive a nuclear winter and be made cheap. But often not very healthy, nutritious etc.
Capitalism focus on one thing, and that is efficiency. But if im to be honest. Not everything needs to be super efficient.
Just look at our cows. When i was a kid it took 3 years for a cow to reach slaughter weight. It eat only grass and hay that was it, it eat from the local fields.
Today our cows reach slaughter weight at 2 years. They get fed soybeans from the other side of the world and feed milled feed.
The cow of the old days, required very little machinery or human intervention. Once you have established a field there is almost no human intervention to keep them fed.
Today there are huge operations to keep the cows fed, huge machinery plowing fields. Fertilizing, spraying, then all the transport etc.
All in the name of more efficiency.
While its not really needed. And makes for worse product, cause grassfed beef taste much better. Has more omega fatty acids, more minerals etc. Its jut a better beef in every way. Except efficiency.
So we do all this work, to make a worse product. But a cheaper product.
Just makes little sense to me.
Like when it comes to power generation. This is not something so complex, thats its hard for a state to plan.
Norway planned all its power generation, and funded it via the people so they would become owners. Result? Some of the cheapest electric power the world has seen.
That benefit is gone now tho, that we have connected outselfs to the European grid where power generation has been mismanaged or not manged at all. Just left to the free market.
Tho the owners of the cheap hydroelectric plants make a ton of money right now. It does not benefit the people directly. Like intended.
I get that planning complex things should be avoided. The communist examples are good experiment on that. Pretty inefficient for a state to manage how much milk goes to a store etc. Market regulates that much better.
However, we know how to use hybrid systems today. To get what we want out of a system (Planned economy) all while subjecting it to market forces.
Kinda how China is running its entire modern economy. And how the nordic countries used to run, before they went all Neo-capitalistic in the 90s and on.
Norway let all its industry and skills die, cause oil shot up the wage price. Norwegian business became unproductive. And Norwegian goverment did not care, and just let stuff die. Instead of protecting it while the economy suffers from dutch disease.
Norway had the world 3rd most profitable IT company. It made the F-16 simulators, it had the entire swedish nuclear power generation datasystems. It supplied computing power to CERN etc. Heart of European electronics was in Norway for a littlebit.
But then the oil came, and killed it all.
Our system is not fragile at all, aslong as the changes are slow and minor. Its when changes happen to fast, or events that change the economy fast.
Thats when our society is fragile. However, when the changes come slowly and people being informed. Then society adapts amazingly well.
Like if goverment tells all its citizens, that we are slowly increasing interest rates too 6% in a 15 year period. So we can have a more stable economy void of these huge loan bubbles we finance our growth on today.
Then it would have little effect on the economy. We would get slightly less growth cause people would lend less money to produce stuff we dont need.
Having the interest rate on loans lower than economic growth, is not wise and makes for huge loans bubbles that will have to burst at some point. In the western economy it seems it burst every 10 years lately. Id like to smoothen the economy out by having abit higher interest rate. Yes, that will cost us abit in longterm growth. But the growth we will have, will be more real. And more robust.
@@MrDanisve Yes, I agree with you too, though I think we always need to look at all the prerequisites of a system that made/make it work and not take any of the factors for granted.
I am German, and if I would ever emigrate I'd pick one of the Scandinavian/nordic countries probably.
Or at the very least a European one.
I think just purely from a statistical standpoint they are amongst the best countries in the world to live in.
Most civilized, low crime, strong economy but a good life/work balance.
But that is extremely hard to achieve, and we know this by the fact that very few countries in the world have ever achieved this and those that have achieved it have only done so for a very short period of time (historically speaking) and I think we are not even aware of all the factors we need to safeguard in order to sustain the direction of development.
One thing I noticed is that we as Europeans take many good things for granted and make assumptions of about human nature that only work within our own cultural and geographical context.
But due to the huge waves of (especially Muslim 3rd world/failed state) migration our systems are being stressed a lot.
I think Norway has spared itself some of that, unlike other European countries.
It has been established that "high trust societies" work the best and I think a high trust society enables a lot of not-for-profit common good policy thinking.
But high trust societies also need to be fairly homogenous in the sense that everybody feels part of the same team and agrees to play by the same rules.
Common cultural identity is needed.
This has become so natural for us that we think other humans will assimilate to think and feel like us over time because "human nature is the same everywhere" but that is really not the case.
So stress is introduced to the system and forces it to change/adapt.
I think it's just one example of many of how external factors force our systems to change.
You're probably also right that slow change allows us citizens to adapt a lot better - but I think that's a prerequisite we don't always have and is probably an impossible demand.
I like the Terrence McKenna's postulation that "history is speeding up" - change is taking place at an ever accelerating rate and that often leaves very little time to react. System shocks guaranteed.
One of the problem with complex systems is often the unintended consequences side and that we keep on having to tweak the economy to avoid unwanted outcomes but each time we intervene we create some new unwanted consequences / collateral damage / perverse incentives or outcomes.
Some things are also short term vs long term thinking.
If we try to avoid pain in the economy and artificially stabilize things that are meant to fail in order to avoid system shocks then we create a worse long-run situation overall by setting the wrong incentive structure.
One example would be the bail out of too big to fail banks or businesses and the attempt to regulate them afterwards.
COVID is another good example.
We shut down the entire economy, essentially achieved nothing by doing it but deferred all of the debt onto future generations while transferring all of the wealth to the super rich (COVID was the largest wealth transferrence in history).
If you'd let mismanaged businesses/banks collapse that would be much more painful in the short term but may be more healthy in the long run.
If you'd bear the "pain of COVID" without closing down you'd have a much more sustainable and healthy long term economy.
That's easy to say and hard to do though.
That's why I like crypto - Bitcoin for example is a currency that you can not artificially manipulate to smoothen any sort of market cycle.
Every type of change in the economy would instantly manifest itself in an unmitigated manner since the money supply side is fixed.
Of course Bitcoin is only a small fraction of the economy and we don't rely on it but it would be interesting to run a simulation based purely on Bitcoin or cardano / Etherium / polkadot etc.
I think each block chain is the simulation of a different economical system in a microcosm and they are competing in a darwinian fashion right now but of course not in an unregulated environment.
One thing I've heard about the economy is that capitalism is good at the "how" but not at the "what".
Meaning: you should tell the market exactly what you want and then let the market produce the outcome.
For example: if you told the market that you want "only high quality non GMO grass fed nutrient rich environmentally friendly beef" then the market can go ahead and produce that in the cheapest way possible.
But the "problem" is that people vote with their wallets.
If we were all more wealthy we would buy the more expensive better quality food.
In the future that might happen.
If everybody had more disposable income then the whole market dynamics could/would change.
But the consumer is still allowed to prioritize.
Problem with the regulation is that our systems have become so interconnected globally that some things are extremely hard to regulate if they are subject to compete with unregulated parts of the market.
Right now we are still subject to scarcity though.
Large parts of the world are still subject to political instability, an abundance of violence and a lack of the basics.
That changes what is possible but once they hopefully catch up some day it will be much easier to achieve better outcomes for all.
An alternative would be to close off the European system much more but it's never really possible to isolate from the rest of the world completely - things are just so intertwined.
Still I think Europe needs to recalibrate a lot.
At the heart of the economical problem really lies the Power-Law-Distribution problem.
Meaning everything always centralizes. Money/Power.
Then those centralized forces are able to influence policy making and reinforce their own monopolistic market dominance preventing any newcomer competition by introducing one sided favorable regulations for example.
I think no matter what system you attempt to establish this is a problem that always occurs and is really hard to mitigate or defend against.
Maybe cycles of birth, growth, corruption and destruction are inevitable. I don't know.
Sire! The peasants, they’re revolting!
Oh, come on, they smell a little but…
You said it they stink on ice
Today though most of the farmers that are protesting in Europe tend to be pretty wealthy definitely not peasants.
Oversimplified reference
let that sink in
Give them cake.
7:19 if EU has to import more, can they be 100% sure that the imported food has the standards required by EU? It seems more like greenwashing and blaming other countries for emissions. Should we also calculate the emissions caused by logistics and also the environmental impact of imported food where it was grown? For example, Avocado cultivation in Chile dried up their rivers as they were diverted towards the farms.
I agree; stopping production in the EU is not going to reduce the impact on the climate, it may well, or even probably will end up being worse, so that seems a bit cynical, if you add in the huge increase in risk for the EUs food supply it becomes even less attractive.
Thats O K because most of the farms in chile are owned by the criminals in washington and bill gates .
It imports food that can't be produced (technically you can even grow bananas on Iceland, but to really small population of some village in middle of nowhere)
So you say Europe should ban avocados. Should you go to jail for owning an avocado in Europe? Because they don't grow here except maybe in some experimental way for very few people. You either delegalize some food and Liberty is important value in Europe so it can't be done without something happening. But Europe can produce it's own potatoes for example, so importing them should mean they had the same standards met during growth that EUs farmer had to meet. It can be done because EU has choice in that that's different from delegalizing potatoes
it's ok to blame europeans for carbon footprint, but it's ok to import everything from China and allowing european companies to produce cheaper goods there without any regulations
Subsidies lose their effects after a few decades because they lead to higher land prices.
New farmers have to borrow more money to buy expensive land, and the interest on these loans eat up the subsidies.
So in the long run subsidies don't help the farmers.
Not a problem with subsidies but land being a commodity and landlords being evil like usual
@@wile123456 Bit of A, bit of B
My counter to that argument is that most farm land has been in families for generations. Most people don't move out of a city and take up farming. The historical trend is overwhelmingly in the opposite direction.
@@wile123456 evil?😀 how so?
If you earn more with certain land, land is worth more. Do you disagree with that?
The graph at 3:00 isn't actually so much about profitability / productivity as it is the fact, that family farms (by definition, almost) have a smaller unit size than the other forms of ownership.
I would be really worried if a for-profit large industrial scale farm complex was unable to produce far more net value PER FARM than a small family farm. Per labour cost is likely also skewed that way due to economies of scale, but not by this much.
One thing that needs to be highlighted is that the CAP budget hasn't received additional resources for 20 years.
In that time, European farmers have been expected to deliver more for less. Inflation has eaten into historical payments which represented farming activity 20 years ago.
The terms like eco- services, biodiversity, and carbon farming models are used more and more, but no new funding has been purposed by the commission or member states.
Always the CAP is go to mechanism to deliver and clearly that cannot be the case anymore
I got news for you... ALL WORKERS have been expected to deliver more for less. Specially in southern Europe.
Why should farmers be entitled to more than the rest of us when they have always supported, as a class, the neoliberal parties that caused this problem in the first pplace?
@_extrathicc
I would suggest that workers in other industries have received income increases over the last 20 years.
Meanwhile, farmers in the EU are expected to produce the world's highest standards of environmental ambition, welfare, biodiversity, and quality, while other countries are placing food of lower environmental standards and questionable animal welfare standards into a market where the consumer is price sensitive. Undercutting our own farmers and leading to the potential of land abandonment and therefore food security.
5.2 million farmers exited farming from 2005 to 2020.
You need to remember that sustainability has 3 pillars.
Economic and social are equally as important as environmental.
Nowhere in mainstream media in UK I could see reports of these protests. These protests are extremely important and farmers fight for people's future. Although many people seem not to realise.this.
Once EU destroys Europe's farming (and this is the goal), we will be getting food from Ukraine and South American countries, where there are no regulations on pesticide use, heavy metal levels in food etc. So we will be eating crappy food, probably for.the same price eventually. I will not even mention food security because it is quite obvious, that you need to have local food production, in case of some conflict or war.
Please.also bear in mind that environmental reasons are just an excuse. I don't.know how anyone can believe it anymore. How is it environmentally friendly to transport the food from the other part of the world, what about CO2 emissions? And also, how is it environmentally friendly to get food from the countries where pesticides are.not controlled at all.
What are you talking about? Those protests have all been covered by BBC, the most mainstream of British news outlets.
Of course there are environmental reasons(most likely exaggerated), but there are no real solutions. So what do they do, move the problems to somewhere else. The crazy thing is, now we all know the consequences of outsourcing our stuff. Yet many people still push for this? This is such short term thinking.
Good thing the UK isnt part of the EU anymore, it can decide for itself what to do.
@@monobryn64 No they haven't. On the BBC yt channel there are just 2 reports on them, one from 2 weeks ago, and another from 4 weeks ago about the protests in France. Nothing about the protests in Brussels.
LOL of course you wont what do you expect? This is absolutely destroying the globalist agenda, why would their media support this in any kind of way? Forget about the MSM learn to find your own information, the internet is a great tool
Netherlands putting into EU legislation: Voluntary sell your farm land at 120% market value and sign the agreement you will not participate in the agriculture sector in the Netherlands or EU. Or later after 1 or 2 years be forced to sell to the government. In combination with their cut back on emissions by culling 200k cows forcing farmers to curtail their production making them unprofitable if not loss making. Let's see what you have to defend this government takedown of farmers whilst letting Bill Gate the largest farm land owner keep up with his acres of land purchases.
This is all part of their 4th Industrial Revolution drive which began with Covid-19: The Great Reset, which is an extension of UN Agenda 2030, which is a sub-category of UN Agenda 21. Go back to the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth from 1972, then on to the UN Vancouver Declaration of 1976 where they decided private ownership of land is dangerous and needs to be ended. Add the Club of Rome's book The First Global Revolution from 1991 where humanity is the enemy of the planet, and don't forget the Limits to Growth co-author Dennis Meadows in 2018 stating depopulation to 1 billion is their goal. Now understand that dismantling agriculture will starve billions of people to death, and you might be beginning to see the tip of the globalist iceberg.
Increasing organic agriculture is not the same as reducing chemical agriculture
Unless people should eat even more, that is indeed more or less the same.
@@dalfokane ok i get it now. But we do business in global markets these days. And yup some people should eat more, more healthier too
@@uggali Existing food scarcity on this world is merely a problem of distribution. I am already talking from a global perspective, as it's unescapable.
Much more people need to eat less, instead of eating more. Less in quantities and less in meat too.
Reducing meat consumption would also lead to less agriculture, as a significant portion of cropland is for animal use only.
@@dalfokane k i agree with ya ffs
But for whether more people need to eat less than people need to eat more i have to disagree and say there’s a lot of food insecurity out there
No, but it's not affordable, it costs more and produces twice less yield, and people who are not rich can't afford to buy it anyway, in UK Tesco market (just checked the prices ) for example the Whole organic chicken costs around 17£ vs none -organic 3.76 £ ... its huge difference... and if you reduce the price of the organic chicken then farmer can't cover his losses ... its no win situation!
Oh, come on. That's a bit harsh. Sure, they smell a bit, but I wouldn't say they're revolting.
An oversimplified reference? Dude... Very cool!
@@xeanderman6688Oversimiplified is the worst "history" channel you can ever watch🤣🤣🤣
@@KokenyRichard I've googled all over the place and still didn't find who asked
@@xeanderman6688 Oh yea sorry I don't have the right to an opinion because my country wasn't a victor in the jooish made world wars so I can't tell the truth about a payed-off lier's channel.
@@xeanderman6688 Oh yea sorry I don't have the right to an opinion because my country wasn't a victor in the jewish made world wars so I can't tell the truth about a payed lier's channel.
I've been watching this channel for a whole year and I still cannot tell where this guy is from. Feels like he has 5 accents at the same time...
M’y guess is Belgium
Netherlands
hasn't he said he's french?
I think he is French 🇨🇵
France
Food security shouldn't be part of a market that can be manipulated by outside forces. Problem is the lower yields due to organic farming are expected, but exhausted soil is going to get there just as quickly.
Focusing on food security would be even worse for farmers since the EU as a whole is already producing much more food to feed itself. The current system is focused on producing a big surplus for export.
There is no food security problem... We export food
but farms owned by bill gates and the criminals from washington d c can use as much fertilizer as they want .
@@monobryn64
AGENDA 2030. WEF.
Organic farms just take longer to reach full capacity, plenty of studies show yields are comparable when you only use mature organic farms for comparison to chemical farms.
Big AG swallows hundreds of small farms by outcompeting and it makes the countryside empty of people = social fabric changes/disaster when there are no people who can sustain schools/infrastructure etc. Not even mentioning knowledge lost, to become a farmer you must be nuts, it's damm hard and it requires so much knowledge. I love farming and hope regulations/systems will leave some breathing space, but it seems we farmers need to fight for such a future otherwise someone will make ill-informed decisions on our behalf/interests.
This is happening across the western world, seems part of "Dear Claus" WEF strategy for the control. Many years ago I grew up on a small homestead farm in the UK, beef, cereal and mainly grass for hay. Most of the hay crop was sold standing to dairy farmers, the small amount of beef was feed on home grown hay and home grown cereal.
Having traveled through parts of northern europe over the years I have watched the change especially in France from small farms to Agri businesses which have in the pursuit of profit ripped out hedges become massive mono culture fields using ever bigger machinery.
this reduces the diversity for animals at the bottom of the food chain which in turn affects animals higher up the food chain.
It is/ has happened in the UK the farm I grew up on with woods, ponds hedges, has been bought up by a farming conglomerate which has cut down the woods, ripped out the hedges filled in the ponds and made a mono culture field adjoined onto their own field.
If the EU is stupid enough to encourage GM crops then the bio diversity will decrease further (norther america prairie land style) and the effect on nature will be extensive, more fertiliser and pesticides will be used, the only winners will be the company that makes/sells the seed and the pesticide.
Politicians and their army of bureaucrats know nothing of farming unless they have been farmers, so instead of interfering on the grand scale, they should gently nudge in the general direction they want and leave the agricultural sector to sort itself out. In this case they should back away from their plans at speed.
Looking at the size of the tractors in the protest it isn't just the small farmer who have shown up but farmers with larger acreage as well.
Excellent video as always. The solution probably lies in a combination of strategies. Not every issue can be solved immediately. We'll also need continual redjustment as food insecurity continues to rise.
As always? The quality has been really inconsistent.
In Portugal the Farmers are just protesting for more and more regular funding from the government and more governmental envolvement, and in the rest of europe they are protesting for LESS government interfeerence
I think they protest in Germany bcs the government wants to end subsidies on fuel, no?
While the end goal is the same, to keep the (small) business alive. No farmers no food...
Most businesses have to put up with government regulation *without* getting those tasty subsidies. Farmers don't know how good they have it.
The portuguese are always 30 years behind right, apparantly also in this haha
@@mricardo96 they legalised drugs before almost everyone else, maybe that is why they lag a little bit in other areas🥸
Well....its European people reaping what their politicians and governments have sown. This is basically what they voted for.
We must let farmers grow the food. Every time bureaucrats try populations starve. USSR, China, Cambodia, etc.
Extraordary video. Thank you for making it!
Europe (the EU) does this thing where they think they can have their cake and eat it to. Life is about trade-offs, and you need to decide what you value more. The EU lost in tech, and will never recover, because of GDPR and European phobias around data privacy. You can't have the strictest regulations AND the most competitive market at the same time. For farming, pick two: support Ukraine, have strict safety standards, protect the environment and fight climate change. You can't have all 3.
if u count social media then europe lost but to say it lost in tech? it just shows u dont know nothing about industry
@@cia5649 lol no, sorry buddy. You think SpaceX, Tesla, Microsoft, Salesforce, Apple, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, etc. are Social Media? The person here who doesn't know what they're talking about is you.
@@jeffmorris5802 Spotify, Ericsson, ubisoft, bluetooth, northvolt, Klarna, ArianSpace, ASML, SAP, Dassault Systems etc so yeah u dont know what your talking about
Europe will find themselves at the mercy of foreign AI companies within 10 years. They just don’t know it yet.
This is the best video on this topic. Comment for the algorithm!
I also wonder what europes farmers are getting for their crops per bushel. If its like canada where folks are getting the same price for their grain that their parents or grandparents were getting 50 years earlier? yet equipment, land and input costs are 150% higher, then theres something wrong.
Decentralize agriculture. Be more flexible with small farmers. Don't let big ag control your food. Control the food and control the people.
I live in the Spanish region of Castilla y León, an agricultural and livestock region. Our farmers and ranchers, like the rest of Europe, cannot continue living in decent conditions due to low prices and the large amount of bureaucracy imposed by the European Union. In addition to unfair competition from products that come from African countries (in the case of Spain, mainly Morocco) or Latin America. That's why I don't understand the attacks they make on us from France, blaming the Spaniards for the problems in the French countryside, when we are not the problem! Anyway, I hope that we all unite in defense of our farmers and ranchers, because without them there is no future.
They see us Spanish as foreigners just as we see Moroccans or South Americans even though we're in the EU, I guess
Comedor de ranas aquí🇲🇫,
The problem in France is that supermarkets buy huge quantities of low price greens and fruits abroad while saying to french farmers their price are too expensive. So they see goods from for exemple Spain and Morocco sold in France while their aren't.
I think that's because the french farming industry is less intensive than her competitors'(Spain and Marrueco for exemple)
Pero si, los franceses veen los productos españoles de la misma manera que los productos marruecos o de latam. Son productos extranjeros comprados a menor precios que los productos frances. Y piden para un control de las exportacciones. Para mi los agricultores franceses deberian intensificar sus produciones en lugar de gritar
the french see the spanish how the spanish see the moroccans.
I hope that you will not share my fate. The bank has forced us to sell the milkcows because the income off the farm was to low. Lucky my sons have jobs working with their hands. Greetings out off the Netherlands.
Long transport of food has usually a negative impact on food quality. So logically have an impact on tomatoes transport from France to Spain. Or the other way round.
German newspaper "Spiegel" website just added an interesting interview on tomatoes.
The expert states that the quality of tomatoes from greenhouses is low - be it from greenhouses in France or in Spain. But harvested tomatoes have to be kept a controlled low temperatures with a negative impact on quality the longer it takes. She uses only tomatoes from her own garden in Germany (summer only).
And added a well known fact: for years, around 80% of tomato concentrate "made in Italy" is from China. For example tripple concentrated tomato pulp from China is imported in large barrels (1 ton), becomes "produced in Italy" simply by being canned after adding some water (and maybe some salt).
The problem is that policies seem to take into account ideology over reality. Basically, the policies have aims that do not take into account the immediate well being of citizens. The arguments tend to be, if this is not done today we will suffer tomorrow. The problem is that if people are suffering today it does not inspire confidence in policies regarding the future. If you damage someone's wellbeing today why should he trust you regarding tomorrow? The farmers are looking at the situation as existential now. Why would I leave my farm to go to some city to dump manure at some public building, incurring the costs associated with such action?
Maybe the farmers should have listened to everybody else 15 years ago when we were protesting neoliberal policies instead of blaming progressives and socialdemocrats.
@_extrathicc what's the logic here though, now that the neoliberals are against the farmers youre on the neoliberals side...?
Its not about parties, we have parties that brands them selfs and ideology like night and day but they keep running the exact eu policies no matter whos in charge. This is communist european union that are invading sovereing countries and governments first and then peoples wealth. People dont realise that eu is communist take over europe.
Someone educate me.... why is crop "stubble" NOT ploughed back into the land as natural fertilizer anymore? Why remove it from the ground and use phosphate dug up elsewhere? Or am I missing something?
As someone who is intimately involved in this, i commend you on the level of detail you’ve managed to achieve.
Wait till others realize the "net 0" goal (combined with aversion to nuclear power, lack of electricians, rising power consumption etc.) will cause even higher inflation and the inability for regular people to own a car.
Latest EU idea is to ban car repair. So if your car breaks after 2035 you will have to buy an expensive new EV, or at least get a "certified" replacement battery for 70% price of a new EV.
Politicians in Brussels seem to live in a different world... where everyone has home with a garage (for charging, to mount solar panels on the roof etc) and can spend 40.000 euro every couple years on a new car
Sound pretty good to me. 20 years ago there were half as many cars per person in Europe and people still managed to get by. Obesity rates were also lower.
Make cities more walkable and fund public transport. It would be better for the environment and health. Not everyone needs to own a car.
@@boopyvacaine reason why people move out of the city and need a car are ridiculous prices. A 19m2 "micro-apartment" is same price as an old 100m2+ home (or half a huge home) with land and maybe some buildings for garage or a workshop. Rent is also very high. I pay 550 monthly for a flat (without power or heating, it's rent+ cold water up to a limit+ garbage only) while yearly property tax on a standalone home is 600-750... Sure you need to pay monthly for garbage and save for a new roof or exterior paint/ insulation on your own, but I did the math and over the years the standalone home is much cheaper.
@@Mic_Glow The biggest rise in cars I have seen has been in cities so it’s not only about people moving to more rural areas. I have seen many able bodied people prefer to drive when their destination is only 15 minutes by foot.
Rural places still benefit from having public transportation as there are many people who can’t drive, be that from being too old or young, not being able to afford a car, being afraid to drive or simply not wanting to. Also having most amenities like a grocery store or school be within walking distance would also reduce the need for a car.
Also if you are saving so much by living rurally I feel like you should be able to invest in a more eco friendly vehicle or even solar panels. Most houses also have a place where you can put a charging station.
Obviously climate change is happening and we have to do something about it. I am not against nuclear or repairing old vehicles but we can’t just go on how we have before.
@@boopyvacaine People who bought a home years ago now can afford solar and an EV. Those who buy now struggle to pay mortgage, if they can even afford a down-payment. Everything close-by... sort of. I have a grocery store literally in my building but everything is 20-30% more expensive than in a discount store
As a brazilian i think the thing with europe is that after ww2 they got too comfortable with not having to decide, they could have the best thing of capitalism and socialism at the same time. Now they cant anymore, you cant be competitive in every field anymore. Brazil due to its climate, soil and technology can have 3 harvest a year in the southeast and central region of the country. You can't compete with that, no one can, there is no winter, no snow, nothing... Now you either open the market and try to compensate by selling stuff in what you are good at or you close your market and have inflation and lot of subsidy... The thing is, you cant be competitive in technology, agriculture, industry all at once... China is a powerhouse in technology now, Brazil is number one food producer now, Russia has your gas suply, these players didnt exist 30 years ago, it was only EU, USA and Japan... The world is changing, you can't have the best for you in every field, its time to choose. For example, Brazil couldnt close its market to EU car companies, otherwise we would be without cars, so it was easy to bully Brasil into accepting any agreement, we couldnt say no. Now Chinese cars flowed brazil with its BYDs and GWMs, if EU doesnt open its market for brazilian products its fine, Brasil closes its market to EU products and buy from the chinese. EU has to decide, the times of having the best spot in every agreement is over.
Just like the fishermen in the past, the farmers protest things they dont understand. Notice how fishermen dont protest anymore? Because EU rules and regulations made EU waters the healthiest in the world. If farmers got their way they would farm the soil until it died and farming collapsed. Farmers are the most subsidised sector and they complain that they EU is trying to prevent soil death.
in the 1980s Denmark paid some North Sea fishers to sell their boats and get a different education.
If we want to save the small farmers, then we should do the same.
They already are farming like that. The draughts and fires in southern Europe that ruins farming is due to the insane amount of pollution and climate change farmers have helped create.
EU waters are the healthiest in the world? That's a load of bullshit EU propaganda. I dont even understand where you're taking this info from. just google about how clean the Baltic sea is or whatever Greece is doing and dumping into the sea, or romania and bulgaria in the black sea and I will not even start with what is happening with the rivers in Poland and other places. I'm not against the EU but i hate reading EU propaganda
To be fair, the fisherman don't protest anymore because there aren't many of them left.
@@Croz89true!
I don't think consolidation into larger farms is necessarily a bad thing. More productive farms are usually good. Yeah it sucks for smaller farmers who can't compete but... Sorry if your business model isn't competitive then you should consider liquidating your assets. The reality is that smaller farms will never be more productive than larger ones and the taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pick up the slack.
I'm not a libertarian but in this case it feels like we are treating smaller farmers like some underprivileged minority that we need to help and save at all costs. When in reality they are business like any other.
True, but telling someone you must give up a 6 generation family farm because corpererste big wigs can do it cheaper is a bitter pill to swallow. Especially from a land ownership kinda take. Imagine someone saying that you must give up your house because a cooperation can rent it back to you for less. Not an apples to apples comparison, but that's how they have to feel about it. It's there entire livelihood, identity, and beliefs may be based around this little plot of land and traditional life. You may be 100% right about it being better for the wider society, but it definitely stomps out some little guys
Should be noted too that big ag and food companies have brought a lot of suffering along with their efficiency. Goverment subsided oreos haven't been the greatest thing to happen to the planet. That's a different debate altogether, thou
Farms are not "a business like any other". They produce FOOD. The lowest tier on Maslow's hierarchy. The basis of existence.
Besides that, farms are one of the very few sectors where most of the factors governing production are natural. Amount of sunlight, frosts, droughts, excessive rain, storms, pests, crop disease, they all have an immensive influence on yield, much more so than the regular risks of the market, supply and demand, that other businesses face. Combine that with the fact that we need food, and it makes sense to help farmers to financially cover for some of those risks, instead of forcing them to liquidate when they have a couple of bad years due to factors completely outside their influence, and completely unpredictable ones at that. No other business that produces essential goods has to deal with these factors.
Finally, economy of scale is one of the areas where farming actually gets worse the larger it gets. It may produce more food on average (although I would argue that large farms are better at generating more profit than they are at generating more food), but it also introduces large single points of failure (if disease strikes, it affects the entire farm, whereas a distributed network of smaller farms will only see a few of those affected), and much longer supply lines that are also vulnerable to failure. Smaller, more local farms can supply their immediate region instead of that region having to buy food from large farms that may be situated hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away, like now. Our current model leads to more emissions from shipping, food that is less fresh, higher prices because of higher investments and overhead, and even lower quality because crops are chosen for shelf life, ease of shipping, and uniformity rather than taste. Studies have even found that crops today are less nutritious than 50 years ago because that's not what modern day crop varieties are selected for.
Modern farming needs to be subsidised, small scale, diversified, and with low environmental impact to have a future. That may not be as profitable as large scale farms, but it is better for us the people, the food we eat, and the land we live on.
The country that gives up its ability to sustain its population with food grown domestically will sit under the thumb of someone else. Food grown in Europe for Europe. And some parts exported and some like measure parts imported because 'variety'. If I must chose between climate change crying bureaucrats and politicians all rubbing their knees together and with lobbyists and having the european farmers continue strong and able to support the population and exporting. I'll chose the farmers every time. If you must blah about co2... then you reduce something else - not. the. food. supply.
Green movement have a myopic vision. Mandates makes lower yields. EU will turn to the US and Australia crowding out China, and India which will import more from Brazilwhich, leading to rainforest loss. Why are they being so shortsighted?
UK are not under European law (brexit) that's why, food well stocked at the moment but how long from imports
Europe's problem originates from excessive bureaucracy in its parliament, resulting in harm to the continent and farmers due to high taxes, forced carbon zero enforcement without a long-term plan, inflation, the effects of the Ukrainian war, and inadequate liquidity support. Meanwhile, countries like China, India and Vietnam face no penalties for importing raw materials without adhering to ecological standards, leading to unfair competition for farmers.
If you think the Parliament is the problem you either don't know who ultimately takes the decisions or you don't understand the amount of bureaucracy in other institutions.
So you're saying that, because China, India and Vietnam import low quality materials that are destroying our planet and people's health, EU countries should be allowed to do the same? What's the end goal here? Increasing agriculture profits for 30 years before the climate is so fucked that nothing will grow anymore?
But the bureaucracy is in place exactly to avoid horrible quality and non-existent ecological standards. You cannot enforce laws without administration, there's no magic way to do that.
The problem is Green lunatics banned GMO's in Europe 20 years ago, despite no evidence of any harm originating from them. We can maintain yields without pesticides if GMO's are adopted. We can maintain balance with natural environments if EU's population stops growing via immigration.
The bureaucracy and administration costs in the EU are very small. In 2022, with 243 billion of total spending, the EU spent 11.5B on administration, just under 5%. Common Agricultural Policy by contrast, cost 56B, 23% of the budget.
High taxes? Have you watched the video? They get 40% of the EU budget
Best video on the subject I have seen so far
Thank you very much
Because they are huge landowners who only care about money, see anything thats nature as their direct enemy, and have heavy machinery that allows them to blackmail entire countries.
What was the reaction again when youth for climate blocked highways?
Very different then when farmers do it....
They're just living in a fantasy, not realising the world is changed, and expecting the same as 50 years ago.
Everytime you walk into the supermarket you buy something produced by your cursed farmers. I advice you to produce your own food because only then you will appreciate when you are struggling with nature.
When I saw the thumbnail I thought it was a video about Austria-Hungary
I grew up in a farming community when at that time , just as it is now - the amount of money a farmer gets is used for a raft of expenses. For instance - repairing fences, repairing machinery, food for livestock, food for themselves, fuel, electricity and the list goes on. In the 80's a relative told one of my parents that supermarkets were buying out & taking over farms. This suggests that supermarkets have more power to dictate the price of food both to the farmer and the customer. Just because a system might be outdated doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Most farmers are look after their properties in an environmentally appropriate manner the best way they know how & are under extreme pressure. Alot of these woke/politicals/elites don't have a clue because they've never done it themselves or experienced this amount of hardship. It appears the woke/crazy environmentalist are trying to inflict a utopia & utopia doesn't exist
So we're basically subsidizing dairy and meat consumption in countries like China? What a strange strategy.
Let's hope more of that giant buget goes to actually improving farming through innovation, rather than just handing out bags of money.
you are such a brain! excellent conclusion. why do chinese buy european milk? because their corporate farms sell a product of questionable quality in order to make a better profit! unfortunately, this is not an exception in China or with milk. European regulation are the gold standard in the world, but it is being misused to destroy it. by selling milk in China, you are not subsidizing the Chinese because they pay for the product.
Europe's stance on gmos is rediculous, they provide all the things they want, reduced pecticide requirements, reduced fertilizer use, and increased yields
no farmer no food no goverments no slavery❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Seems like the EU politicians that know not much besides what the voters want have never heard that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Just the type of explanation I was after. Cheers
I think the size of the farm isnt the correct way to catagorize.
Instead catagorize the farms based on their ratio of output vs fertilizer and pestisides used.
And then put systems in place that promote the spread of those high efficency techniques and bussinesses.
You want your changes to be guided by the measurements the whole way through.
Not "just take a guess then see if the fertilizer use and pestiside use went down".
Its very very silly to opperate that way.
Consolidating the farm effectively means corporations taking over the market and turning farmers into tenants on their own land. We’ve seen this before.
i think about how much food is produced and then not consumed and thrown away. to try and bring that level down would greatly lower the profitability of farmers. but it needs to happen. lots of things need to happen to reduce our energy use and pollution. the amount of waste our global civilization produces, if decreased, would have severe economic impact. thats just one example when it comes to food. every time i look at our global economic organization and our species i realize we are just wiley coyote run off a cliff - we just havent' looked down yet. and when we do, forced or not, we will realize the fall and its devastation on what currently is our way of life and expectations from modern civilization. fossil fuels have created an extremely dangerous civilization that cannot last for much longer - at least not for 8+ billion people. doomed if we do - doomed if we dont. think about this when swallowing the pills of the looming energy transition that nobody is going to vote for when they realize what comes with it (less of everything... you cannot change the laws of thermodynamics). but the governance of our societies isnt left or right - its top and bottom and its about power... so i think the farmers in europe and what they are doing is just the tip of the iceberg. what a crazy time to be alive. as carl sagan said before he died "there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere, to save us from ourselves".
Very insightful
Well if you want to control the price of food you need to own all the farms and if you want any to own and control everything on earth you become a multi national..
Greeting to you all brave farmers! From RU with love (but with no gas or oil)🤷♂
This is less about the environment than it is politics and global control.
1. When has it ever been a good idea to decrease food production, especially over Nitrogen emissions
2. When did Nitrogen and GHG Emissions become more important than food?
Like hello? We still need to eat, and if you don't grow/make it yourself, you still have to source it from somewhere else.
but we're exporting a lot of it: why should we subsidize China's meat consumption?
Here in Denmark we produce somewhere between three and five times more food than we need to feed ourselves. Meanwhile farmers get billions in subsidies, emit around a third of our greenhouse gasses and cause cataclysmic levels of fish death due to nitrogen emissions. Cutting back to only producing twice as much food as we need to feed ourselves seems like a no brainer.
@@monobryn64 Except small farms can't afford it, or they would go out of business.
@@monobryn64 Source on 'fish death'? Also how is food prices going up in the Denmark if they produce 3 times what they need?
@@tobiascornille People have a right to eat, ( its the people who get hurt, not the government), while I'm not saying we should be supporting China this way, and I'm sure China could make their own meat. But the point is, if you control the food, you control the people (Just a general statement). But more importantly, once you lose the food production, you won't get it back.
Organic farming.. really?
I know organic farming is a great idea because it's good for us but you only need to look at other countries and how they have collapsed due to this policy.
This explain pretty well. Now I have a bit of overall view on why it is happening.
5:34 So it's a huge problem buying agricultural products from Europe into Europe. What a shame.
9:16 So what more can I say about this hypocrisy of this?
Problem is that in EU, farmer bussines is about grants and other benefits, it's not actual capitalism, no real free market, government is trying to save companies and people who are bad in what they do and that completely destroyed market and now, when some cheaper ukrainian stuff enters market, they are angry because they know they can't compare with that without another grants. I kind of understand them, they didn't create this stupid system, they just live in that, but a lot of these farmers would already went bankrupt and their place could be took by someone better and more capable like it is supposed to be in free market and actual capitalism. But EU is more like socialism today, unfortunately.
If farmers in Ukraine, in country which is destroyed by war are able to make it cheaper, then EU is doing something wrong, that's for sure.
Another problem is what I call a "german supermarket mafia" - companies like Lidl, Kaufland etc....they don't want to pay fair prices to farmers and then they sell their products for very high prices and that's why Germany is that rich, it's a modern colonialism and slavery, we should make laws against German companies because this is already getting out of our hands, it was not such extreme in the past, but now after enrgocrisis? Companies like Lidl will pay you like 25 cents for some product and then they are selling it for 5 eur and I am not exagerrating it, it's today reality, they are exploiting their oligopol and cartel deals and this has to stop, but our government doesn't have "balls" to do something against our loved germans who "saved" us after 1989 from going bankrupt. That's 34 years ago, nobody cares what was in early 90s, they are slavers now.
And I really recommend everyone to NOT support German chains if you have other option, yes, even Tesco or Ahold is better option if you can go there, just don't go to Lidl, Kaufland, NORMA etc...it's the german mafia. There is no other way how to change market than don't support them with our money, unfortunately I live in a small town where only biger supermarket is NORMA. They have nothing for high prices, I have to go there, but I already stopped buying some products which are REALLY overpriced, like everything from Haribo, like no, this went to far, don't buy anything from Haribo. Price is double or triple of 2019 price, we should not accept this. Don't support Germans if you have other option.
I wish more polish chains entered our market, I would love to support them instead of germans who are already rich enough and pretending like we take more than we pay to EU, it's a lie, we literally feed them and their economy is based on modern slavery but Germans living in Germany can't see that.
Capitalism is partly to blame. Capitalism tends to maximize profits and minimize costs, which in turn, creates monopolies. Which is partly why there are less farmers.... But also why South Africa is importing into the E.U. and vice versa.... It is also why the farmland itself is so expensive and why costs are so high..... A socialist debt cancellation perhaps?
Pls understand that the money we get in subsidies, are priced into the landprice... The subsidies are turned to interest payments, after the first year. Example 1ha makes 1000 Eur profit, = a land price of 20.000 Eur, if you give the farm a subsidie of 500 euro the profit is now 1500 euro and the land price just rose to 30.000 Euro.... Subsidies are for the banks not the farmers. once a new farmer buys the land at 30.000 the subsidie does no longer support the farmers, but instead the financial sector.
Farmers actually support the tertiary and labour market sectors as both are very protected by regulation while farm gate incomes are globalized. This means the so-called subsidy is actually a rebate to help cope with the many costs businesses imposed on farmers by the nonfarm sector.
Why do not U produce profitable products? It looks like that some agriculture companies are making billions whyle some farmers are angry they are not rentable... Sell those lands, keep some for hobby if thats what you want to do.
@@kashmirha We are producing profitable products that are number 3 on the list of human needs after air and water. I ask, why can't the urban sector supply agricultural needs at a global price like farms sell under. If you think food produced cheaply is not important, stop consuming food, and thats one way to fix the problem. RIP
Yeah, and you famously have to buy the land every year to farm. BS.
There is no really simple answer, but from a security perspective Europe needs to consider that if they get their food from countries that are not entirely friendly, look at what happened with Germany depending on Russia too much for gas. Sadly I feel the EU needs to keep their farmers and accept the tradeoffs, it would be really risky to rely on other countries for their food.
How about we make a less half-assed effort here in Europe to end the main cause of many of these problems, namely Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
Full support
And we were told Brexit was a bad idea for the UK.
If you reduce your own emissions just to import from a country with lower environmental standards, not much point in the standards - is that addressed in some way, eg with tariffs on imports grown under less restrictive (ie less expensive) environmental standards?
Oh, my goodness! NITROGEN emissions!! We can't have that! After all the air we breathe and have been breathing for hundreds of years is ONLY a mere 78% nitrogen. This is a potential calamity if we don't move to cut these emissions drastically!
Holy potato 😮 There are so many factors and consequences! It's crazy. Thank you for making this oversight of the matter understandable, for someone who has a hard time seeing trhough it! Shit. I think the best I can do, is to support my local farmers, where I can.
This is what happens when the govt. runs a country's agriculture. You'd think the EU would have learned from the USSR's mistakes.
Why don't smaller farms create co-ops and the government give them funding based on co-op size, then co-op member decide how it's divided. wouldn't they get more in funding. in the country here there are co-ops... there have always been co-ops
Most agricultural products are traded on the global market. EU farmers cannot sell their goods at rates Ukrainians, Indians or Americans can if they are going to be burdened by massive regulations with no funding to back it up. Margins are already as thin as they can get and to be profitable you need to expand either by producing more or refining your produce otherwise you might just as well sell your farm.
The government are like oppressing and controlling them treating them like slaves with their policies endanger their people to starvation and famine. It's won’t end well. Where food bread biscuit, cake, ice cream grain, meat, process food and milk in the supermarket come from first we need farmers. The supermarket and restaurants benefits not farmers
Core of problem is in fact that EU subsidies goes to ineffective biggest owners of soil.
So the European citizen pays for food twice, once through taxes that support farmers and once through food that could have been imported cheaper from abroad.
Nice 😂
And the result will be? Collapse of EU farming, creating food insecure and dependency on 3rd parties, lower quality foods, unemployment will go much much higher, and the GDP will go down... the list goes on and on and on... for what benefit? Lower prices for a few months until those 3rd parties decide the increase the prices...
And VAT and income tax :-)
So I went to a farmers market in EU and yes I was surprised by sticker shock. 30 euros for a kilo of cheese. Yes it is amazing cheese. But at that price it cost less to buy a slice of quiche for 17 euro at a restaurant. This is very expensive for such a poor area. I really do not know what the locals do to cope. A lot of small business were either closed or were going out of business. I find this very depressing and I feel very bad for everyone going through this .... protesting / riots are NOT the answer it only destroys the property and the hope of the people trying to get through this ....
@@Thefinalcountdown650 You are making me hungry. But yes it is expensive even from buying directly from the farmer and I like to cook and bake but I was travelling through EU so THAT delicious quiche was SOOO good and I enjoyed not having to do all the buying and cooking. I found adding a couple of different kinds of cheeses makes the quiche really tasty. Like a smoke gouda, and a sharp cheddar with regular fresh mozzarella. But making the Quiche in southern CA USA will be less expensive and maybe it is because we have so many farmers producing cheeses, but the smoke gouda comes form EU. But the baking is pretty expensive in a electric oven. The power company rates are very high so baking time is an issue and now in the summer and baking is not a good idea in 100 F temps 37 C.
I am amazed that you made no reference to the Corporate squeeze on farmers. Firstly the farmer has no power over the costs of Seeds, Fertilisers and Pesticides and secondly the farmers get the crumbs from the Processors and Corporate Retailers. Many researcher have identified these issues as being very influencial in the stimulating Farmer rage.
Right.
And the "farmers unions" are part of that "game", selling overpriced seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides for maximising their own profits too.
With also governments helping those big companies.
Then do without them. Ohh they can only produce 30% without the inputs? That certainly means that 70% of your production is based not on your work but on the inputs. Now again, why should the corporations subsidies your profits with cheaper inputs?
Unfortunately we waited to long to reduce our dependence on chemical fertilisers. Sure newer fertilisers such as polyhalite may help expand timeline. Ultimately were at a do or die albit just. But is still better to act sooner than later.
EU exporting food is a bad thing for ordinary EU citizens. Agriculture receives a lot of EU subsidies, which come from EU citizens. If agriculture expands to export more, they get more subsidies, they take something away from other EU citizens. Subsidies are always paid by someone and are usually a bad idea, everyone should be allowed to provide their own food supply in the EU.
Here come the corporate farmers. This is a repeat of what happened in the 90s in America. When it was over corporate Farms took over. They have made a tactical mistake.
Family-business farmers are the only guarantee to safety of food supply. Few corporations would be very much unstable and since they are profit-oriented - lower quality food.
With globalization, it will be very challenging to support small farms in developed countries no matter what level of subsidies are offered
Why should we care? Efficiency prevails, as it should, no?😅
Ask the protesting farmers. I'm not voicing my support or disapproval, but clearly, they care@@lukazupie7220
@@lukazupie7220national security. He who controls your food controls your nation
@@badart3204 BS lol. And if it would be true, it would be another reason to end subsidies. Should we give more money to the people who already control us??😁
@@badart3204 so then why dont' we let the inefficient small farms go out of business to reduce reliance of foreign agriculture?
Proletarians of all countries, unite 🚩
Thanks for explaining this complex issue!
It sounds like farmers are trying to keep an old way of doing things in which they received special treatment rather than competing in a free market. Now they're throwing a tantrum cause their not being preferred by protectionist policies.
The meat & dairy sector is the big problem in the situation, because it requires significantly more resources to produce their products rather than plants to feed directly to people. Usually less than 10% of plants fed to animals are converted to actual food for humans. But we could eat plants directly.
Europe very well could feed the population if they were shifting to a plant based diet rather than resource intensive meat & dairy.
It's another sector that is crippled by corruption and privatisation. Food supply is is a matter of public interest, European security and fundamental existence. It should be regulated massively. Farmers shouldn't have to buy land for market prices and the the profit margins of companies between the farmers and consumers need to be capped.
Watching this makes me think... we are screwed
Freedom and Revolution of conservatism.
Problem I see is tunnel-vision. 1. restart EU produced fertilizer makers, namely focusing on phosphates and potassium.
2. Hügelkultur & terra preta, both helped to get there from maintaining healthy forests. Also this locks in the natural nitrogen into the soil itself instead of it washing away, added bonus is locking carbon into the soil.
"If they can't afford bread, let them eat pie" Emannuelette Macron
so despite this
how peaceful and economically stable is a place like Germany or Sweden?
The government doesn't care. Von der Leyen should be re-elected.
There's a 5th option, regenerative farming check out kiss the ground
The goal is to force the farmers to stop producing food, so we completely depend on the EU government and what they give us.
A poor analysis. Even for a 10 minutes summary.
The only somehow good part is on EU subsidiaries - almost all for large farming groups (not necessarily "farmers"), not much left for small farms.
Totally missing is the historical aspect: France (mainly De Gaulle) wanted to maximise returns for the countries farmers by getting all the subsidies they could from the "European Common Market". France had to become the main food production country for "Europe". Later other countries with important food production and lots of surface for food production joined what now is EU - with still the same approach for maximising subsidies.
Other point are food markets in most EU countries - distributors have become monopolies, use common purchase organisations to get lowest purchase prices, maximise their profits on food sales; farmers were not allowed to sell directly to consumers. And farmers were not really interested in getting a larger share of sales prices - they got the subsidies from EU. Farmers unions were part of that game: most of the "farmers unions" have become big business, maximising their own profits by selling more and more pesticides, insecticides, fertilisers to farmers (even if not necessary), active only for getting subsidies.
In France, many farmers are contractually bound to suppliers and buyers (pig raisers for example) - bound buying products, and bound selling their products to large companies at low prices, bad terms. The farmers have to pay for the investments, have all the work - but not the profits of their work.
The EU needs major reforms - one is farming.
New Zealand has done such a reform - suppressed close to all farming subsidies some 40 years ago. And their farming is now part of worlds best.
Note how he never talked about the effects of "global warming" on agriculture.
You say that the agricultural budget is 1/3 of the overall budget?
Why is agriculture subsidize so much?
I don't understand the thumbnail. It seems to be pointing to a European farmers revolt map but what is the meaning of the colours? It can't be that one revolted and the other not, so what it is? Did I miss it in the video? 😅
Hmmm it is meant to be the countries with the largest protest movements 😅 If it is not clear then I will play around with it some more.
Thanks for the feedback!
-Hugo
@@IntoEurope thank you for the great and informative video. It's a real pleasure.
I'm just a client, im not producing abything myself, here is ny five eurocents
1) I woudnt care dbout higher prices IF the miney would go to the farmers, but I've heard ehat are prices to buy from them and what are prices I buy those. I want to pay the farmers. Let them have nore chance to sell on their own
2) Importing from countries outside of EU is not helping climate but changing place where the pollution is. Its like I would start going to bath at my grandma place while claming I reduced water usage in ny home and I am a hero.
3) I want to buy local!!!
4) Things are hard to change if the clients wont change. This is something that hurts me the most. If clients would buy better food it would shift naturally too
5) idk my English in that topic isnt good so maybe I put my thoughts badly djdjdjf but i tried
A society completely dominated by economic laws cannot be a happy society. There is no need for more economic optimization. There is a need for more happiness for the common people. More time for family and neighbors and friends, more nature, more culture, more health, more sex, more children, more certainty of a happy and humane future.
I refuse to purchase GMOs!!!! I grow my own heirlooms!!! Government can kiss my ass!!! I raise everything I need on my land and what I don't I can live without!!!
No revolting going on in sweden. It’s not even on the news.
We don’t want to find ways to increase the population and crowded conditions.
Fight to the end my heros 💪
Today’s farming already has that effect and we don’t want to take it to the next level.