A major European Union plan to fight climate change and better protect nature in the 27-nation bloc has been indefinitely postponed , underscoring how farmers’ protests sweeping the continent influence politics ahead of the June EU parliamentary elections
I live in a farming community in Saskatchewan, Canada. It’s really mind blowing how many farmers don’t give two shits about climate change. They’re really not unlike heavily profit-driven companies just looking for next quarter gains, completely oblivious to other longer term factors that might be detrimental to their business.
It’s sad in a way. This is their livelihood, and rather than adapt to the risk to bring some sort of long term sustainability, they’re just looking for that next brand new model of truck to buy when harvest comes in this year.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
The myth of the humble farmer or small holder living in harmony with his land is as bullshit as the myth of the noble savage. The vast majority of farmers see the planet as a resource to make money from. If they take any heed to local conditions, they think of it in tragedy of the commons style. For instance, in many places around the world, the aquifers irrigating farmland have less than 20 years before they’re emptied. Local farmers are aware. They take it as a warning to pump as much water as possible as fast as they can, because if they don’t take the water and turn it into profit, someone else will, and the water will still be gone.
And that’s not even getting into how these brutal exploitative farming methods are what allowed the Earth’s population to balloon to a unsustainable 8 billion and ravage the land and devour resources of every sort.
The vast majority of farmers are the enemy of the planet. In my more green authoritarian moments, I envision nationalizing every acre and setting up eco villages of subsistence farmers populated by the poor of our cities and worked by former corporate middle management reduced to serfdom. No one should own whole square miles of farmland. Not even farmers.
Me too. I’ve talked to a few retired farmers and a couple of active farmers who just shake their heads at all the nonsense, but I would say that you are generally correct.
I know that zero-tillage and high-cut stubble goes a long way to reducing erosion, but I can’t help thinking that they’ve picked the wrong time to get rid of all the tree rows.
Where I live, way down South in the USA, the general attitude is God isn’t going to let this happen. Most of my neighboring towns are projected to be under water in the next two decades, tops. But God said he wouldn’t destroy the earth with floods again…
5 years minimum, they’re going to protest again against insurance companies because their rates arw going to be on the roof.