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How rioting farmers unraveled Europe’s ambitious climate plan

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Thursday, May 2, 2024

Farmer protests in Nîmes, France, in March. According to reports, large tires were set on fire during the blockade. | Luc Auffret/Anadolu via Getty Images Road-clogging, manure-dumping farmers reveal the paradox at the heart of EU agriculture. In February 2021, in the midst of the deadly second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grégory Doucet, mayor of Lyon, France, temporarily took red meat off the menus of the city’s school cafeterias. While the change was environmentally friendly, the decision was driven by social distancing protocols: Preparing one hot meal that could be served to meat-eaters, vegetarians, and those with religious restrictions rather than serving multiple options was safer and more efficient. The response from the French agricultural establishment was hysterical. “We need to stop putting ideology on our children’s plates!,” then-Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie tweeted. Livestock farmers clogged Lyon’s downtown with tractors and paraded cows in front of city hall, brandishing banners declaring, “Stopping meat is a guarantee of weakness against future viruses.” An impromptu coalition of livestock producers, politicians, and parents unsuccessfully petitioned the city’s court to overturn the change. It may have seemed a tempest in a teacup — a quintessentially French squabble. But it was a microcosm of European agricultural politics, reflecting the great paradox of European Union (EU) farmers’ relationship to the state. On one hand, farmers are wards of the welfare state, dependent on national governments and the European Union for the generous subsidies and suite of protectionist trade policies that keep them in business. On the other, they are business people who balk at regulations, restrictions, and perceived government overreach. The tension between these positions regularly erupts into farmer revolts when governments attempt to regulate food or farming in the public interest as it might any other industry. EU politicians, meanwhile, often feel the need to kowtow to agribusiness because of its ability to mobilize protesters and voters alike. This year, it has become clear these protests have the power to transform Europe’s future. This past February, three years almost to the day after Doucet’s school lunch announcement, roads around Lyon were again blocked by farmers raging against the French government and the EU. It was one surge in the wave of protests that has swept through Europe in recent months, set off by a litany of demands, including continued subsidies and no new environmental regulations. In short, all the benefits of government with none of the governance. In Paris, farmers traded blows with police at the country’s Salon de l’Agriculture trade fair. In Germany, they tried storming a ferry carrying the country’s economy minister. In Brussels, they rammed through police barricades with tractors. In the Netherlands, they lit asbestos on fire alongside highways. In Poland, they massed along the Ukrainian border to prevent the import of cheap grain. In Czechia, they paved Prague’s streets with manure. The protests have come as the EU seeks to pass a slate of laws as part of its Green Deal, a sweeping climate plan that includes checking the worst harms of industrial agriculture, which takes up more than a third of the continent’s landmass and contributes disproportionately to its ecological footprint. That agenda is colliding with Europe’s longtime paradigm of few-strings-attached welfare for agribusiness. Agribusiness interests have been working to foil the Farm to Fork strategy, the crown jewel of the Green Deal meant to overhaul Europe’s food system, since its inception in 2020. This year, with the specter of right-wing populism looming over upcoming European Parliament elections (part of the EU’s legislative branch), farmers’ protests across the continent have succeeded at not only stalling new sustainability reforms, but also undermining existing environmental regulations. Now, plans to make Europe a global leader in sustainable agriculture appear to be dead on arrival. Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images Farmers dump manure on streets in the EU quarter of Brussels in March. How European agriculture got this way Despite its centrality to European politics and policy, agriculture is a very small industry within the bloc’s economy, making up about 1.4 percent of the EU’s GDP and no more than 5 percent of GDP in any of the Union’s 27 countries. The sector is also one of the biggest recipients of EU funds, with subsidies to farmers and investment in rural development consuming about a quarter of the EU’s budget, on top of often generous national subsidies. Meanwhile, European agriculture’s environmental footprint is vastly disproportionate to its economic contribution. It uses a third of all water on the increasingly arid continent. It’s responsible for 10 percent of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, including much of its methane and nitrous oxide, both highly potent greenhouse gases primarily released by animal agriculture. It accounts for about a quarter of global pesticide use, which has been linked to soil and water contamination, biodiversity loss, and a slew of impacts on human health. Of course, we need to eat, and food needs to be produced. But Europe’s monocrop- and livestock-intensive agriculture system is anything but sustainable. Yet the EU continues to pour massive amounts of money into subsidizing an economically negligible sector that is responsible for many of the continent’s environmental problems and that, off the back of those subsidies, organizes to prevent environmental regulations or even conditions on those very subsidies. Many countries around the world generously subsidize food production — including, famously, the United States, where agriculture makes up less than 1 percent of GDP and punches far above its weight politically. But much of the US ag sector’s billions in annual federal payouts comes in indirect forms like subsidized crop insurance, including more than a third of the $24 billion it received in 2021 — and these subsidies make up a much smaller share of the industry’s contribution to GDP relative to agriculture subsidies in the EU. In Europe, decades of government policy have integrated food production into an extensive state welfare framework where, on paper, the good of farmers is equated with the public good. That system emerged from the ruins of World War II, when shoring up farming and food security became an existential policy imperative on the devastated and often starved continent. Post-war policies were designed to secure the food supply, provide farming families with a stable income, and stimulate rural economies in the interest of the public good. European agriculture policy became its own welfare system defined by subsidies and protection from foreign competition. It worked. By 1950, agricultural production in Western Europe had recovered to pre-war levels. When the European Economic Community (EEC), the precursor to the EU, formed in 1957, agriculture was central to the discussions, as economic integration would require dealing with the problem of highly subsidized and protected farming in member states. The answer was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), launched in 1962, a centerpiece of EEC and later EU policy. An extension of national-level agricultural welfare policies, the goal of the CAP was “to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular by increasing the individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture.” In other words, rather than using policy to build agriculture into a viable competitive business, the goal was to protect agriculture from the market and commit to a long-term policy of keeping farmers in business. CAP was “from the outset a public policy reflecting highly subjective political ‘preferences,’ not rational commercial interests,” economic historian Ann-Christina Knudsen argues in her book Farmers on Welfare: The Making of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy. For decades, CAP has been the EU’s biggest budget line. As recently as the 1980s, it made up about two-thirds of the Union’s budget. While bouts of trade liberalization and the rise of other priorities have steadily reduced its relative size, about a third of the EU’s 2021-2027 budget was earmarked for CAP. Over 70 percent of this money is distributed as direct payments to farmers. Since payments are primarily based on farm size, the biggest farms get the lion’s share of that money. Over half of the EU’s 9 million farms produce less than 4,000 euros of products per year and make up a combined 2 percent of Europe’s farm production, while the top 1 percent of farms — those that bring in over 500,000 euros — control 19 percent of all farmland and are responsible for over 40 percent of output. The top 0.5 percent of farms receive over 16 percent of all CAP payments. Lavish subsidies have helped make Europe a net exporter of agricultural products, with early concerns about food security long since displaced by a global thirst for Irish whiskey and Dutch beer and hunger for Irish butter and French cheese. Coupled with decades of government policy incentivizing industrial production methods that favor big operations, such as factory farming and large-scale monocropping, CAP has served to push Europe’s farmers to get big or get out. Between 2005 and 2020, the EU lost over 5 million farms, virtually all of them small operations sold by retiring farmers or those simply unable to compete with their larger neighbors. Large farmers, in turn, have organized into powerful political interest groups that aim to dictate agricultural policy to their governments. Farmers and their political allies pack the EU’s agriculture committee. Lobby organizations like Copa-Cogeca, which represents large farmers’ unions across the EU, and CropLife Europe, a pesticide trade group, pressure governments to entrench the status quo, including maintaining CAP as an ever-open spigot gushing taxpayer money. And where governments are seen as truant in delivering on their promises, cities and nations can be brought to a standstill by blockades of tractors, helping galvanize public opinion and push politicians into acquiescence. Europe’s turn toward environmental protections is clashing with farming interests Today, the growing importance of environmental goals in EU politics has driven a wedge into the sometimes contentious but mostly cozy relationship between farming interests and governments. While EU subsidies do come with some environmental strings attached, such as requirements to protect wetlands or engage in soil-friendly crop rotation, these are often poorly enforced and noncompliance is common. In Europe, much like in the US, agriculture is governed with a lighter touch compared to other industries, a paradigm often known as agricultural exceptionalism. In the Netherlands, for instance, farms have for decades been granted a derogation on nitrogen emissions, allowed to emit more than any other industry. This meant that, over the years, dairy farms and heavily fertilized crop fields leached nitrogen into the soil and water, poisoning rivers and wetlands. In 2019, the Dutch government sought to close the loophole and buy out livestock farmers unable to comply with the restriction. Farmers launched a series of protests marked by the now-ubiquitous use of tractors to block roads and public spaces in a show of force against government bureaucrats. Many felt aggrieved that government, by pushing the resource-intensive industrial farming that had made the Netherlands into an agricultural powerhouse, had helped create the very environmental problems now being blamed on farmers. Peter Boer/Bloomberg via Getty Images A two-week old calf on a dairy farm in Hazerswoude, Netherlands. Livestock farmers have been protesting the Dutch government’s efforts to limit polluting nitrogen emissions from farms. Cities across the country ground to a halt, and the protesters formed a new political party, the far-right-aligned BoerBurgerBeweging (the Farmer-Citizen Movement, or BBB). Last year, it won the country’s provincial elections in a landslide on the back of rural votes as well as broader anti-government and anti-EU sentiment, controlling 20 percent of seats in the Dutch senate. It was a portent of things to come. 2019 was also the year the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, proposed the Green Deal, which aims to achieve net zero emissions across the EU by 2050 through emissions reduction across all industries, renewable energy and electric vehicle adoption, and reforestation programs. Farm to Fork, the food system component of the plan, calls for dramatically reducing pesticide use and food waste, and promoting more sustainable dietary choices through product labeling and school lunches; independent modeling suggested it could cut agricultural emissions by up to 20 percent and halve biodiversity destruction. Environmental policies are broadly popular with the European electorate, and that plan was arrived at through the EU’s highly bureaucratic — but nonetheless democratically deliberative — process. But because it originated with the European Commission, whose members are unelected, it was seen by some as being mandated by unaccountable functionaries. Farmers bristled at the idea of being told to devote some of their land to biodiversity and nature restoration. Growers of monocrop products like grains and grapes for wine balked at drastic pesticide reductions. The pesticide industry and its lobby saw its profits threatened. But most impacted would be livestock, the sector least able to meet stringent environmental or animal welfare standards. Animal agriculture makes up 40 percent of European agricultural production, releases more than 80 percent of the continent’s emissions from agriculture, and receives more than 80 percent of CAP subsidies, according to a recent study using data from 2013. Immediately, the agricultural lobby began petitioning politicians to delay or do away with the proposed rules, starting with the proposed pesticide reduction measures. At first, EU politicians held in their support for reforms, voting in 2021 to implement Farm to Fork. But as Covid-19, with its disruption of food supply chains, dragged on and Russia invaded Ukraine, raising the specter of a food shortage, ag lobby groups gained new ammunition to fire at what they framed as the Green Deal’s attack on food security and the livelihood of farmers. Attacks on pro-Green Deal politicians escalated, including threats of violence against its staunchest supporters. Bit by bit, political support for Farm to Fork began to erode. By the end of 2023, before most of Farm to Fork had even been implemented, many of its core initiatives were already watered down or abandoned, including pesticide reduction mandates and farm animal welfare improvements. Also declawed was the nature restoration law, which would require EU member states to restore 20 percent of degraded habitats to preserve biodiversity, by calling on farmers to plant tree and flower strips along the edges of fields, for example. Industrial beef and dairy operations were also granted an exemption from industrial emissions targets despite being among the food system’s biggest emitters, responsible for most agricultural methane emissions. Throughout, political allies of agricultural lobbies like the right-wing European People’s Party have celebrated these wins over the specter of “NGO environmental dictatorship.” Farming interests are blocking the development of sustainable alternatives The same groups pushing against environmental regulation in the name of keeping the government out of business have few compunctions about turning to governments to thwart their competition. Meat producers in particular are threatened not only by environmental regulations that would affect them most, as the food system’s biggest emitters, but also by meat alternatives that have the potential to cut into their market share. Cell-cultivated meat, a novel technology that can harvest animal tissue from stem cells rather than slaughtered animals, has not yet received regulatory approval for sale in the EU and remains largely theoretical. That did not stop politicians in Italy, under pressure from agricultural lobby groups, from passing legislation last November banning not just the sale of cellular agriculture products, but also scientific research into the technology. Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, a member of the country’s far-right ruling party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), declared cultivated meat a threat to Italian culture and civilization. Soon thereafter, members of the Italian delegation to the EU, joined by representatives from 11 other countries, called on the Council of Europe to “ensure that artificially lab-grown products must never be promoted as or confused for authentic foods,” ostensibly in the public interest. Farming lends itself to populism, which often acts as a cover for cold business calculations. The cultivated meat ban reveals that agricultural lobby group demands are generally about realpolitik rather than a principled position about state intervention — no different from any business that aims to protect its bottom line. Political scientist Leah Stokes, in her book Short Circuiting Policy, has described such policy fights as “organized combat” between interest groups, which tends to favor powerful incumbents over new constituencies aiming to build political support for social or economic change. In Italy, an entrenched and politically well-connected agricultural lobby had the power to write its preferences into policy while proponents of cellular agriculture did not, allowing them to nip potential competition in the bud. Something similar is at work in the unraveling of the EU’s green agenda. Proponents of environmental legislation, while technically having science and public support on their side, were either unprepared or lacked the heart for a fight with the battle-tested farming lobby. All that took place before Europe became engulfed by protests. Then came the tractors. Last December, a proposed cut to diesel subsidies (used to power tractors and other farm machinery) in Germany, which had more to do with the country’s budgetary crisis than with environmental regulations, sent aggrieved farmers into the streets. Dozens of other protests erupted around Europe stemming from particular national issues. But as they grew, they coalesced into a generalized grievance about the failure of government and the EU to sufficiently support farmers, with new environmental policies offering a particularly easy target for ire. Alan Matthews, an Irish economist and preeminent expert on the CAP, recently argued that part of the problem is the changing social capital of farmers: “Instead of being seen as heroic producers of a vital commodity, they are increasingly described as environmental villains and climate destroyers. ... Instead of taking responsibility for these problems, farmers often adopt a defensive position of denial.” The protests have brought farmers of all stripes to the streets, big and small, organic and conventional. Despite their differences and the historic exclusion of small farmers from EU policymaking, most of Europe’s farmers share a common interest in maintaining subsidies and reducing regulation. They also raise some valid points about the contradictions in EU policy, such as in their calls for more protection from foreign competitors that produce with lower standards than in Europe, including livestock produced in jurisdictions with no animal welfare protections or raised using growth stimulants banned in Europe. But this argument is undermined by farmers’ calls to weaken those very standards. By late February, when a massive protest by farmers from across the continent ran amok through the EU quarter of Brussels, politicians across the continent were buckling to farmers’ demand. At the EU, even the watered-down version of the nature restoration law that had passed a vote in EU Parliament despite protests was stalled — perhaps indefinitely — as states including Belgium and Italy withdrew their support. But perhaps most worrying has been the willingness of EU politicians to weaken already existing environmental standards, including loosening environmental conditions and reporting requirements for all farms smaller than 10 hectares. These decisions may have also been motivated by upcoming EU elections. Many Europeans support the farmers’ cause, and as the Dutch case showed, the protests have the potential to galvanize voters to support parties seen as “pro-farmer.” With widespread concern about large gains for right and far-right parties in the EU Parliamentary elections next month, even ostensibly pro-Green Deal politicians, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have been forced to act appropriately deferential to the protesters. Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks at the European Parliament on February 6, the same day that she recommended shelving a plan to cut pesticide use as a concession to protesting farmers. Sooner or later, climate change will force a reckoning with farming practices The latest progress report on the EU’s quest for carbon neutrality, released by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change amid the protests in January, showed little improvement, especially in agriculture. It called for reductions in production of meat and dairy, higher consumer prices of highly emitting foods, more incentives for farmers to embrace green practices, and, as a political hint, more ambitious policy plans. In short: the opposite of the situation on the ground. Arriving at a viable agricultural policy that marries support for farmers, green goals, and liberal trade policies is a difficult balancing act with few clear-cut solutions. It is unlikely that these could be achieved without continued state and EU involvement in shaping how food is produced in Europe through some mix of protectionism, policy nudges, and regulation. CAP, in one form or another, isn’t going anywhere. But to the extent that it remains primarily a subsidy program, there is no reason why conditions on meeting strict climate and environmental targets should not be massively strengthened, rather than weakened, and enforcement ramped up. And there is no reason not to use policy to steer production away from highly polluting industries like meat and dairy toward less harmful ones. To be in favor of more sustainable farming is not to be against farmers; it is to be against unsustainable farming practices. To allow these two to be conflated is to lose the fight, as the EU is currently doing. After all, to the extent farmers see themselves as businessmen, a sign of business acumen is making a profit within regulatory and market constraints. One thing is certain: Bowing to the demands of special interests whose only interest is maintaining agricultural exceptionalism only precipitates a sooner reckoning with environmental crises, which will force farming to change whether farmers want to or not. The EU, however, seems to be taking marching orders from a parasite of its own creation, abandoning the very notions of public good that led to the creation of its agricultural policies in the first place.

A large tractor with burning tires in the background
Farmer protests in Nîmes, France, in March. According to reports, large tires were set on fire during the blockade. | Luc Auffret/Anadolu via Getty Images

Road-clogging, manure-dumping farmers reveal the paradox at the heart of EU agriculture.

In February 2021, in the midst of the deadly second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grégory Doucet, mayor of Lyon, France, temporarily took red meat off the menus of the city’s school cafeterias. While the change was environmentally friendly, the decision was driven by social distancing protocols: Preparing one hot meal that could be served to meat-eaters, vegetarians, and those with religious restrictions rather than serving multiple options was safer and more efficient.

The response from the French agricultural establishment was hysterical. “We need to stop putting ideology on our children’s plates!,” then-Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie tweeted. Livestock farmers clogged Lyon’s downtown with tractors and paraded cows in front of city hall, brandishing banners declaring, “Stopping meat is a guarantee of weakness against future viruses.” An impromptu coalition of livestock producers, politicians, and parents unsuccessfully petitioned the city’s court to overturn the change.

It may have seemed a tempest in a teacup — a quintessentially French squabble. But it was a microcosm of European agricultural politics, reflecting the great paradox of European Union (EU) farmers’ relationship to the state.

On one hand, farmers are wards of the welfare state, dependent on national governments and the European Union for the generous subsidies and suite of protectionist trade policies that keep them in business. On the other, they are business people who balk at regulations, restrictions, and perceived government overreach. The tension between these positions regularly erupts into farmer revolts when governments attempt to regulate food or farming in the public interest as it might any other industry. EU politicians, meanwhile, often feel the need to kowtow to agribusiness because of its ability to mobilize protesters and voters alike.

This year, it has become clear these protests have the power to transform Europe’s future.

This past February, three years almost to the day after Doucet’s school lunch announcement, roads around Lyon were again blocked by farmers raging against the French government and the EU. It was one surge in the wave of protests that has swept through Europe in recent months, set off by a litany of demands, including continued subsidies and no new environmental regulations. In short, all the benefits of government with none of the governance.

In Paris, farmers traded blows with police at the country’s Salon de l’Agriculture trade fair. In Germany, they tried storming a ferry carrying the country’s economy minister. In Brussels, they rammed through police barricades with tractors. In the Netherlands, they lit asbestos on fire alongside highways. In Poland, they massed along the Ukrainian border to prevent the import of cheap grain. In Czechia, they paved Prague’s streets with manure.

The protests have come as the EU seeks to pass a slate of laws as part of its Green Deal, a sweeping climate plan that includes checking the worst harms of industrial agriculture, which takes up more than a third of the continent’s landmass and contributes disproportionately to its ecological footprint. That agenda is colliding with Europe’s longtime paradigm of few-strings-attached welfare for agribusiness.

Agribusiness interests have been working to foil the Farm to Fork strategy, the crown jewel of the Green Deal meant to overhaul Europe’s food system, since its inception in 2020. This year, with the specter of right-wing populism looming over upcoming European Parliament elections (part of the EU’s legislative branch), farmers’ protests across the continent have succeeded at not only stalling new sustainability reforms, but also undermining existing environmental regulations. Now, plans to make Europe a global leader in sustainable agriculture appear to be dead on arrival.

A truck sprays manure onto the street in front of a sleek office building; much of the street is already covered. Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images
Farmers dump manure on streets in the EU quarter of Brussels in March.

How European agriculture got this way

Despite its centrality to European politics and policy, agriculture is a very small industry within the bloc’s economy, making up about 1.4 percent of the EU’s GDP and no more than 5 percent of GDP in any of the Union’s 27 countries. The sector is also one of the biggest recipients of EU funds, with subsidies to farmers and investment in rural development consuming about a quarter of the EU’s budget, on top of often generous national subsidies.

Meanwhile, European agriculture’s environmental footprint is vastly disproportionate to its economic contribution. It uses a third of all water on the increasingly arid continent. It’s responsible for 10 percent of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, including much of its methane and nitrous oxide, both highly potent greenhouse gases primarily released by animal agriculture. It accounts for about a quarter of global pesticide use, which has been linked to soil and water contamination, biodiversity loss, and a slew of impacts on human health.

Of course, we need to eat, and food needs to be produced. But Europe’s monocrop- and livestock-intensive agriculture system is anything but sustainable.

Yet the EU continues to pour massive amounts of money into subsidizing an economically negligible sector that is responsible for many of the continent’s environmental problems and that, off the back of those subsidies, organizes to prevent environmental regulations or even conditions on those very subsidies.

Chart showing EU agriculture contributing 1.4 percent of the continent’s GDP, using 24% of its budget as subsidies, emitting 10% of its greenhouse gases, and using 31% of its freshwater and 39% of its land

Many countries around the world generously subsidize food production — including, famously, the United States, where agriculture makes up less than 1 percent of GDP and punches far above its weight politically. But much of the US ag sector’s billions in annual federal payouts comes in indirect forms like subsidized crop insurance, including more than a third of the $24 billion it received in 2021 — and these subsidies make up a much smaller share of the industry’s contribution to GDP relative to agriculture subsidies in the EU. In Europe, decades of government policy have integrated food production into an extensive state welfare framework where, on paper, the good of farmers is equated with the public good.

That system emerged from the ruins of World War II, when shoring up farming and food security became an existential policy imperative on the devastated and often starved continent.

Post-war policies were designed to secure the food supply, provide farming families with a stable income, and stimulate rural economies in the interest of the public good. European agriculture policy became its own welfare system defined by subsidies and protection from foreign competition.

It worked. By 1950, agricultural production in Western Europe had recovered to pre-war levels. When the European Economic Community (EEC), the precursor to the EU, formed in 1957, agriculture was central to the discussions, as economic integration would require dealing with the problem of highly subsidized and protected farming in member states.

The answer was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), launched in 1962, a centerpiece of EEC and later EU policy. An extension of national-level agricultural welfare policies, the goal of the CAP was “to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular by increasing the individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture.”

In other words, rather than using policy to build agriculture into a viable competitive business, the goal was to protect agriculture from the market and commit to a long-term policy of keeping farmers in business. CAP was “from the outset a public policy reflecting highly subjective political ‘preferences,’ not rational commercial interests,” economic historian Ann-Christina Knudsen argues in her book Farmers on Welfare: The Making of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy.

For decades, CAP has been the EU’s biggest budget line. As recently as the 1980s, it made up about two-thirds of the Union’s budget. While bouts of trade liberalization and the rise of other priorities have steadily reduced its relative size, about a third of the EU’s 2021-2027 budget was earmarked for CAP. Over 70 percent of this money is distributed as direct payments to farmers.

Since payments are primarily based on farm size, the biggest farms get the lion’s share of that money. Over half of the EU’s 9 million farms produce less than 4,000 euros of products per year and make up a combined 2 percent of Europe’s farm production, while the top 1 percent of farms — those that bring in over 500,000 euros — control 19 percent of all farmland and are responsible for over 40 percent of output. The top 0.5 percent of farms receive over 16 percent of all CAP payments.

Lavish subsidies have helped make Europe a net exporter of agricultural products, with early concerns about food security long since displaced by a global thirst for Irish whiskey and Dutch beer and hunger for Irish butter and French cheese.

Coupled with decades of government policy incentivizing industrial production methods that favor big operations, such as factory farming and large-scale monocropping, CAP has served to push Europe’s farmers to get big or get out. Between 2005 and 2020, the EU lost over 5 million farms, virtually all of them small operations sold by retiring farmers or those simply unable to compete with their larger neighbors.

Large farmers, in turn, have organized into powerful political interest groups that aim to dictate agricultural policy to their governments. Farmers and their political allies pack the EU’s agriculture committee. Lobby organizations like Copa-Cogeca, which represents large farmers’ unions across the EU, and CropLife Europe, a pesticide trade group, pressure governments to entrench the status quo, including maintaining CAP as an ever-open spigot gushing taxpayer money.

And where governments are seen as truant in delivering on their promises, cities and nations can be brought to a standstill by blockades of tractors, helping galvanize public opinion and push politicians into acquiescence.

Europe’s turn toward environmental protections is clashing with farming interests

Today, the growing importance of environmental goals in EU politics has driven a wedge into the sometimes contentious but mostly cozy relationship between farming interests and governments.

While EU subsidies do come with some environmental strings attached, such as requirements to protect wetlands or engage in soil-friendly crop rotation, these are often poorly enforced and noncompliance is common. In Europe, much like in the US, agriculture is governed with a lighter touch compared to other industries, a paradigm often known as agricultural exceptionalism.

In the Netherlands, for instance, farms have for decades been granted a derogation on nitrogen emissions, allowed to emit more than any other industry. This meant that, over the years, dairy farms and heavily fertilized crop fields leached nitrogen into the soil and water, poisoning rivers and wetlands.

In 2019, the Dutch government sought to close the loophole and buy out livestock farmers unable to comply with the restriction. Farmers launched a series of protests marked by the now-ubiquitous use of tractors to block roads and public spaces in a show of force against government bureaucrats. Many felt aggrieved that government, by pushing the resource-intensive industrial farming that had made the Netherlands into an agricultural powerhouse, had helped create the very environmental problems now being blamed on farmers.

A small black-and-white calf with ear tags in each ear is seen in a crate behind metal bars. Peter Boer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A two-week old calf on a dairy farm in Hazerswoude, Netherlands. Livestock farmers have been protesting the Dutch government’s efforts to limit polluting nitrogen emissions from farms.

Cities across the country ground to a halt, and the protesters formed a new political party, the far-right-aligned BoerBurgerBeweging (the Farmer-Citizen Movement, or BBB). Last year, it won the country’s provincial elections in a landslide on the back of rural votes as well as broader anti-government and anti-EU sentiment, controlling 20 percent of seats in the Dutch senate.

It was a portent of things to come.

2019 was also the year the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, proposed the Green Deal, which aims to achieve net zero emissions across the EU by 2050 through emissions reduction across all industries, renewable energy and electric vehicle adoption, and reforestation programs. Farm to Fork, the food system component of the plan, calls for dramatically reducing pesticide use and food waste, and promoting more sustainable dietary choices through product labeling and school lunches; independent modeling suggested it could cut agricultural emissions by up to 20 percent and halve biodiversity destruction.

Environmental policies are broadly popular with the European electorate, and that plan was arrived at through the EU’s highly bureaucratic — but nonetheless democratically deliberative — process. But because it originated with the European Commission, whose members are unelected, it was seen by some as being mandated by unaccountable functionaries. Farmers bristled at the idea of being told to devote some of their land to biodiversity and nature restoration. Growers of monocrop products like grains and grapes for wine balked at drastic pesticide reductions. The pesticide industry and its lobby saw its profits threatened.

But most impacted would be livestock, the sector least able to meet stringent environmental or animal welfare standards. Animal agriculture makes up 40 percent of European agricultural production, releases more than 80 percent of the continent’s emissions from agriculture, and receives more than 80 percent of CAP subsidies, according to a recent study using data from 2013.

Immediately, the agricultural lobby began petitioning politicians to delay or do away with the proposed rules, starting with the proposed pesticide reduction measures. At first, EU politicians held in their support for reforms, voting in 2021 to implement Farm to Fork. But as Covid-19, with its disruption of food supply chains, dragged on and Russia invaded Ukraine, raising the specter of a food shortage, ag lobby groups gained new ammunition to fire at what they framed as the Green Deal’s attack on food security and the livelihood of farmers. Attacks on pro-Green Deal politicians escalated, including threats of violence against its staunchest supporters. Bit by bit, political support for Farm to Fork began to erode.

By the end of 2023, before most of Farm to Fork had even been implemented, many of its core initiatives were already watered down or abandoned, including pesticide reduction mandates and farm animal welfare improvements. Also declawed was the nature restoration law, which would require EU member states to restore 20 percent of degraded habitats to preserve biodiversity, by calling on farmers to plant tree and flower strips along the edges of fields, for example. Industrial beef and dairy operations were also granted an exemption from industrial emissions targets despite being among the food system’s biggest emitters, responsible for most agricultural methane emissions.

Throughout, political allies of agricultural lobbies like the right-wing European People’s Party have celebrated these wins over the specter of “NGO environmental dictatorship.”

Farming interests are blocking the development of sustainable alternatives

The same groups pushing against environmental regulation in the name of keeping the government out of business have few compunctions about turning to governments to thwart their competition. Meat producers in particular are threatened not only by environmental regulations that would affect them most, as the food system’s biggest emitters, but also by meat alternatives that have the potential to cut into their market share.

Cell-cultivated meat, a novel technology that can harvest animal tissue from stem cells rather than slaughtered animals, has not yet received regulatory approval for sale in the EU and remains largely theoretical. That did not stop politicians in Italy, under pressure from agricultural lobby groups, from passing legislation last November banning not just the sale of cellular agriculture products, but also scientific research into the technology.

Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, a member of the country’s far-right ruling party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), declared cultivated meat a threat to Italian culture and civilization. Soon thereafter, members of the Italian delegation to the EU, joined by representatives from 11 other countries, called on the Council of Europe to “ensure that artificially lab-grown products must never be promoted as or confused for authentic foods,” ostensibly in the public interest.

Farming lends itself to populism, which often acts as a cover for cold business calculations. The cultivated meat ban reveals that agricultural lobby group demands are generally about realpolitik rather than a principled position about state intervention — no different from any business that aims to protect its bottom line. Political scientist Leah Stokes, in her book Short Circuiting Policy, has described such policy fights as “organized combat” between interest groups, which tends to favor powerful incumbents over new constituencies aiming to build political support for social or economic change. In Italy, an entrenched and politically well-connected agricultural lobby had the power to write its preferences into policy while proponents of cellular agriculture did not, allowing them to nip potential competition in the bud.

Something similar is at work in the unraveling of the EU’s green agenda. Proponents of environmental legislation, while technically having science and public support on their side, were either unprepared or lacked the heart for a fight with the battle-tested farming lobby.

All that took place before Europe became engulfed by protests. Then came the tractors.

Last December, a proposed cut to diesel subsidies (used to power tractors and other farm machinery) in Germany, which had more to do with the country’s budgetary crisis than with environmental regulations, sent aggrieved farmers into the streets. Dozens of other protests erupted around Europe stemming from particular national issues. But as they grew, they coalesced into a generalized grievance about the failure of government and the EU to sufficiently support farmers, with new environmental policies offering a particularly easy target for ire.

Alan Matthews, an Irish economist and preeminent expert on the CAP, recently argued that part of the problem is the changing social capital of farmers: “Instead of being seen as heroic producers of a vital commodity, they are increasingly described as environmental villains and climate destroyers. ... Instead of taking responsibility for these problems, farmers often adopt a defensive position of denial.”

The protests have brought farmers of all stripes to the streets, big and small, organic and conventional. Despite their differences and the historic exclusion of small farmers from EU policymaking, most of Europe’s farmers share a common interest in maintaining subsidies and reducing regulation.

They also raise some valid points about the contradictions in EU policy, such as in their calls for more protection from foreign competitors that produce with lower standards than in Europe, including livestock produced in jurisdictions with no animal welfare protections or raised using growth stimulants banned in Europe. But this argument is undermined by farmers’ calls to weaken those very standards.

By late February, when a massive protest by farmers from across the continent ran amok through the EU quarter of Brussels, politicians across the continent were buckling to farmers’ demand. At the EU, even the watered-down version of the nature restoration law that had passed a vote in EU Parliament despite protests was stalled — perhaps indefinitely — as states including Belgium and Italy withdrew their support.

But perhaps most worrying has been the willingness of EU politicians to weaken already existing environmental standards, including loosening environmental conditions and reporting requirements for all farms smaller than 10 hectares.

These decisions may have also been motivated by upcoming EU elections. Many Europeans support the farmers’ cause, and as the Dutch case showed, the protests have the potential to galvanize voters to support parties seen as “pro-farmer.” With widespread concern about large gains for right and far-right parties in the EU Parliamentary elections next month, even ostensibly pro-Green Deal politicians, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have been forced to act appropriately deferential to the protesters.

Ursula von der Leyen, a blonde woman in her 60s, speaks into microphones in front of the EU flag. Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks at the European Parliament on February 6, the same day that she recommended shelving a plan to cut pesticide use as a concession to protesting farmers.

Sooner or later, climate change will force a reckoning with farming practices

The latest progress report on the EU’s quest for carbon neutrality, released by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change amid the protests in January, showed little improvement, especially in agriculture. It called for reductions in production of meat and dairy, higher consumer prices of highly emitting foods, more incentives for farmers to embrace green practices, and, as a political hint, more ambitious policy plans. In short: the opposite of the situation on the ground.

Arriving at a viable agricultural policy that marries support for farmers, green goals, and liberal trade policies is a difficult balancing act with few clear-cut solutions. It is unlikely that these could be achieved without continued state and EU involvement in shaping how food is produced in Europe through some mix of protectionism, policy nudges, and regulation. CAP, in one form or another, isn’t going anywhere.

But to the extent that it remains primarily a subsidy program, there is no reason why conditions on meeting strict climate and environmental targets should not be massively strengthened, rather than weakened, and enforcement ramped up. And there is no reason not to use policy to steer production away from highly polluting industries like meat and dairy toward less harmful ones.

To be in favor of more sustainable farming is not to be against farmers; it is to be against unsustainable farming practices. To allow these two to be conflated is to lose the fight, as the EU is currently doing. After all, to the extent farmers see themselves as businessmen, a sign of business acumen is making a profit within regulatory and market constraints.

One thing is certain: Bowing to the demands of special interests whose only interest is maintaining agricultural exceptionalism only precipitates a sooner reckoning with environmental crises, which will force farming to change whether farmers want to or not. The EU, however, seems to be taking marching orders from a parasite of its own creation, abandoning the very notions of public good that led to the creation of its agricultural policies in the first place.

Read the full story here.
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Under a Coalition government, the fate of Australia’s central climate policy hangs in the balance

Both major parties agree Australia must reach net-zero emissions. That’s why winding back the safeguard mechanism would be reckless policy.

RobynCharnley/ShutterstockThe future of Australia’s key climate policy is uncertain after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said a Coalition government would review the measure, known as the “safeguard mechanism”, which is designed to limit emissions from Australia’s largest industrial polluters. According to the Australian Financial Review, if the Coalition wins office it will consider relaxing the policy, as part of its plan to increase domestic gas supplies. Evidence suggests weakening the mechanism would be a mistake. In fact, it could be argued the policy does not go far enough to force polluting companies to curb their emissions. Both major parties now accept Australia must reach net-zero emissions by 2050. This bipartisan agreement should make one thing clear: winding back the safeguard mechanism would be reckless policy. What’s the safeguard mechanism again? The safeguard mechanism began under the Coalition government in 2016. It now applies to 219 large polluting facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. These facilities are in sectors such as electricity, mining, gas, manufacturing, waste and transport. Together, they produce just under one-third of Australia’s emissions. Under the policy’s original design, companies were purportedly required to keep their emissions below a certain cap, and buy carbon credits to offset any emissions over the cap. However, loopholes meant the cap was weakly enforced. This meant greenhouse gas pollution from the facilities actually increased – rising from 131.3 million tonnes to 138.7 million tonnes in the first six years of the policy. Labor strengthened the safeguard mechanism after it won office, by setting a hard cap for industrial emissions. The Coalition voted against the reforms. Dutton has since labelled the safeguard mechanism a “carbon tax” – a claim that has been debunked. Some members of the Coalition reportedly believe the policy makes manufacturers globally uncompetitive. Now, according to media reports, a Coalition government would review the safeguard mechanism with a view to weakening it, in a bid to bolster business and increase gas supply. Why the safeguard mechanism should be left alone Weakening the safeguard mechanism would lead to several problems. First, it would mean large facilities, including new coal and gas projects, would be permitted to operate without meaningful limits on their pollution. This threatens Australia’s international climate obligations. Second, if polluters were no longer required to buy carbon offsets, this would disrupt Australia’s carbon market. As the Clean Energy Regulator notes, the safeguard mechanism is the “dominant source” of demand for Australian carbon credits. In the first quarter of 2024, about 1.2 million carbon-credit units were purchased by parties wanting to offset their emissions. The vast majority were purchased by companies meeting compliance obligations under the safeguard mechanism or similar state rules. If companies are no longer required to buy offsets, or they buy fewer offsets, this would hurt those who sell carbon credits. Carbon credits are earned by organisations and individuals who abate carbon – through measures such as tree planting or retaining vegetation. The activities are often carried out by farmers and other landholders, including Indigenous organisations. Indigenous-led carbon projects have delivered jobs, cultural renewal and environmental benefits. The safeguard mechanism, together with the government pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, also provides certainty for the operators of polluting facilities. Many in the business sector have called for the policy to remain unchanged. And finally, winding back the safeguard mechanism would send a troubling signal to the world: that Australia is stepping back from climate action. Now is not the time to abdicate our responsibilities on climate change. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen dramatically since 1960. This increase is driving global warming and climate change, leading to extreme weather events which will only worsen. A hard-won policy The safeguard mechanism has not had time to deliver meaningful outcomes. And it is far from perfect – but it is hard-won, and Australia needs it. The 2023 reforms to the mechanism were designed to support trade-exposed industries, while encouraging companies to invest in emissions reduction. Undoing this mechanism would risk our climate goals. It would leave the government limited means to curb pollution from Australia’s largest emitters, and muddy the roadmap to net-zero. It would also create uncertainty for all carbon market participants, including the polluting facilities themselves. Felicity Deane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Why 50-Degree-F Days Feel Warmer in Spring Than in Fall

There are real, physiological reasons why the same temperature feels different in April and October

In the first few weeks of spring, a 50-degree-Fahrenheit (10-degree-Celsius) day might call for a light jacket or no jacket—or even short sleeves, depending on the person. But in the fall, the same weather might have you reaching for a parka.It’s not just in your head. The relative warmth of spring is physiological as well as psychological; after a long, biting winter, your body has changed in ways that can make 50 degrees F seem downright balmy.“I fully experience this on a regular basis with my work,” says Cara Ocobock, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, who studies how the human body adapts to cold. Her work often takes her to Finland, where she studies populations of reindeer herders who spend lots of time in extreme cold.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“The human body is very good at acclimatizing to different environmental situations that are not permanent—and the changes that your body experiences during this time also aren’t permanent,” she says. Some of these changes involve a heat-generating organ that was only recently discovered in adults.Scientific American spoke with Ocobock to learn more about the changes our bodies undergo during winter—including to that strange, newfound organ—and how these changes affect us when the winter chill finally gives way to the warmth of spring.Have you personally experienced this “50 degrees feels warm” phenomenon?Yes, I have a story from my last trip to Finland. I was 300 kilometers [185 miles] north of the Arctic Circle during what should have been the coldest time of the year. There were maybe four or five days where it didn’t get above –20 degrees Fahrenheit [–29 degrees Celsius]. But then five days later, it was in the positive 40s Fahrenheit [or five to 10 degrees C], which should not exist that far north that time of year. After those days of extreme cold, I started sweating [when it went] above freezing. I wouldn’t even wear a coat. My body just kind of reversed course—like, “We need to cool you down; this is not what we have been used to.”How quickly do these physiological changes happen when someone is exposed to more extreme temperatures?There’s always going to be individual and populational variation, but we see the changes start happening pretty quickly. It can start within 24 hours, but they don’t fully set in for about seven to 10 days. You will maintain those changes until you go and switch environments again, and then you’ll lose your acclimatization. This can be to heat, cold, humidity, dryness or high altitude as well. For example, when I [returned to sea level from] field work in the Rocky Mountains, I was able to do two full lengths of an Olympic swimming pool without breathing. Within two weeks, that was gone.So how do our bodies change when we are exposed to cold weather?There’s a constant balancing of several different systems going on here. One of the quick changes is an increase in your resting metabolic rate—the baseline number of calories your body burns in order to survive. Your body is kind of increasing its own thermostat to produce more heat because you are losing more heat to the environment.We also see changes in the way your blood vessels [tighten or expand] to respond to the cold. In the cold, [vessels constrict to] reduce how much blood is flowing through and the heat that can potentially be lost to the environment. And when you’re cold, blood will be shunted more to the deep blood vessels that are further away from the surface, whereas in a hot climate, the opposite happens.We also see and increase in brown adipose tissue activity—this is an active area of research. “Brown fat,” as we call it colloquially, is a type of fat that burns only to keep you warm during acute cold exposure. In adult humans, it’s located [just above your clavicles], as well as along your major deep blood vessels. This organ, and we do consider it kind of its own organ, uses energy to produce heat—not energy to [activate your muscles] to go run a mile or anything like that. We used to think that human adults never have brown fat. We knew that babies have it [for the first few months of life], but we thought that once they burned through it, that was it. But we are now seeing brown adipose tissue everywhere we look in adult human populations.How is brown fat different from regular fat?Brown adipose tissue is very, very rich in mitochondria. Instead of being the powerhouse of the cell, those mitochondria are the furnace. It basically short-circuits the typical process so that this tissue produces heat rather than energy.In adults, to date, we have seen brown fat in populations in Russia and Finland—cold climates, which makes sense. We’ve seen it in Albany, N.Y.—temperate climate but cold winters. And we’ve also seen it in Samoa—a tropical island climate. So we’re beginning to think that brown adipose tissue might be a very deeply ancient tissue and that it could have been around in our evolutionary history for a very long time.How does brown fat activity change during cold seasons?One study on seasonal changes in brown adipose tissue [was] conducted by my former graduate student, Alexandra Niclou. She looked at seasonal variation in a brown adipose tissue among folks in Albany. She found that people were able to maintain higher body temperatures from brown fat in the winter but at a reduced caloric cost. And so it seemed the brown fat actually got more efficient the more it was being used to maintain body temperature in the winter. So there does seem to be a physiological difference in how brown fat is responding between the seasons. I’m going back to Finland this spring [to measure this further] among reindeer herders and indoor workers.Given all of those factors, what do you think is happening to our bodies on that first “warm” spring day?In the winter, you’re going to have an increase in resting metabolism. You might see an increase in your brown adipose tissue activity in order to keep you warm. Then all of a sudden it’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but your resting metabolic rate is still going to be higher, [and your brown fat might be more active], which means your body is producing more heat than it typically would have been. That’s probably why you feel like it’s way warmer out and start sweating. That acclimatization process is going to take a week or more to get you used to this new, warmer temperature setting.There’s also a developmental aspect of this—where you grew up likely has a massive, massive impact on how your body responds to different extremes and changes in seasonal temperatures. I’m a college professor [in Indiana], and walking around campus this time of year, you can tell the kids from the East Coast and the Midwest versus those from the South and the West Coast [by who is wearing] short T-shirts and sandals when it’s, like, 50 degrees and [who is] still in puff jackets. It always cracks me up. And we might actually see happening with brown adipose tissue as well—that the more you are exposed to cold during critical developmental periods as a child, the more active and responsive your brown adipose tissue may be as an adult.Do these seasonal changes still impact you if you spend most of the winter indoors?They are definitely still impacting you. It might not be as much, obviously, and this is part of what we’re doing with our work in Finland with reindeer herders, who spend more time outside in the extreme cold, and indoor office workers in the same region. But because you still go outside, you still experience acute cold, [even if it’s not] for hours and hours on end.Why is it important to understand how our bodies acclimatize to extreme temperatures?Understanding how bodies rapidly respond [to changes in temperature] is going to be even more important in the face of climate change, when we have highly and dramatically variable environments —where you get ice storms in Texas, for example. [Helping people acclimatize via what we know about] biology, behavior and technology is going to be critical, I think, because no matter what, our bodies are going to be physiologically limited in coping with both extreme cold and extreme heat. Our bodies are not limitless, so we have [to adjust our] behavior and turn to technology to make up for what our bodies can’t do.

The Psychological Effects of Climate Change: The Scientific Explanations — and Solutions That Can Empower Your Mind

Our minds can flip the script on climate change. Here are ways to reframe our perceptions and make us more resilient and empowered. The post The Psychological Effects of Climate Change: The Scientific Explanations — and Solutions That Can Empower Your Mind appeared first on The Revelator.

Are environmental and climate change problems overwhelming you? As psychologists my colleagues and I increasingly see the psychological and physiological effects of climate stress on our clients. These effects — including “fear of the unknown,” instability, catastrophizing, financial insecurity, and biophysiological alterations due to unseasonal weather events — create an ominous feeling of chaos, adversely affecting people’s emotional and mental equilibrium and making it hard to focus on clear actions, solutions, and effective pathways to fighting back climate confusion. This can leave us feeling deeply uneasy about the future. How can we cope with these feelings of overwhelming apprehension or hopelessness? As individuals we can’t take on the world — that’s an impossible task. So do we just turn away and give up? Of course not. Instead let’s look at more productive approaches to applying the brakes when anxiety, nihilism, and emotional shutdown leave us stuck in place. There’s a new and growing field in psychology focused on addressing the increasing burdens on our psyches due to climate chaos. Climate psychology addresses the emotional, mental, and sociological processes that contribute to the climate crisis, and human responses and adaptations to that can make positive, proactive, and productive solutions to climate-change events. As I’ve seen with my clients, friends, family, and community, the effects of climate change on mental and emotional wellbeing require a fresh approach to this lived experience challenge. For many people the first step to addressing this psychological crisis starts in our own minds. Psychologically this is known as “taking back the power”: Choose to do something — something that will empower you, energize you, and heal the trauma of climate insecurity, ignorance, and willful destruction by the rich and powerful. Before we do that, though, it helps to understand the psychological and physiological damage we’re trying to heal. “Where Did the World I Used to Know Go?” The word “solastalgia” describes the emotion of longing for a natural world that no longer exists. You’ve probably experienced this: The ongoing disruption of seasonal weather’s traditional timing makes us feel deeply disoriented, moody, depressed, confused, irritable, and uneasy on a subconscious level as our bodies’ biological, mind-affecting chemicals become unbalanced — much like what’s happening to our planet. There are biochemical reasons for these emotions caused by climate disruption. Climate trauma causes remarkable physiological — and therefore psychological — alterations to human biochemistry that significantly alter brain chemistry, leading to dysregulation of neurotransmitters and hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine, and dopamine. This adversely affects normal stress response, memory, and emotional regulation. Physiologically, increased heat and climate instability can even accelerate the aging process, new research suggests. Examples of events that disorient and alter our minds include: Plants bloom too early for the wildlife that depend on them, pushing them out of synch with the natural system. Salt and freshwater wildlife migrate with warmer temperatures, disrupting our food systems. Wildlife and plants become infected with disease or poisoned due to algae blooms or poisonous flood runoff. Drought causes water insecurity, increases costs, and threatens livelihoods. The loss of slow “transitional seasons” like spring and autumn causes deep temperature swings — and mood swings. Warmer climates mean invasive species, whether planted by humans or caused by “species creep” out of inhospitable climates. Diseases kill wildlife who historically have kept disease-carrying pest populations down. These disruptions alter our behavior and affect some of our most significant life choices. Climate Change Affects Life’s Biggest Decisions People are now questioning important life decisions under an uncertain climate context. Should we have children? Should we buy a home? Where should we live? Can we afford children and a home mortgage? Will there be food and clean water? How secure is my job? This is the psychological trauma and uncertainty of displacement, which leaves us feeling trapped, without agency or control. We can’t look into a crystal ball and see the future, but climate anxiety and resource insecurity create a very difficult, confusing decision-making process when planning family, home, job, and community. The increasingly likely threats of displacement — loss of life and health, region, or country — are highly stressful and traumatic because they’re unpredictable. Globally we see the increasing geographical relocation of individuals, cultures, and communities. Leaving behind generations of the family sense of “home” is highly traumatic as entire cultures must relocate due to resource insecurities caused by drought, floods, invasive species, or the extinction of native species. These insecurities cause extreme and enduring stress. A few examples include the rising cost or unavailability of insurance for disasters, community dissolution, loss of a “home” or place, and friends and family scattering to new geographic locations because of better opportunities there. Globally these events affect local, federal, and international government and political decision-making. Huge migrations of wildlife and humans to other geographical locations upset existing populations, which causes perceived cultural threats, so emigrants are demonized, segregated, and violence erupts, destabilizing societies and governments. All of this creates a universal sense of helplessness: “There’s nothing I can do, so why bother?” Take Back Your Power: Try This Psychology 101 Exercise Exercise 1. Spend an hour enviro-dooming online. It’s easy. Go for it with gusto: Furiously repost the bad things, “like,” and share — send the doom to all your groups and friends. The algorithms and AI will direct you to every negative environmental disaster online, because the scientists hired by Big Tech know what excites your brain chemicals and tickles your brain’s pleasure centers. It’s based on addiction science: Create exciting content, keep supplying more stimulation and agitation. Big Tech is a drug dealer for negative, aggressive, pleasurable chemicals. You’ll always get a fix, because Big Tech algorithms and AI now know your mind — and offers your brain maladaptive chemical and behavioral solutions. Now stop and check yourself. Scan your mind and body. How do you feel? Exercise 2: Turn off all your electronics. Get up and go for a walk, stroll into town and see what’s happening. Art shows? Community events? Farmers markets? What’s new at the library and community center? Is there a park to kick back and enjoy nature? Smile and be nice to strangers and shop clerks, open a door for someone, help someone with directions, or help an elderly or disabled person reach that can of corn on the top shelf. Research shows that when we smile and act nice to strangers, we get a burst of serotonin and other happiness chemicals in our brains. And the people we help do too. It’s contagious. Now how do you feel? We can all take advantage of that reset. Whether we’re talking about climate change, civil rights, politics, or anything else, you control the mediums you expose yourself to. Use your critical thinking, set limits and boundaries, resist the manipulation of media. It takes some practice to resist bad habits. But we can do it. Let’s reframe your relationship with the world in its current health. Start with your mindset, then, using what you discovered above, branch out into your community. Get involved with others around you and you’ll soon find yourself making small local changes, then bigger ones as your positive engagement ripples outward to others. See how those positive brain chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins — which play crucial roles in regulating mood, promoting well-being, and fostering feelings of pleasure and satisfaction — are radiating out to others, and the world. Be kind to yourself. It all starts with you. Scroll down to find our “Republish” button Previously in The Revelator: Why Climate Grief Is an Essential for Climate Action The post The Psychological Effects of Climate Change: The Scientific Explanations — and Solutions That Can Empower Your Mind appeared first on The Revelator.

Scientists Shielding Farming From Climate Change Need More Public Funding. but They're Getting Less

Public funding for agricultural research in the U.S. has been declining for the last two decades, a process Trump has rapidly accelerated by freezing or pausing support for a variety of research programs financed by the USDA, EPA and other organizations

Erin McGuire spent years cultivating fruits and vegetables like onions, peppers and tomatoes as a scientist and later director of a lab at the University of California-Davis. She collaborated with hundreds of people to breed drought-resistant varieties, develop new ways to cool fresh produce and find ways to make more money for small farmers at home and overseas.Then the funding stopped. Her lab, and by extension many of its overseas partners, were backed financially by the United States Agency for International Development, which Trump's administration has been dismantling for the past several weeks. Just before it was time to collect data that had been two years in the making, her team received a stop work order. She had to lay off her whole team. Soon she was laid off, too.“It’s really just been devastating,” she said. “I don’t know how you come back from this.”The U.S. needs more publicly funded research and development on agriculture to offset the effects of climate change, according to a paper out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month. But instead the U.S. has been investing less. United States Department of Agriculture data shows that as of 2019, the U.S. spent about a third less on agricultural research than its peak in 2002, a difference of about $2 billion. The recent pauses and freezes to funding for research on climate change and international development are only adding to the drop. It’s a serious issue for farmers who depend on new innovations to keep their businesses afloat, the next generation of scientists and eventually for consumers who buy food.“This is terrible news for the U.S. agricultural sector,” said Cornell associate professor Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, the lead author of the paper. Trump administration hastens funding cuts As the Trump administration pauses and shutters research programs funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, USDA and other agencies, Ortiz-Bobea and other experts have seen field trials stopped, postdoctoral positions eliminated and a looming gap forming between the reality of climate change and the tools farmers have to deal with it.The EPA declined to comment, and the USDA and USAID did not respond to Associated Press queries.Ortiz-Bobea and his team quantified overall U.S. agricultural productivity, estimated how much it would be slowed by climate change in coming years and calculated how much money would need to be invested in research and development to counteract that slowdown.Think of it like riding a bike into a headwind, Ortiz-Bobea said. To maintain the same speed, you have to pedal harder; in this case, R&D can be that extra push.Some countries are heading that direction. China spends almost twice as much as the U.S. on agricultural research, and has increased its research investments by five times since 2000, wrote Omanjana Goswami, a scientist with the Food and Environment team at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in an email.Spending cutbacks have also shuttered agricultural research across almost all of the Feed the Future Innovation Labs, of which McGuire's was one. Those 17 labs across 13 universities focused on food security, technical agriculture research, policy and various aspects of climate change. The stop-work orders at those labs not only disappointed researchers, but made useless much of their work.“There are many, many millions of dollars of expenditure that will generate nothing now because the work couldn’t be finished,” said David Tschirley, a professor who had been directing another one of those programs, the Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research, Capacity and Influence at Michigan State University, since 2019. Finding new funding for agricultural research Some researchers hope that other sources of funding can fill the gaps: “That’s where private sector could really step up,” said Swati Hegde, a scientist in the Food, Land, and Water Program at the World Resources Institute.From an agricultural point of view, climate change is “really scary,” with larger and larger regions exposed to temperatures above healthy growing conditions for many crops, said Bill Anderson, CEO of Bayer, a multinational biotechnology and pharmaceutical company that invested nearly $3 billion in agricultural research and development last year. But private companies have their own constraints on R&D investment, and he said Bayer can't invest as much as it would like in that area. “I don’t think that private industry can replicate" how federal funding typically supports early stage, speculative science, he said, “because the economics don't really work.” He added that industry tends to be better suited to back ideas that have already been validated. Goswami, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, also expressed concerns that private research funding isn't as trackable and transparent as public funding. And others said even sizeable investments from companies don't give anywhere near enough money to match government funding. Researchers, farmers and consumers feel the fallout The full impact may not be apparent for many years, and the damage won't easily be repaired. Experts think it will be a blow in other countries where climate change is already decimating yields, driving hunger and conflict. “I really worry that if we don’t really look at the global food situation, we will have a disaster,” said David Zilberman, a professor at UC Berkeley who won a Wolf Prize in 2019 for his work on agriculture.But even domestically, experts say one thing is almost certain: this will mean even higher prices at the grocery store now and in the future.“More people on the Earth, you need more productivity to prevent food prices going crazy,” said Tom Hertel, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. Even if nothing changes right away, he thinks “10 years from now, 20 years from now, our yield growth will surely be stunted” by cuts to research on agricultural productivity.Many scientists said the wound isn’t just professional but personal. “People are very demoralized,” especially younger researchers who don’t have tenure and want to work on international food research, said Zilberman.Now those dreams are on hold for many. In carefully tended research plots, weeds begin to grow.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

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