WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #174 - The peasant question in Europe (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The European Parliament's approval of the Nature Restoration Law with

336 votes in favour, 300 against and 13 abstentions was hailed as a
victory for environmentalists and as the defeat of the attempt to build
a new power bloc that will run the EU after the elections in June 2024,
based on the alliance between the People's Party and Giorgia Meloni's
Conservatives . ---- In this regard, the law aims to restore 20% of the
land and marine areas of the European Union by 2030, in order to halt
the loss of biodiversity by 2030. Nature restoration measures are
foreseen which concern all ecosystems that need a trend reversal by
2050. The goal is to ensure food security, climate resilience, health
and well-being for the population, and at the same time the survival of
fauna and flora. Among the most important objectives of the Nature
Restoration Law are the desire to reduce the use of chemical pesticides
by 50% by 2030, the increase in protected areas, efforts to save
pollinators, but also the idea of ensuring that there be no loss of
urban green spaces by 2030 and plan, indeed, a 5% increase by 2050.
Not only that, but "a minimum of 10% tree cover in each city" is
foreseen, the rewetting of dried up peatlands that would help to absorb
carbon, the adoption of various actions to increase biodiversity in
agricultural land, the restoration of seabed habitats, the removal of
river barriers to free 25 thousand kilometers of rivers in order to
prevent disasters during floods. Each Member State will have to develop
national rehabilitation plans with precise reporting of what has been
done, so that project implementation can be monitored and the objectives
set by law can be achieved. It is estimated that investments for the
recovery of the environment, for every euro spent, will bring between 8
and 38 euro in benefits for every citizen of the Union.
The environmentalist response to the climate crisis takes the form of a
profound restructuring of production. The climate crisis, together with
the energy crisis, force a profound revision of the economic and
productive structure which requires gigantic investments and above all a
different social organization which clashes with consolidated interests
both at an industrial and agricultural level. If it is true that the
energy crisis produces the necessary change in the industrial apparatus,
the renunciation of oil and fossil fuels as the main means of energy
production, it is accompanied by an equally profound revision of the
agricultural production method and requires the abandonment, or at least
the downsizing of an intensive agriculture that shapes the territory
according to production needs, upsetting its natural structure, Suffice
it to consider that today Europe is the continent that handles most of
the world trade in meat and live animals. It is no coincidence, and it
should be remembered, that the European Union was born out of the need
for coordination of agricultural policies and has assumed this element
as one of the qualifying points that have marked the times, methods and
stages of the Union's development. Proof of this is the Community
agricultural budget which represents one of the most robust items of the
entire productive structure of the union. It follows that a profound
restructuring of agricultural production has a massive impact on some
countries that have made this sector the key one, on which the
well-being of the populations hinges.

The Dutch answer

If we start from these premises, it is easy to understand why strong
opposition to this bill arose in the Netherlands, a country which,
despite its small size, is one of the major producers in the
agricultural and zootechnical fields and has found a social base of
support in the country made up of the agricultural world which has
always represented the leading sector of the country's economy. Using
the Dutch provincial elections held in March as an excuse, a new party
emerged, the Farmer-Citizen Movement (in Dutch BoerBurgerBeweging , BBB)
which obtained almost 20% of the vote (in the 2019 election it had
obtained only one seat) .
It has not been long since then, Prime Minister Mark Rutte is a
supporter of environmental policy, he had to take note of the changed
political climate and, albeit on partly different issues, he had to
resign and announce new elections for the month of September and his
retirement from politics, as if to sanction the end of an era after a
decade of uninterrupted government.
It is now a fact that in Europe - and beyond - there is an ongoing clash
between city and countryside which sees city dwellers lined up in
defense of the environment and the fight against climate change, willing
to bear the necessary changes to the model of life and work, in order to
contrast or at least slow down soil consumption and the crisis climate,
while the inhabitants of the suburbs and the countryside see the quality
of life and their well-being called into question as they have organized
and developed it over time and therefore oppose change.
This common feeling is widespread in Holland. also for cultural and
religious reasons. In fact, the town was materially born from man's
constant and continuous struggle against nature, which was violently
modified, providing for the emergence of submerged land, so much so that
the surface of the town is updated from time to time in growth,
depending on the amount of land that new arable land is taken from the
sea through new polders. Recovering land by the sea means cultivating
it, making it productive, setting up activities on it, including
breeding, which are intensive in order to maximize profits and which,
over time, have become the country's wealth. After all, Holland is
famous for having plundered the colonies for centuries with the East
India Company and for having financed the progressive conquest of
territories with the sweat and blood of the populations of Asia, and beyond!
To understand the extent of the problem, it should be remembered that in
2020, the Netherlands ranked fourth in per capita greenhouse gas
emissions, after Ireland, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic.
Furthermore, the Netherlands is the first EU country by soil nitrogen
concentration, the compound responsible for the dispersion of nitric
oxide (a greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere. The agricultural sector is
mainly responsible for the high levels of emissions of this gas, as well
as methane, also because the country has the highest density of farm
animals per hectare of land, which produce emissions of nitrogenous
compounds.
In the period between 2010 and 2019, the Netherlands did not comply with
the limits set for the emissions of some of the most harmful greenhouse
gases, violating European Directive 2023/2264, so much so that in the
summer of 2019, the Dutch government had to implement a plan to cut
emissions, of methane and nitrogen dioxide, by 50% by 2030 (even by 70%
in some areas). If the plan had been implemented, it would have led to
the closure of numerous farms and the reduction of livestock for
breeding, as well as the interruption of building projects for new
settlements in the polders and the reduction of the speed limit for cars.
However, precisely because of the consequences on the agricultural
sector, the plan had provoked massive protests from ranchers and
farmers. Therefore, asking the Dutch to give up their dream of taming
nature, indeed inducing them to accept its choices, means operating a
real cultural violence on the history of the country. It should be added
that the common feeling of the population is influenced by the Calvinist
culture and therefore looks with a certain favor at the so-called
"prosperity theology", or believes that the man Faber if he emancipates
through his work and earns all the more compared to the Kingdom of
heaven the more his works on earth are distinguished by industriousness
and charity. That is, we are at the roots of capitalism as Max Weber
explained to us.
Paradoxically, another component of the country's culture pays
particular attention to respect for nature, because it knows that it
cannot be subjected to violence, as evidenced by the particularly heavy
sanctions against those who damage the correct functioning of the canals
and the drainage of waters, and this because by manipulating nature the
Dutch have learned that there are rules to be respected to prevent
nature itself from regaining the upper hand and to ensure that the
elements can be tamed. This cultural awareness weighs on the country's
social fabric, causing a strong and robust environmental movement to
operate there.
It is for this reason that today we are witnessing a growing
polarization of the common feeling of the population, divided between
environmentalists and supporters of respect for nature and therefore
supporters of the law voted by the European Community and the
simultaneous presence of farmers and breeders who represent an
anti-ecological social block , who sees the country's production model
in danger and judges the sacrifice of jobs excessive on the altar of the
green economic transition.

The peasant movement in Europe

There are those who reduce the phenomenon arguing that we are faced with
a redistribution of votes to the right because another far-right party,
the Forum for Democracy, a Eurosceptic party founded in 2016, which went
from 14.4% in 2019 to just 2% in the last elections.
The fact is that the left and political analysts in general do not
realize that a social base is being created which has structural
motivations and specific economic characteristics which makes populism
and anti-ecologicalism the political banner whose name claims company
management. These new movements have adopted a demagogic approach to
politics, typical of populist movements, which opposes the ruling class,
described as elitist, to that of the workers. In addition to this, the
BBB also embodies a new rhetoric on the European political landscape: a
rhetoric that describes governments' environmental and climate policies
as a new form of oppression that those in power exert on citizens,
ignoring their interests and concerns.
This trend is more widespread than it appears if we only look at what is
also happening in Belgium, France and Germany, where farmers and
ranchers have taken to the streets to protest against the reforms - or
reform proposals - of their sector. to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Everywhere the dispute is the same: the green economic transition cannot
take place on the shoulders of workers and peasants in particular.
If in Belgium the peasant protest has concentrated on the fall in the
prices of milk and meat, claiming from the farmers a greater profit
which is essential to prevent the bankruptcy of the companies but has
not found political representation at least for now and has therefore
not given rise to the construction of a specific movement cannot be said
the same for France where since October 2018 the Gilets jaunes movement
has sided against the environmental transition, contesting measures such
as the increase in excise taxes on fuel, the lowering of speed limits,
the increase in motorway tolls and the improvement of radars to detect
infringements. The parainsurrectionary movement was born which for
months enlivened the French weekend with roadblocks, demonstrations,
protests that assumed reflective vests as their emblem required by law
on the roads. The Movement predominantly composed of citizens belonging
to the middle class and generally residing in non-metropolitan or rural
areas of the country, and therefore forced to travel by car to reach the
workplace, it immediately aggregated social actors such as pensioners,
employees and small entrepreneurs, disappointed by the
policies social issues of the executive and the failed promises of the
French President. Subsequently, the movement extended its claims to the
provision of greater social services and income support, the promotion
of businesses in non-urban areas, the revision of the pension system,
the increase in wages upon the cessation of austerity policies.
Over time, the movement has partially modified its objectives and they
have found new vigor leading to the struggle that for months has seen
French society opposed to the government in the dispute over pensions, a
dispute which apparently ended with the victory of the executive, while
in reality the fire is smoldering under the ashes and new outbreaks of
anger are always possible.

Unify the struggles

This contradictory and variegated landscape of conflicting interests and
struggles makes the task of the left more difficult today than ever, be
it the political prospects of the reformist left or the distant
prospects of a revolutionary breakthrough. A priority requirement is
certainly that of being able to unify the struggles, finding common
objectives, in a situation in which the capitalist restructuring
underway and the profound transformation of the economy induced by the
energy and climate crisis present a picture that is anything but
favorable at the level institutional, with right-wing parties prevailing
in government, which is creating the conditions for a possible
reorientation of the political axis at the community level.
Faced with class interests that objectively diverge more and more, it is
not possible to identify a single direction and provide an organic
indication of the direction in which to move and therefore one can only
start from the territories, with the support of resistance struggles,
trying to maintain territorial cohesion and class unity, as the starting
point of a common action, with a view to glimpsing the bearing lines of
a different society. to give substance to the fight against
inequalities, above all for a minimum subsistence wage, which guarantees
the maintenance of essential living conditions, with at least acceptable
levels of health care, social solidarity, education, trying to contain
the overwhelming power of political and social right that are hegemonic
right now and are
leading the class struggle with determination, winning it.

The editorial staff

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/07/28/la-questione-contadina-in-europa/
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