Yes, farm workers are protesting, at least in Germany. It’s in fact the small family farms who aren’t protesting because they literally can’t afford to, larger ones are doing it for them, owner and employees joining ranks because employees are smart enough to see that their boss isn’t earning more than them, even if they wanted to they couldn’t afford it. Which is also why the average tractor you see at those protests is quite impressive family farms can’t afford that kind of hardware (and have no need for it either, and if they have, they borrow one or own one by means of a coop).
Marxist class analysis does not look at whether you’re an employer or entrepreneur, but your power relationship to capital. And by that measure farmers range from petite bourgeois (if they’re very lucky) down to right-out Lumpen.
As said: Just because a day labourer owns a hammer doesn’t mean they have anything to say regarding their work, any power to siphon off surplus value, etc.
Marxist class analysis does not look at whether you’re an employer or entrepreneur, but your power relationship to capital. And by that measure farmers range from petite bourgeois (if they’re very lucky) down to right-out Lumpen.
Lumpen? Lol. I’m from Romania, we still have subsistence farmers. That’s “lumpen”.
You’re talking about small business owners getting corporate welfare for decades, slowly losing to the bigger capitalists, which is the inevitable result of capitalism.
I agree that the competition issue is a problem, but most of them will support neoliberalism: deregulation, the race to the bottom. That’s a problem because they’re destroying the planet.
And the animal sector needs to end. The feed crop farmers can switch to food crops.
You’re talking about small business owners getting corporate welfare for decades, slowly losing to the bigger capitalists, which is the inevitable result of capitalism.
Talking about Germany: We’re talking about farmers getting squeezed out by supermarkets and other traders and by subsidies geared towards increasing farm size. It has been decades-long state policy to shaft small farmers and benefit large ones.
That exact subsidy regime is what they’re protesting.
I agree that the competition issue is a problem, but most of them will support neoliberalism: deregulation, the race to the bottom.
They’re protesting that EU environmental and animal welfare regulations are costing them too much, yes. But they aren’t fundamentally opposed to those regulations, they simply don’t want to be the ones stuck with the bill. They can’t afford those bills.
And the animal sector needs to end. The feed crop farmers can switch to food crops.
Bullshit. Intensive animal farming needs to end, meat needs to become more expensive (and also btw butcher’s wages need to be increased), protein imports need to end (i.e. South American soy), but Europe has plenty of agricultural land to produce meat sustainably. There’s plenty of landscapes we can’t preserve without animal agriculture as European bisons aren’t really a thing, any more, neither are wolves which would be necessary to keep the bisons in check should they be re-introduced on a larger scale and we refuse to hunt them.
If you don’t want to eat meat that’s your choice and I support it, but don’t expect that bullshit statistics (like counting water raining down on meadows as “water use”) impress anyone not invested in your moral system. Least of all ecologists.
Talking about Germany: We’re talking about farmers getting squeezed out by supermarkets and other traders and by subsidies geared towards increasing farm size. It has been decades-long state policy to shaft small farmers and benefit large ones.
Yeah, and that’s intra-capitalist competition. In the end there can be only one Big Ag corporation.
I’m not sure what you want, are you some kind of liberal? Small time capitalists are still capitalists, even when they’re losing to big capitalists.
That exact subsidy regime is what they’re protesting.
They want more subsidies with fewer strings attached. Not no subsidies.
They can’t afford those bills.
Because they’re overleveraged. Because they’re capitalists who bet (invested) too much in technological capital.
Do you still not get what automation means here? They are owners and managers, not workers. They manage robots or energy slaves. A tractor isn’t a hammer.
Bullshit. Intensive animal farming needs to end, meat needs to become more expensive (and also btw butcher’s wages need to be increased), protein imports need to end (i.e. South American soy), but Europe has plenty of agricultural land to produce meat sustainably. There’s plenty of landscapes we can’t preserve without animal agriculture as European bisons aren’t really a thing, any more, neither are wolves which would be necessary to keep the bisons in check should they be re-introduced on a larger scale and we refuse to hunt them.
Bud, these farmers are all about CAFOs. Intensive animal farming delivers almost all of the animal products.
And extensive animal farming has no future either. Not only is extensive animal farming responsible for massive deforestation and GHG emissions from ruminants, but land is limited, and it’s already being used for such activities.
I’d love to see the industrial animal farming system disappear tomorrow, and it would be the same farmers in the streets, along with masses of commodity fetishists complaining about the cost of living because the price of meat and eggs went to the Moon.
When we’ll return to the land on mass, in a few decades, because that’s the only way to survive, you and your kids will have to deal with these farmers you see today, and their kids, as the ones that don’t sell will be large land owners who will not be sharing land with you (nor tools). You will be their serf.
No it’s not. As before: Your class analysis is off. A capitalist is someone who can live off capital income alone. Farmers don’t.
They want more subsidies with fewer strings attached. Not no subsidies.
Noone wants no subsidies in Europe. People want a subsidy regime that’s quite a bit less neoliberal, that does even more for the environment and structural change within the sector, but without fucking over farmers.
Without subsidies farming would be dead in Europe, which is problematic for two reasons: First off, food security, secondly, capital would swarm out into the third world exploiting land and people there to produce food to sell here.
Bud, these farmers are all about CAFOs. Intensive animal farming delivers almost all of the animal products.
I’m sorry please what the village my sister is living it has no animal-raising farms at all. Two or three small chicken coops, but not for commercial purposes.
When we’ll return to the land on mass, in a few decades, because that’s the only way to survive
OMFG. Go to the countryside. Right now. Move there. Speak to farmers. Fucking primitivist city fuck, who’s going to produce cancer medicine in your world.
Honestly, the fact that you’re trying to portray large land owners with and high-tech capital owners as “those workers” is extremely amusing, and also tragic, as you’re supporting the soil of fascism.
Many of those farmers don’t own land, they lease it. Maybe they own one field because they come from an old farming family, but not the rest of the fields they need to even break even. And a tractor needs to be driven and you need to get up early even if it is GPS-enabled and can micro-dose fertiliser into the exact spots the field needs.
Don’t bring your US “one farm from horizon to horizon” POV into European agriculture. That’s pretty much the case pretty much nowhere over here.
Lastly, I never said “those workers”. Did you even reply to the right comment.
Many of those farmers don’t own land, they lease it.
Of course, the rentiers are worse. I agree with that.
And a tractor needs to be driven and you need to get up early even if it is GPS-enabled and can micro-dose fertiliser into the exact spots the field needs.
Right, because they’re not workers. The farmers are managers and owners of technology. And they’re becoming unnecessary.
At least try to understand the role of fossil fuels and technology in all of this.
Of course, the rentiers are worse. I agree with that.
Rentiers which receive agricultural subsidies, btw.
Right, because they’re not workers. The farmers are managers and owners of technology. And they’re becoming unnecessary.
Petite bourgois are by definition workers. Those farmers very much can’t live from capital income alone. They’re folks who studied (in one way or the other) agriculture, they are making decisions as to what to grow when and where, they’re out there in the fields grabbing dirt and inspecting roots and making decisions about when to fertilise, when to harvest. They’re farmers, doing farmer stuff. That doesn’t change just because they hired the neigbour’s son to drive the tractor over one field while they’re inspecting another. Or, once every year, a bunch of Ukrainians come along and help with harvesting stuff that needs harvesting by hand.
And no they’re very much not unnecessary. What’s it with vegans and being city kids completely alienated from how their food is grown.
At least try to understand the role of fossil fuels and technology in all of this.
It’s not just fossil fuels, import-dependent agriculture is generally a problem and those issues also include, say, phosphates. Not a climate change issue but a general sustainability one (those mines won’t last forever), with further impacts on the local environment (overfertilisation and everything).
Meanwhile saying “your diesel is going to cost more” to farmers who couldn’t afford to buy electric tractors if those even existed in the first place is tone-deaf as fuck.
Do you think organic farmers have it easier than conventional ones? Or don’t drive diesels? Boy oh boy. The prices you get for produce are higher, yes, but it’s also more work. Which wouldn’t be an issue if you weren’t saying “farmers don’t work”.
So they don’t produce surplus value that is siphoned off by capital?
All those contractors that went bankrupt because Trump doesn’t pay his bills, do you intend to say that to their face? That because they own a literal hammer, they can’t get fucked over?
Even fucking tankies, at least some of them, acknowledge this: In the GDR tradespeople, from baker to electrician, owned (as in actually owned) their business. Hiring a journeyman and having a trainee doesn’t bourgeois make.
And are the farm workers protesting (and are they unionized) or are the farm owners protesting?
They are overleveraged entrepreneurs. I agree that that’s not good, but that’s not an excuse to maintain business as usual.
Yes, farm workers are protesting, at least in Germany. It’s in fact the small family farms who aren’t protesting because they literally can’t afford to, larger ones are doing it for them, owner and employees joining ranks because employees are smart enough to see that their boss isn’t earning more than them, even if they wanted to they couldn’t afford it. Which is also why the average tractor you see at those protests is quite impressive family farms can’t afford that kind of hardware (and have no need for it either, and if they have, they borrow one or own one by means of a coop).
Marxist class analysis does not look at whether you’re an employer or entrepreneur, but your power relationship to capital. And by that measure farmers range from petite bourgeois (if they’re very lucky) down to right-out Lumpen.
As said: Just because a day labourer owns a hammer doesn’t mean they have anything to say regarding their work, any power to siphon off surplus value, etc.
Lumpen? Lol. I’m from Romania, we still have subsistence farmers. That’s “lumpen”.
You’re talking about small business owners getting corporate welfare for decades, slowly losing to the bigger capitalists, which is the inevitable result of capitalism.
I agree that the competition issue is a problem, but most of them will support neoliberalism: deregulation, the race to the bottom. That’s a problem because they’re destroying the planet.
And the animal sector needs to end. The feed crop farmers can switch to food crops.
Talking about Germany: We’re talking about farmers getting squeezed out by supermarkets and other traders and by subsidies geared towards increasing farm size. It has been decades-long state policy to shaft small farmers and benefit large ones.
That exact subsidy regime is what they’re protesting.
They’re protesting that EU environmental and animal welfare regulations are costing them too much, yes. But they aren’t fundamentally opposed to those regulations, they simply don’t want to be the ones stuck with the bill. They can’t afford those bills.
Bullshit. Intensive animal farming needs to end, meat needs to become more expensive (and also btw butcher’s wages need to be increased), protein imports need to end (i.e. South American soy), but Europe has plenty of agricultural land to produce meat sustainably. There’s plenty of landscapes we can’t preserve without animal agriculture as European bisons aren’t really a thing, any more, neither are wolves which would be necessary to keep the bisons in check should they be re-introduced on a larger scale and we refuse to hunt them.
If you don’t want to eat meat that’s your choice and I support it, but don’t expect that bullshit statistics (like counting water raining down on meadows as “water use”) impress anyone not invested in your moral system. Least of all ecologists.
Yeah, and that’s intra-capitalist competition. In the end there can be only one Big Ag corporation.
I’m not sure what you want, are you some kind of liberal? Small time capitalists are still capitalists, even when they’re losing to big capitalists.
They want more subsidies with fewer strings attached. Not no subsidies.
Because they’re overleveraged. Because they’re capitalists who bet (invested) too much in technological capital.
Do you still not get what automation means here? They are owners and managers, not workers. They manage robots or energy slaves. A tractor isn’t a hammer.
Bud, these farmers are all about CAFOs. Intensive animal farming delivers almost all of the animal products.
And extensive animal farming has no future either. Not only is extensive animal farming responsible for massive deforestation and GHG emissions from ruminants, but land is limited, and it’s already being used for such activities.
I’d love to see the industrial animal farming system disappear tomorrow, and it would be the same farmers in the streets, along with masses of commodity fetishists complaining about the cost of living because the price of meat and eggs went to the Moon.
When we’ll return to the land on mass, in a few decades, because that’s the only way to survive, you and your kids will have to deal with these farmers you see today, and their kids, as the ones that don’t sell will be large land owners who will not be sharing land with you (nor tools). You will be their serf.
No it’s not. As before: Your class analysis is off. A capitalist is someone who can live off capital income alone. Farmers don’t.
Noone wants no subsidies in Europe. People want a subsidy regime that’s quite a bit less neoliberal, that does even more for the environment and structural change within the sector, but without fucking over farmers.
Without subsidies farming would be dead in Europe, which is problematic for two reasons: First off, food security, secondly, capital would swarm out into the third world exploiting land and people there to produce food to sell here.
I’m sorry please what the village my sister is living it has no animal-raising farms at all. Two or three small chicken coops, but not for commercial purposes.
OMFG. Go to the countryside. Right now. Move there. Speak to farmers. Fucking primitivist city fuck, who’s going to produce cancer medicine in your world.
Honestly, the fact that you’re trying to portray large land owners with and high-tech capital owners as “those workers” is extremely amusing, and also tragic, as you’re supporting the soil of fascism.
Many of those farmers don’t own land, they lease it. Maybe they own one field because they come from an old farming family, but not the rest of the fields they need to even break even. And a tractor needs to be driven and you need to get up early even if it is GPS-enabled and can micro-dose fertiliser into the exact spots the field needs.
Don’t bring your US “one farm from horizon to horizon” POV into European agriculture. That’s pretty much the case pretty much nowhere over here.
Lastly, I never said “those workers”. Did you even reply to the right comment.
Of course, the rentiers are worse. I agree with that.
Right, because they’re not workers. The farmers are managers and owners of technology. And they’re becoming unnecessary.
At least try to understand the role of fossil fuels and technology in all of this.
Here, start with Luddites: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/06/the-luddites-were-right
Rentiers which receive agricultural subsidies, btw.
Petite bourgois are by definition workers. Those farmers very much can’t live from capital income alone. They’re folks who studied (in one way or the other) agriculture, they are making decisions as to what to grow when and where, they’re out there in the fields grabbing dirt and inspecting roots and making decisions about when to fertilise, when to harvest. They’re farmers, doing farmer stuff. That doesn’t change just because they hired the neigbour’s son to drive the tractor over one field while they’re inspecting another. Or, once every year, a bunch of Ukrainians come along and help with harvesting stuff that needs harvesting by hand.
And no they’re very much not unnecessary. What’s it with vegans and being city kids completely alienated from how their food is grown.
It’s not just fossil fuels, import-dependent agriculture is generally a problem and those issues also include, say, phosphates. Not a climate change issue but a general sustainability one (those mines won’t last forever), with further impacts on the local environment (overfertilisation and everything).
Meanwhile saying “your diesel is going to cost more” to farmers who couldn’t afford to buy electric tractors if those even existed in the first place is tone-deaf as fuck.
Do you think organic farmers have it easier than conventional ones? Or don’t drive diesels? Boy oh boy. The prices you get for produce are higher, yes, but it’s also more work. Which wouldn’t be an issue if you weren’t saying “farmers don’t work”.
No, they’re not. They’re always blurring the lines. Clearly class traitors in this context.
So they don’t produce surplus value that is siphoned off by capital?
All those contractors that went bankrupt because Trump doesn’t pay his bills, do you intend to say that to their face? That because they own a literal hammer, they can’t get fucked over?
Even fucking tankies, at least some of them, acknowledge this: In the GDR tradespeople, from baker to electrician, owned (as in actually owned) their business. Hiring a journeyman and having a trainee doesn’t bourgeois make.