Yesterday I went to see the movie “There is a problem with cow nr. 80” (1). A French movie, by Dirk Barrez, about the insanity of the liberalization of agricultural markets causing millions of small farmers around the world to stop their livelihood because they cannot face the foreign competition. In short: big farmers are taking over, Monsanto and Round Up are coming in, destroying soil and human health, and finally people move to cities hoping on a better chance there. The film was shown as part of the AlimenTERRA festival in order to debate this issue with a larger public. Conclusion of the debate: each country should have the right to protect their farmers. Unfortunately I was too tired of listening to the movie that I couldn’t speak properly French anymore. So I put something on this blog instead.

RebelFarmer is concerned with keeping rural communities on the countryside. Communities that can earn a living not only with agriculture, but moreover with the management of natural resources in general: safeguarding biodiversity, producing renewable energy, gathering and processing forest by-products, soil and water conservation, landscape maintenance etc. etc. If they would be properly paid for doing that, a whole lot of people would not have to find their luck in cities. But they aren’t.

Ofcourse we need more campaigns to promote family scaled ecofarmers to produce for local consumers. Ecofarmers are one of the few rural businesses that get a little bit money, as part of the premium price, to take care of the environment. But with all the campaigns in the world, you would not be able to convince all consumers to pay this premium price. There will remain many people that oppose to organic farming. And many will say they can’t afford to pay the premium price.  However, if you ask people if they would allow the government to take measures in order to have a sustainable countryside and agriculture, without Monsanto and RoundUp, I am optimistic about reaching a majority saying yes.

Current EU hectare payments (“direct payments”) are unequally sponsoring intensive-large scale farms. Although the EU needs to “decouple” its agricultural support from the distorting effects on the world market, they still cause overproduction in Europe and dumping practices in developing countries that try to build up their own agricultural sector. About 30% of the total EU budget, more than 30 billion Euro, goes to European hectare payments each year until 2013 (In 2009: 42,8 billion). What else can we do with this money? Just to mention a few possibilities:

Improve soil
Agricultural soils in Europe have dangerously low humus contents and are eroding (4). Although some scientists still believe that agricultural production on sterile substrate with mineral fertilization is the future, many recent studies show that a good soil is a far more easy, less risky and cheaper solution to fertilize plants. Massive mulching and composting to improve humus content of agricultural soils is therefor necessary. But farmers are not willing to apply this obvious method, because it makes the production process more expensive, and the negative results of the present tillage practices will only show up later. Why not give farmers the ability to buy more compost and apply non-tillage techniques?

Terracing and maintaining dry walls
Terraces are in decay everywhere in Europe, they are overgrown with bushes and walls are falling down. It causes loss of biodiversity and a well-appreciated cultural heritage in general, fire risks in Mediterranean countries and increased risk on floods in the Alps region. Farmers don’t have interest in terraces at this moment. But saving terraces with new techniques, and making them more accessible, would create an enormous future availability of new high quality farm land. 

Ponds and wetlands on agricultural lands
They are badly needed for amphibians and birds. But ofcourse take space or cause water damage to crops. Why not compensate farmers to maintain such nature areas?

Natural plot borders
They are needed for young birds to flee too when the grass is mowed, for wild flora to grow, for insects (who eat bugs who eat crops!), and finally for filtering run off water. Why not compensate for each meter “nature”?

Hedgerows
These old suppliers of biomass and handicraft material are standing in the way for modern farmers, and take space. But they are needed for many bird species and mammals (many of them eating mice!).

Old breeds and varieties
Besides they are nice or taste nice, we need their genes for later crossing. Even GMO projects need them. Gene banks turned out not to be able to guarantee the saving of all the stocked genes.

Consumer groups
Why not paying some people to organise local marketing, for a better balance between of local offer and demand?

Farm experiments and research
Farmers themselves have a seriously underestimated intuition and ideas on what could be good for their land, crops and animals. They should get much more the ability to initiate and participate in agricultural research.

The EU does move already in that direction; things like “second pillar” subsidies and “agri-environment” measures”, and “cross compliance”, on which I will not elaborate here. But they do not currently result in something significant, let alone stopping polluting agriculture and rural exodus. EU citizens find a lively and sustainable countryside extremely important (4). So let’s give the EU another push by demanding that the direct hectare payments should be transformed within the ten year coming into measure payments to help farmers maintain soil fertility and biodiversity, two of the most precious resources of our planet guaranteeing the productivity of the future!

Links:
1. “Vache numero 80 a un problem”

2. Explanation about the EU Agricultural Budget

3. European Soil Bureau

4. Research on European citizens support for agriculture and rural development

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