THE EUROPEAN FARMER:
“What am I doing here?”
With the Mercosur negotiations finalised, European farmers are worried for their future.
By: Einar Nygaard & Victor Dyreborg
Rays of sunlight shine through the Thursday morning mist, illuminating a box truck standing between two small barns. The driver is leaning out of the window, talking to a man in a worn-down grey sweater and a bright blue woolen cap. They exchange a few words, and the truck drives of.
“That was the butcher, you just missed him,” says Matthias Stürwoldt, the man in the blue cap.
Stürwoldt invites us inside the barn. It’s 7:30, and he is about to go milk the cows. Somewhere, a cock crows.
Cog in the machine
Stürwoldt’s farm is one of 255.000 German agricultural holdings, and like many of these, his farm produces milk. In fact, Germany is Europe’s largest exporter of milk, producing 32.4 million tons of cow milk in 2023, according to the German Federal Statistical Office.
Although this number has remained relatively stable for the last ten years, the number of farms has been steadily declining with a 37% reduction in the EU from the year 2005 to 2020 (Eurostat). Stürwoldt says this decline has negative consequences.
“Year after year there are less farmers. So, we are not as important as voters compared to previous years. I don’t think politics takes into account that what we as farmers do is important to society,” says Stürwoldt.
It’s no secret that farmers in the EU have been unhappy with their conditions for a long time.
And recently, farmers were struck by another blow in form of a trade agreement they call “the worst ever.” Namely the free trade agreement that EU recently passed with the Mercosur Union, consisting of the countries Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
THE FTA
The Mercosur Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was finalized on the 6. of December 2024 marking history for the 25 yearlong negotiation that started back in 1999. Now it continues its run through the fairly complicated European process.
The Mercosur deal is the largest EU trade agreement in the history of the union, and for many industries it will be beneficial. However, trade agreements of this size often have a hard time satisfying the needs and wants of everyone.
Farmers in particular say they are going to be negatively affected by this deal and have protested it for years.
Ksenija Simovic, senior policy advisor for the EU-wide farmers union COPA-COGECA, says they have been opposed to it since the beginning.
“We have always been clear that we are against this deal. It impacts competitiveness for European farmers, and we are also concerned about the large divergence in production standards between the EU and the Mercosur countries” she said.
Despite this opposition, most European governments, Germany among them, ended up supporting trade with the South American countries.
The reasons for this are many and varied, but for Germany, one of the reasons is that the deal makes it cheaper to sell cars and car parts to the Mercosur countries. Since Germany has many large automotive industries, there is a lot of financial gain in agreeing to this deal.
The Mercosur countries highlighted in green. Venezuela, painted in red, was suspended from the union in 2016.
| FACTS ON MERCOSUR – The Mercosur agreement is a trade deal between the European Union and the Mercosur Union. – The trade deal is meant to make it easier to import and export certain goods between the two unions, such as meat, chemicals and car parts. – The Mercosur agreement contains a clause that the deal can be suspended if countries fail to uphold their promises to the Paris climate treaty. – The name “Mercosur” comes from the Spanish Mercado Común del Sur and Portuguese Mercado Comum do Sul, which both translate to “Southern Common Market.” |
Frustration and fear
German farmers have not been hiding their frustration. On Monday 2. December, days before the finalization of the FTA, the farmers’ association Landwirtschaft Verbindet Deutschland (LSV) planned a countrywide border-protest.
Farmers all over the country drove their tractors to the German borders to meet with farmers of other nationalities, in in a last-ditch effort to prevent the deal.
At one of the borders, specifically the one shared with Denmark, around 70 local German farmers stood around a tractor-trailer transformed stage, where the LSV representatives spoke to the crowd of protesters.
“We hoped we would be more, that we would be joined by Danish farmers. But they have not come,” says LSV-chairman Markus Kühl.
Kühl started the LSV Deutschland in his kitchen along with his wife, and together they organized several protests in opposition to the Mercosur deal.
“Politicians should come back to using facts. We should be able to care for ourselves, but Mercosur is working against this.”
Kühl says that while Mercosur can deliver meat right now, he doubts they will be able to do so for years to come, due to what he describes as unsustainable farming practices.
I am frightened
– Markus Kühl
“And in the meantime, our fields rot here at home. When no one farms anymore, and the knowledge is gone, then we have a problem, because we won’t be able to feed ourselves.”
However, despite all his efforts, he was not hopeful.
“I am frightened. It will go through, I think, because people are earning money from it. A country has to export to import. If it wants technology and machinery and such, it needs to sell something. So, the huge companies that export from Germany, like Mercedes, they are the winners. And we have to pay for that.“
As we now know, Kühl was right in believing the deal would go through.
Present at the protests were Stefan Hansen and Annika Wind-Hansen, a popular YouTube couple running a popular agricultural channel with more than 100.000 subscribers. Their primary worries about the Mercosur FTA were the market prices and differences in agricultural standards and regulations.
An opportunity for growth
Whilst the trade agreement might affect farmers negatively, it’s a bright future for the European automotive industry. Their reaction to the conclusion of the deal was therefore quite different to that of the farmers.
The German Verband der Automobilindustrie e.V. (VDA), a German car manufacturer union, released the following after the conclusion of the deal:
“The conclusion of the negotiations on the EU-Mercosur trade agreement is good news for the entire European business location and for Germany as an export country,” the VDA said in a press release.
We reached out to the VDA and asked what they thought about the farmers feeling let down by the deal.
“The Mercosur agreement is highly relevant for Europe as a business location and for Germany as an export country – for prosperity, growth, jobs and equally in the joint fight against climate change,” they said, and added:
“Only with economic strength can the EU play an important role on the world stage.”
What do the numbers say?
The EU’s trade deal with the Mercosur Union has winners and losers, and so far, we have been using Germany as an example to illustrate the two sides. In reality, who wins and who loses out on the deal is not black and white, and how much does anyone win and lose, anyways? To get an insight into this, we have to look at the numbers.
When it comes to farming, the deal opens for more trade from Mercosur to EU when it comes to beef, poultry and pork. Other products are affected as well, but for now, let us start with these three.
Currently, Mercosur countries are exporting 200.000 tons of beef, 330.000 tons of poultry and 35.000 tons of pork. The Mercosur FTA allows for an additional 100.000 tons of beef, 180.000 tons of poultry, and 30.000 tons of pork to be imported with no or reduced tariffs.
In grams per citizen, this increase equates to roughly two burgers, two chicken breasts and a few strips of bacon more per year. In total weight, it is an increase of 300.000 tons of meat, which equates to the weight of 30 Eiffel towers.
For beef and poultry, the new maximum amount of imported meat from the Mercosur countries equates to around 4 percent of the annual consumption in the EU. For pork, it equates to 0.3 percent.
When it comes to milk and dairy products, it is the European farmers who benefit from the deal. Smaller farmers like Matthias, who only sells locally, are relatively unaffected by this, but the larger exporters will likely gain from the FTA. The quotas on cheese and milk powder, for instance, are increased tenfold, from 3000 to 30.000 and 1000 to 10.000 tonnes respectively.
When it comes to the car industry, the import tariffs on cars will be reduced to zero over many years, from 18 to 30 years depending on the type of car. Electric vehicles are reduced faster than petrol fueled cars. Since South America has a production deficit of around 30%, gaining increased access to this market is very profitable for European car manufacturers.
All right, enough numbers. Let’s talk about what we might all be wondering. How will it affect me?
Should non-farmers care?
Whilst farmers are adamant that these numbers are threatening the country’s future, and the automotive industry eagerly awaits the opportunity for growth in a new market, it is still unclear what this all means for the European citizen, aka. the consumer.
That is because such predictions are very hard to make, according to Léa Auffret from the BEUC, The European Consumer Organisation.
The European Parliament has stated the agreement will “create the conditions for European consumers to choose from a wider and more affordable range of products,” Auffret says it is too early to say anything about the long-term effects of the deal.
“When it comes to diversity of goods, we can be pretty sure it will improve. As for price reduction, it mostly affects the upper economic operators.”
Auffret says that the price changes will largely affect those who import the products. They will pay less to get the products in. But what they do with their sales margin after that is up to them, she says.
“Most of the time consumers do not really see a difference. Generally speaking, farmers and consumers are the losers, even though we’re being told as consumers that we’re going to win from trade agreements.”
When talking about import of meat, Auffret says she is not worried about the numbers themselves.
“The quotas don’t seem that high to us. We are more worried that the import of meats from Mercosur do not have to comply with any more welfare rules.”
Auffret says this will be hard to detect.
“It is not fair either for farmers or for consumers, because that’s something consumers are not necessarily aware of. You believe that you’re buying something that complies with the rules and regulations we have in Europe, but for animal welfare, that is not true.”
Another point raised by Auffret was built on skepticism about importing more meat to a market that is already saturated.
“We have a hard time seeing how it can benefit sustainable consumption.”
Stopping the deal
With the negotiations finalized, the next step for the deal to become a reality is ratification. That means it has to win a majority vote with 15 member countries representing at least 65% of the European Union’s population. Some are still hopeful that the deal can be stopped during this process, if more than 35% of member countries refuse to ratify the deal. Among these is LSV-chariman Markus Kühl (who we reached out to after the conclusion of the Mercosur negotiations).
“We are hoping that the other states like France and Austria are getting the necessary majority to stop the Mercosur-Deal the way it is now,” says Kühl, adding that the deal is irresponsible in terms of Consumer Protection and honesty towards european Farmers.
“Brussels cannot shorten our self-sufficiency on the one hand and replace the lost food with imported products, made with much lower standards.”
A smiling, sorrowful farmer
Regardless of the final outcome of the Mercosur deal, the decline in the farming population, combined with disputes between the agricultural sector and environmental groups, highlights the significant challenges Matthias Stürwoldt and his colleagues are facing.
Stürwoldt says farming is becoming harder.
“It’s like being the coach of a football team, where everyone thinks they know better than you, and hate you when they think you are doing something wrong, he says with a slight smile.”
To Stürwoldt, the hardest part of the changing times is the alienation and lack of respect that he feels in society.
“It’s not about the money; it is about recognition. People seeing the value in what you do feels very different from them constantly critiquing your work and what you do. That’s what makes it hard.”
Stürwoldt says this sometimes makes him question why he does what he does.
When people accuse you of being bad for nature and bad for the climate, it makes you think “what am I doing here”.
