Anthony Lee stands in front of the barn on his family farm in Lower Saxony, Germany. Lee has been an outspoken critic of EU climate change policies and a leader of Europe’s farmers’ protest movement. He is running for EU membership for the right-wing Free Voters party and his YouTube channel has been viewed more than 24 million times.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
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HANOVER, Germany — Last year, Anthony Lee received a letter from the Ministry of Agriculture in the German state of Lower Saxony, where he runs his family farm. The letter informed him that his annual farm subsidy would be reduced by approximately $10 after a tree fell on his land, resulting in the loss of hundreds of square feet of sugar beet growing potential.
“Every three days, satellites fly over our property, our fields,” Li said, pointing to the sky. “Then every farmer has to download an app and we get a push message saying: ‘On a certain day, something is not right in your field. Take a picture and send it to us. Now it’s It got so crazy.
Farming in twenty-first-century Europe means tractors equipped with GPS, rules inspired by climate change and crop rotations monitored by cameras from space.
“If satellite images show you or show the government that something is not true, then if you say we grow wheat and [instead] If you grow corn, it automatically sends them a message that something is wrong. “Or if you bring out feces [at] At a certain time that is not allowed, or if you plow, I mean, they honestly talk about not plowing.
Lee is a candidate in this week’s European Parliament elections and a spokesman for the German Farmers’ Association, which has been organizing farmers’ protests.
He said he began to feel that the state was slowly taking over his farm. He is not alone.
Farmers across Europe have staged more than 4,000 protests so far this year, a 300% increase from last year, according to global risk data firm Verisk Maplecroft. They are angry about new environmental regulations, the removal of subsidies and the import of cheap agricultural products that do not meet the same standards as the food they produce. As the European Union holds parliamentary elections this week, surveys and analysts predict the bloc will move to the right. Vocal farmers could become a powerful force in influencing votes.
Farmers parked their tractors near the European Parliament on Tuesday amid protests by numerous European farmers’ associations in Brussels.
Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Photo: Getty Images
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Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Photo: Getty Images
Armed with beets and fertilizer
European officials have set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by 2030, with scientists saying Europe has become the fastest-warming continent on Earth. But the EU has weakened or shelved some proposed agricultural policies as concessions to protesting farmers.
Some of these demonstrations turned violent, such as the protests in Brussels, the seat of the EU government, in February and March. Farmers threw beets at police and then sprayed them with liquid fertilizer, who responded with tear gas and water cannon.
“I mean, in terms of European farmers, we’re talking about relatively small-scale farmers who are good at farming,” said Alan Matthews, retired professor of European agricultural policy at Trinity College, Dublin.
“But we’re now asking them — in addition to being a farmer and, of course, a financial manager — we’re now asking them to be half ecologist and half conservationist,” Matthews said. “They need to know how they impact greenhouse gas emissions. So we’re asking farmers to fulfill a series of additional obligations and requirements, if you will.
According to the European Commission, agricultural emissions account for 10% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions, mainly through methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
From climate change marches to protests against climate laws
In the last European Parliament elections in 2019, pro-environment Green Party politicians made the strongest showing in mass student-led protests around the world, demanding action on climate change. Now the pendulum can swing.
Matthews said the farmers’ protest movement across Europe in the months leading up to the election reminded him of the climate change demonstrations surrounding the last vote. “Instead of young people protesting, we now have farmers protesting ahead of the European elections,” Matthews observed. “But I think the protests themselves could have a similar impact” — in the opposite direction.
Matthews believes that the draft five-year strategic agenda published by the European Council, the EU’s highest decision-making body, is swinging. The last five-year agenda outlined a transition to a greener, more sustainable Europe, and “all that language is missing from the current draft of the next strategic agenda,” Matthews said. “The focus is more on competitiveness, sovereignty and trade issues, and this is also reflected in the food and agriculture agenda.”
The shift has alarmed many politicians concerned about the environment. Michael Bloos, a German member of the Green Party in the European Parliament, said that delaying climate change policies to appease farmers’ protests is a step backwards. “This is bad for environmental policy,” he said. “Their entire industry is not really regulated on climate, so climate policy is unlikely to make them angry. But certainly we are working with them to get better prices for their products. But that doesn’t It’s not the Greens’ fault, it’s the big retailers who don’t supply them with enough product.
For farmer Li, low prices for produce are another problem, which is why he turned to other sources of income, such as a small hotel and beer garden he built on the farm to attract tourists to the area.
But Lee said the bigger problem was the Greens themselves. “This is definitely an agenda to get rid of small agricultural businesses,” he said of the Greens’ policies. “They tell us the opposite. The first farms to go bankrupt are small farms because they cannot cope with the system.
Anthony Lee’s farm in Lower Saxony, Germany.
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Lee expressed his displeasure on YouTube, where his hundreds of videos have been viewed more than 24 million times combined.
He is running for EU membership for the right-wing Free Voters party. He attracted media attention for accusing politicians of wanting to expropriate farmers’ land to build housing for refugees, but he provided no evidence for this claim.
Lee dismisses such criticism, saying he does not belong to the far right. He says he is just a family farmer who wants the EU to return more decision-making power to the people who work the land and feed Europe.
Esme Nicholson contributed to this report from Berlin.
