Farmers against the grain, those who fight against climate change:«EU green policies?Necessary" – The interviews

The movement of tractors has put EU measures to protect the environment in the crosshairs.But there is another, equally large group of farmers who defend green policies and ask to put a stop to "industrial" agriculture.Here are their stories

May 2018.Climate change is struggling to reach the front pages of newspapers, no one knows who it is yet Greta Thunberg and there are only a few small groups of environmentalists talking about the Green Deal.Yet, there are already those who feel the effects of the changing climate first-hand and are forced to deal with it every day.This is the case of Giorgio Elter, a farmer from Cogne, in the Aosta Valley, who joins in a collective lawsuit against the European Union, accused of not committing enough to mitigate climate change.Almost six years have passed since that moment and a lot of water has passed under the bridge:the'green wave of Fridays for Future, the alarms (largely unheard) of the IPCC scientists, but also the birth of the Green Deal, that package of laws for the environment and climate through which the European Union promised to revolutionize its economy in the name of ecology and sustainability.Today, paradoxically, it is the farmers who are contesting this path, who at the beginning of 2024 took to the streets across Europe to protest against Brussels' green policies.

Guardians of nature

Giorgio Elter's lawsuit against the European Union did not make much headway:it was deemed inadmissible and it was never discussed again.In a certain sense, however, there was a victory.«The objective was not to obtain a conviction, but to have media coverage and put pressure on politicians.There was a lot of talk about it at that time", recalls the farmer from Aosta, who is now 60 years old.A few years after that legal action, Brussels officially adopted the Green Deal, effectively bidding to become the first major economy in the world to achieve carbon neutrality.A path that has encountered various obstacles and setbacks, including farmers' protests.The "tractor movement", as it was immediately renamed, has been ridden by a part of politics to lash out against Brussels' green agenda, but there is also an equally large community of farmers who claim the need to do their own part in the fight against climate change.«The farmer boasts of this identification as custodian of the territory and nature, but this is not the case», explains Giorgio Elter, who manages a small 4-hectare farm in Cogne, where he grows vegetables, small fruits and aromatic plants.«The problem – he adds – is that almost all agriculture is now intensive and exploits the soil without worrying about the consequences».

The other side of the protests

Elter judges the tractor protests of recent months to be "instrumental".The real objective, according to the farmer from Aosta, is not "Europe's policies", but "the fact that agricultural products are underpaid".Giacomo Zattini, climate activist and son of farmers, who until a few years ago helped on the family farm, also shares the same opinion:«I don't feel like saying that all those who took to the streets to protest were erupted or out of their minds.Some are actually against ecological measures, but many others are just impatient."When the tractor movement also arrived in Italy, Zattini published a video on social media to send a message to those who were protesting:«Farmers can and must be the best allies for the ecological transition at an Italian and European level, but this must go through fair remuneration», said the young activist sitting on the family tractor.«That part of the agricultural world that took to the streets asking for a stop to European environmental measures proved to be short-sighted and against itself.The Green deal is a decoy that serves to foment those who were already hostile to the European Union", adds Zattini today.

Towards «agroecology»

According to the young activist, there can be no contrast between agriculture and ecology.Indeed, it is only by embracing more sustainable practices that the sector can guarantee itself a future worthy of the name.«We are faced with a choice:do we want industrial agriculture that only thinks about maximizing profits or do we want to choose agroecology, that agriculture that is within nature and respects it?", asks Zattini.There are those who have actually asked themselves this question and ended up distorting their working method.This is the case of Cascina Isola Maria, an agricultural company on the outskirts of Milan managed by Dario Olivero and Renata Lovati, husband and wife.«Our company was founded in 1980.We were a company that produced milk by breeding Friesian cattle", explains Olivero.At a certain point, the two owners of Cascina Isola Maria came into contact with some environmentalist movements and decided to revolutionize the management of their company.«In 2009 we abandoned this logic of maximizing production and exploiting land and animals», explains Olivero.Today his company has embraced organic agriculture, saying goodbye once and for all to pesticides for the soil and hormones for the animals.«We didn't do it just out of ideological choice, but also because we were no longer on our feet economically.We finally went positive and focused, more than on agrochemistry, on the production of quality milk", says the farmer.

The distortions of the CAP

The tractor protest brought to light the distress in the agricultural sector.A movement that "absolutely needs to be taken into consideration", observes Olivero, but which "has completely misunderstood the objectives to fight against".The battleground is there Common agricultural policy (CAP), the main instrument through which the European Union regulates subsidies for the sector.The latest reform was approved in 2021 and allocates a total of 387 billion euros, around a third of the total EU budget, to be distributed between 2023 and 2027.One of the most criticized aspects of the CAP concerns the two pillars through which the funds are distributed.The first pillar aims to support companies in proportion to their size, regardless of what they grow and the agricultural practices they implement.The second pillar, less relevant in terms of resources, provides for the provision of public subsidies only in exchange for a series of practices aimed at environmental protection or respect for labor rights.«In the last 20 years the number of agricultural companies in Italy has decreased by half.But 50% of the land has not disappeared:simply, every time a small company disappeared, a larger one took over that land and became even bigger", explains the Milanese farmer.According to Olivero, the current approach of the CAP rewards an "industrial" vision of agriculture and is making "that social fabric made up of many small agricultural companies" disappear.

Organic agriculture in Italy

Despite everything, there are those who are rolling up their sleeves to try to carry out more sustainable agriculture.With over 2 million hectares, Italy is the EU country with the highest percentage of organic agricultural areas on the national total:19%, compared to 11% in Spain and Germany and 10% in France.More than half of organic producers are concentrated in five regions:Sicily, Puglia, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Calabria.«Industrial agriculture is the one that is most bothered by a green approach, but there are many small producers who have always worked towards more sustainable agriculture», explains Olivero.The credit also goes to the generational change.Those who study agricultural sciences at university today are more aware of the risks that derive from the massive and systematic use of pesticides, herbicides and other chemical products on the land.The real challenge, at this point, is to be able to broaden this awareness to all workers in the sector.«Many farmers – observes Giorgio Elter – perhaps don't even have the cultural preparation to see that this work can be done differently.But hope is the last to die.Revolutions happen like this:with daily work."