Why Farmers Are Protesting Around the World

The tractor rolled to the front of the government building, then tipped its trailer to unload a mixture of manure, rotting produce and hay.

The farmer on that tractor was not alone. A thousand farmers with some 400 putrid trailer loads ended up at the same location in Toulouse, France. Why? And why are farmers protesting worldwide?

The scope of the farm problem

According to a February 2024 PBS broadcast, “farmers in dozens of countries on six continents have been staging protests since 2021.” By the spring of 2024, large-scale farmer protests had been seen in more than 65 countries.

Here are some examples:

• In 2023 Argentinian farmers protested both export taxes and the official government currency exchange rate. As a result of the official exchange rate alone, farmers lose half the value of their international sales.
• In 2024 thousands of farmers in India converged in New Delhi, the capital, protesting low crop prices and seeking minimum price guarantees.
• In 2024 Polish farmers blocked a border crossing into Ukraine to protest a trade deal with Mercosur, a South American trade bloc, as well as increased agricultural taxes.
• In 2024 farmers in Australia protested environmental regulations they find costly and cumbersome.
• In November 2024 thousands of farmers gathered on Parliament Square in London to protest against the planned agricultural inheritance taxation policies. Previously, the intergenerational transfer of farms had been exempt from taxation as a result of a 1992 tax break intended to protect food security.

Why farmers are protesting worldwide

It has never been easy to be a farmer. But the modern world has devalued this essential profession and added a host of new pressures.

A whole range of issues, from the weather to economic and political policies, have put enormous pressure on farmers.

The major cause is the struggle to make a living. Fertilizer, diesel fuel and other production costs have soared, yet the prices farmers receive for their crops remain low. This disparity often leaves farmers in debt.

U.S. farmers in the state of Illinois, for example, have seen debt levels increase steadily since 1991. At the same time, farm incomes for 2024 were projected to decrease by 25 percent. Illinois farmers are not alone.

Farmers in Europe saw the base price of their produce drop by 9 percent in 2023. At the same time, they faced increasing costs.

In an effort to solve other problems, governments often add to the pressures on farmers. According to Voice of America, the French government’s effort “to bring down food inflation has left them [farmers] unable to cover high costs for energy, fertilizer and transport.”

The war in Ukraine added to this problem, especially in Europe. War shut down normal trade, resulting in higher prices for both fertilizer and fuel.

Prior to the war, Russia was a major supplier of both. In 2020, Russia accounted for 13 percent of global fertilizer production, making it the top producer. In 2022, Russia was behind only the United States and Saudi Arabia in terms of oil production.

Sanctions imposed against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have blocked Russian fertilizer and oil from many global markets.

In light of the overwhelming pressures many are facing, sadly, the suicide rate among farmers is high. In 2022 CNN reported that every day another 30 farmers committed suicide in India.

In the United States, farmers are 3.5 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

Trade deals, regulation and environmental concerns

Other reasons farmers are protesting include what they perceive to be unfair trade deals and the so-called “green” initiatives that have led to a heavy burden of government regulation. Regulations intended to protect the environment are seen to be unfairly overwhelming small farmers without considering their plight.

Trade agreements allow developing countries, which often have more relaxed regulatory standards, to sell their agricultural products at lower prices in richer countries. Farmers perceive these arrangements as unfair because of the stricter standards they must meet.

The European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is another major point of contention. Many of the protesting European farmers believe that these policies favor the large industrial farms over the many small farms.

According to an article on the European Politico website, “Farmers are being burdened by debt, squeezed by powerful retailers and agrochemical companies, battered by extreme weather, and undercut by cheap foreign imports, for years now—all while relying on a subsidy system that favors the big players.”

The greater threat to the environment

Ironically, it’s the larger corporate farms that may pose the greatest threat to our environment. Large corporate farms tend to practice monoculture, or growing a single crop, to achieve greater efficiency. However, according to the ScienceDirect website, monoculture can increase “disease pressure,” while “reducing particular nutrients in the soil.” It can also result in deforestation and degradation of the soil.

An alarming number of honeybee colonies, for instance, have been dying off. Montana State University lists monoculture as one of three primary reasons for colony collapse disorder. Other pollinators have also been adversely affected by monoculture.

Meanwhile, the world’s small farms, saddled with cumbersome regulations and global competition, continue to struggle.

The root of the problem

Each farm protest highlights one or more specific issues. As might be expected, there are arguments on both sides of each issue.

• Trade deals aimed at supplying less expensive food to the bulk of a national population help the general public, but at the expense of the country’s farmers.
• Attempting to manage economic volatility, nations such as Argentina place controls on the flow of foreign money. The unintended consequence is, in essence, an enormous tax on farmers.
• Environmental regulations are drafted to protect the planet. Farmers, however, shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden.
• Factors that favor agribusiness can hurt the environment, as well as hurting small farmers. Striving for efficiency in production to lower costs, large corporate farms engage in practices such as monoculture that harm the environment. At the same time, their ability to lower costs drives crop prices down, hurting the small farms.

As governments around the world struggle to solve these and other problems plaguing farmers, they actually face a larger intractable problem that blocks a solution to the others. That problem is our corrupt human nature.

It is a problem that has no human solution. Cut off from God, the nations of the world will never solve the growing crisis in agriculture.

Greed on all sides

Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, humans have consistently made poor choices. We tend to choose based on what benefits us as individuals, rather than what is best for everyone.

God explains: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

God consistently warns against greed. Three of His 10 Commandments touch on this attitude: the commandments prohibiting stealing, bearing false witness and coveting (Exodus 20:15-17).

Farmers need to make a living, which may make groceries more expensive for the public. Yet consumers may not consider what their desire for low-cost groceries means for the farmers who grow that produce. On top of that, farmers compete with agribusiness, which lobbies hard for special considerations.

It’s natural for us to pursue what is best for us individually, but what we need is a world in which people care about the consequences of our decisions on other people. What we need is a world in which we all follow Christ’s admonition to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19).

The environmental issue

God gave Adam and Eve “dominion” over the world (Genesis 1:26) and the responsibility of taking care of the garden (Genesis 2:15). The implication is that humans have a direct role to play in preserving this wonderful planet.

The Bible includes some specific environmental legislation.

The people of Israel were to refrain from cultivating crops every seventh year, allowing the land itself to regenerate (Leviticus 25:1-4). Unfortunately, Israel didn’t properly observe this land Sabbath, which was one reason for captivity (Leviticus 26:34-35; 2 Chronicles 36:21).

We are no better today; in many ways we are worse. As our industrial and technological sophistication grows, so, too, does the damage we do to the planet God gave us.

Perils of human government

The role of government in addressing and solving our problems is another factor in the farm crisis. Regardless of how good an administration’s intentions may be, it cannot find a solution that will satisfy everyone affected by its policies.

Only God has that power and ability.

That’s why God told Samuel to warn the people of Israel, after they had asked for a king (1 Samuel 8:5), that human government inevitably ends up serving its own interests rather than those of the people (verses 11-17).

Good news for future farmers

There is good news for farmers. These problems that are so intractable for human governments and societies will be solved when Christ returns to establish His Kingdom on earth.

When that day comes, God will bless farmers: “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the LORD, ‘when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it’” (Amos 9:13).