By setting up multiple roadblocks and stirring up a commotion around the country, the farmers forced the government to take action. It ended up promising them 400 million euros in subsidies and tax breaks and vowed to reconsider the environmental constraints imposed on them. It has threatened industrialists and supermarket chains that take advantage of their dominant position with sanctions. And it has publicly opposed the ratification of the latest free-trade agreement negotiated by the European Union.
These promises were enough for the largest farmers’ union, the FNSEA, to call off the protests. Even if the farmers put an end to the roadblocks, they aren’t crying victory just yet because they know that, fundamentally, nothing has been resolved.
They know that clinging to the authorization of pesticides won’t secure their future or help them confront climate change. If the 400 million euros are in fact granted, they’ll go to the wealthiest farmers as they always do. And even if food industry tycoons and supermarket chain suppliers do let up a little it will only be for a short period of time.
The fact that wealthy farmers dominate over poorer ones is one of the most revolting aspects of capitalism. And just because the government speaks of France’s “sovereignty” and “cultural exception” when it comes to food, doesn’t mean that agriculture is an exception to the rule.
While many farmers struggle to make minimum wage, farming is a very lucrative business for the shareholders of Lactalis and Bigard. Seed companies and agrochemical trusts like Bayer and others bring in huge profits. The farming industry brings prosperity to Danone and Unilever shareholders, agricultural equipment manufacturers and supermarket chains like Leclerc, Carrefour, and Auchan. And the banks, too, benefit from the indebtedness forced on farmers!
Free trade agreements have been widely condemned. But who negotiates and benefits from them, if not agri-food and large retail importers and major French exporters including cereal producers, sugar beet growers and vineyard owners? And while the government pretends to arbitrate, it always sides with them.
None of the real problems will be solved for poorer farmers as long as the laws of the market, inherent to capitalism, prevail. Yet, in their overwhelming majority, farmers are attached to the capitalist order.
For the rich ones, the capitalist order has its advantages. Agricultural capitalists are just like the president of the FNSEA, Arnaud Rousseau, who is also the leader of the company that produces food products for the Lesieur and Puget brands. They are powerful enough to participate in setting prices on the market, to export their products all over the world and even to purchase and exploit land in the poorest countries. When it comes to subsidies, they are the ones who benefit the most. In fact, they are the ones who get the biggest share of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy subsidies.
As for small farmers, they are crushed by the market economy and competition, but they can only consider their future within the capitalist economy. They defend private ownership and free enterprise all the more because they fear losing their own property.
The same goes for many artisans, salespeople or self-employed workers who have one foot in the world of labor and another in the world of entrepreneurship. They are caught up in so many contradictions. They speak out against the power of the state and continue to plead for more subsidies. They defend the market economy and free enterprise, but they also want a guaranteed income and regulated markets.
This is why the prospect of overthrowing capitalism and putting an end to the laws of “the survival of the fittest” can only be embodied by the exploited, by those who have only their labor to live on, in other words by wage-earning workers. They are the only ones who have no attachment to capitalism whatsoever: no small shop, no small business, no land to capitalize on.
They, too, have many reasons to put up a fight and are more than legitimate in doing so. Farmers can proudly assert that they feed the country. But without the workers who manufacture tractors and harvesting machines, without those who work in slaughterhouses, without truck drivers and cashiers, there would be no food on our tables. Workers in agribusiness, the energy and automotive sectors, healthcare and other sectors are also essential to society.
Well, we, the workers, must also learn to organize and fight back! Not only to defend our living conditions but also, and above all, to offer a different future for society; one where the production of agricultural and industrial goods is planned and organized in a rational way so as to satisfy the needs of all, because the means to do so exist.
Nathalie Arthaud