climate change

By staff - How We Fix The Climate, February 28, 2024

By Morgan Ody, Andoni Garcia Arriola, Vitor Rodrigues - EuroVia, February 26, 2024

ECVC demands an obligation at the EU level to ensure prices paid to farmers cover the costs of production, including a decent income for the work of farmers and agricultural workers and their social security contributions.

In recent months farmers protests have blocked cities all over Europe. ECVC firmly believes that the Spanish translation of the EU Unfair Trade Practice (UTP) directive is a good way forward to reply to the demand unifying most of the protests: fair prices for farmers’ products. While some other national translation may be interesting, it is only in Spain that this law has been effective and actually made a difference in the price of the farmers: it actually obliges each link of the food chain to cover its production costs, starting with producers. Some key features are developed here, which should be taken up at the EU level of the directive in order to strengthen it.

Through the law, producers have the right to anonymously report anyone who purchases their produce at a price below their production costs, which they self-determine for their products on a case-by-case basis. Thus, purchase of produce at a loss can be punished with a fine of €3,000 to €100,000. It is important to have truly dissuasive fines. Repeat offenders can be fined at a higher rate, from €100,000 to €1 million euros. During the first quarter of 2023, the Spanish government announced that 55 companies had been sanctioned[1] .

An instrument, created by COAG – one of the Spanish member organisations of ECVC and La Via Campesina - in 2008, together with two consumer associations, has been very important in giving transparency to the market:

- The Origin-Destination Price Index (Indice de precios origen-destino - IPOD) publishes an index every month to denounce the abuse of power and the imposition of prices below production costs by industry and distribution. This index started off back in 2008 as an initiative of farmers and consumer organisations, and it illustrated the difference between prices paid to farmers and by consumers. This amounted to more than 500%, indicating that the greatest beneficiaries of market deregulation have been the strongest operators (generally large-scale distribution) and the most disadvantaged were farmers and consumers, for whom prices at source are very low and yet consumers pay a much higher price than they would have to in a regulated market situation.

The core of the law are the two following functional instruments:

- First, the Food Information and Control Agency (FICA) which is the legal body of control, dedicated to collecting anonymously complaints and sanction from farmers, farming organisations, cooperatives and other entities in the chain. It also has its own capacity to carry out ex officio inspections of compliance and execution of contracts, on price abuses, lack of agricultural contracts, failure to meet payment deadlines and other abusive practices. It publishes the sanctions when they are final.

- The Chain Observatory, which is responsible for carrying out price and cost studies along the value chain of each agricultural and animal production. These studies are important as they are part of the possible references for farmers when they negotiate contracts. It also has to publish studies of costs, evolution of consumption and evolution of food prices.

Another key element is that in Spain, contracts – which are obligatory - must be deposited in an official register so that no changes can be made once complaints have been articulated.

The EU should include this high level of public control and price transparency. It should also pay attention to the following elements:
- Prices by law must cover production costs in each link of the chain, starting with the farmer and the cost must include a decent income for farmers and all agricultural workers.
- Selling at a loss is prohibited.
- Farmers must be paid in a maximum of 30 days when they sell a perishable product and 60 days if products are processed.
- Sanctions must be significant if the above points are not complied with.
- Price observatories at national and European levels must provide net margin levels by brand and manufacturer.
- There must be transparency on commercial negotiation conditions.

Finally, this law will not be completely effective without addressing international trade, removing the WTO from agriculture and stopping free trade agreements. A new trade framework based on food sovereignty should be implemented to enable the relocation of agricultural production and prevent national production from competing with imports that maintain low prices. Furthermore these free trade agreements deepen the climate and biodiversity crises and damage food systems in Europe and the rest of the world.

The European Union adopted it last revision of the Directive on Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) in the agricultural and food supply chain in April 2019[2]. The Directive bans certain „Unfair Trading Practices“ imposed unilaterally by one trading partner on another at the EU level in the agricultural and food supply chain. However, even though the directive is a step in the right direction, it does not go so far as to legally cover production costs. As seen in the farmers protest the national implementations did so far not improve the barging power of farmers. Hence ECVC is calling the EU commission to strengthen the directive at EU level and a national implementation based on the chain law in Spain.

By Lara Skinner, Fred Zalcman, Georges Sassine, Julie Tighe, and Vincent Alvarez - Cornell ILR, February 14, 2024

By Emma Foehringer Merchant and Joshua Yeager - Inside Climate News, February 21, 2024

On a recent Tuesday evening, several oil workers in Kern County, California, spoke out in support of a project that they hope will create much-needed jobs.

“What I’m hoping to get out of this is hope for my grandson’s generation,” said Allen Miller, a third-generation oilman who came to work in the petroleum-rich region in 1984. “That they can provide for their family the way my grandpa did and the way I did.”

The audience applauded Miller’s comments during a crowded public meeting in Taft, a city of about 8,500, in the heart of the state’s oil country. 

The proposed project, known as Carbon TerraVault 1, would store millions of tons of planet-warming carbon a mile beneath the nearby Elk Hills Oil Field. Oil production in that field and others nearby has sustained the county’s economy for over a century. 

“This is our oil field,” said Manny Campos, a longtime Taft resident and businessman. “I’m glad to see we are being intentional about keeping it that way and keeping the benefits local.”

Some environmental advocates are skeptical of the carbon removal industry — and its ability to create a significant number of jobs — but California policymakers view carbon removal and storage as a necessary tool to manage greenhouse gas emissions. 

The fledgling technology is a key part of the state’s plan to fight climate change, which also includes phasing out oil drilling by 2045. The county and California Resources Corporation (CRC), the oil company hoping to build the TerraVault, see carbon management as a vital new revenue stream. Kern County stands to lose thousands of jobs and millions in tax dollars as drilling declines 

But carbon storage facilities themselves are not currently projected to generate large numbers of jobs, according to a report prepared for the county. Kern’s own analysis shows the initial phase of the TerraVault project will only produce five permanent positions.

By Sam Black and Josh Hirschfeld-Kroen - More Perfect Union, February 20, 2024

By Lois Ross - Rabble, February 16, 2024

It has not been making the mainstream news in Canada, but across Europe farmers are gathering in major cities with their tractors, blocking roads and encircling major cities, protesting a host of national and international issues.

It is complicated, because these protests are not based on a single issue, but rather an entire host of agricultural and trade policies, coupled in some cases with the impact of war, new and pending trade deals, cheaper imported foods, climate change regulations, inflation, and increased costs of production topped by increasingly diminishing returns for farmers.

Across the European Union – from the Netherlands, through Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and into Poland and Romania, farmers are visibly confronting a food system that they feel has turned on them.

Issues cited by farmers are cheap food imports, in others rising production costs and decreasing margins for the farm. Drought, along with policies that would increase farm concentration and escalate the loss of farm livelihoods, also have been cited.

In many ways it is a perfect storm — and one that has been a long-time in the making. Some of the same issues leading European Union farmers to protest are bubbling to the surface here in Canada.

It is hard to find detailed information on the tensions surfacing in each country, but the general malaise has been described in a recent article by The Guardian:

“Farmers have said they face falling sale prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, powerful and domineering retailers, debt, climate change and cheap foreign imports, all within an EU agricultural system based on the premise that ‘bigger is better’.”

By Preston Arrow-Weed, Christian Torres, Jared Naimark, Daniela Flores, and Dustin Mulvaney - Earthworks, February 15, 2024

By Yago Álvarez Barba - La Via Campesina, February 15, 2024

Peasant organizations demand that free trade agreements that have been opening the doors to unfair competition for years be halted, which materialize in their current problems.

Tractors continue to block the roads, new mobilizations are announced, and the problems that the agricultural sector has put on the table are beginning to dominate the center of political debate and media attention. Among the demands of one side and the other, and among those that the far right wants to co-opt and exploit for its own benefit, there is one that is a well-known issue among many activists and social organizations that did not necessarily have to be part of the agricultural sector: free trade treaties.

As one of their main demands, the three farmers’ associations – Asociación Agraria de Jóvenes Agricultores (ASAJA), Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Agricultores y Ganaderos (COAG) and the Unión de Pequeños Agricultores y Ganaderos (UPA) – have demanded that negotiations for one of the major agreements on the table, the Mercosur agreement with the European Union, be completely halted. This agreement would eliminate barriers and further open trade with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. They also demand the “non-ratification of the agreement with New Zealand,” which is pending its final ratification by the Parliament of New Zealand and, according to COAG, “opens the door to the importation of meat and milk from the other side of the planet.” Additionally, they also demand that “negotiations with Chile, Kenya, Mexico, India, and Australia” be halted, all of which have been signed by the EU in recent years.

These proclamations are not new, even if it’s when farmers have paralyzed the roads that they have jumped into public debate. Social movements and campaigns against free trade agreements have been warning for years that these trade agreements would have devastating consequences for agriculture, livestock, economies based on these sectors, the planet, and our own bodies. The campaign against the free trade agreement(FTA) between the European Union (EU) and the United States, known as the TTIP, was the focal point of hundreds of social movements, farmers, ranchers, and environmental and human rights defenders across Europe. That FTA was frozen after Trump’s victory, but others like the agreement with Canada, the CETA, and those signed in the following years are now being demanded by farmers’ organizations to be halted and renegotiated. From those free trade agreements, these protests.

By Enrico Somaglia - Green European Journal, February 13, 2024

With farmers taking to the streets and making headlines all over Europe, national governments and EU institutions are rushing to make concessions to appease them. But are the solutions offered what farmers and agricultural workers really need? We asked Enrico Somaglia, deputy general secretary of the European Federation of Food, Agriculture, and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT).

Green European Journal: Is there a common thread among the farmers’ protests happening across Europe?

Enrico Somaglia: The protests are linked to different national circumstances, such as overregulation, subsidy cuts, or imports of Ukrainian grain to the EU. But there is definitely a frustration towards a common enemy, the European Union, the Green Deal and its Farm To Fork strategy. Of course, not every farmer sees them as enemies: the agriculture sector is very heterogeneous. Small and big farmers are organised in different ways, they have different representatives. A minority within the sector opposes any kind of green policies because it is resistant to change. As trade unions, we firmly reject this stance.

On the other hand, a significant part of the farmers are against the Green Deal because they perceive it as something that has been unilaterally imposed on them. Fortunately, there is still room to improve green policies to make sure they are more socially acceptable. Trade unions see this as the way forward to build a different agriculture sector which is not only more sustainable from an environmental point of view, but is also a better place to work. To achieve that, we need measures for a truly just transition. We should not forget that if the condition of farmers is challenging, that of agricultural workers is simply unbearable. A vast proportion of seasonal workers, migrant workers, and daily labourers still face unrecorded working hours, appalling housing situations, and exploitative working relationships. The green transition can be an opportunity to create better jobs, but it needs to be stronger on the social side.