The 'tractoradas' that travel through Spain have raised a flag and banner against the 2030 Agenda, approved by the United Nations, and against environmental defenders. The sustainable development objectives have been presented by some as contrary to the interests of the countryside. However, the experts consulted argue that trade and agricultural policies, unrelated to the necessary adaptation to climate change and the preservation of biodiversity, are responsible for the damage that has unleashed the unrest in the agricultural world, victim of an unfair distribution of the benefits.
Despite this, the current model of the field continues to win the game on the European Union board, in what scientists and environmentalists consider a “flight forward.” The consequences? An increasingly deteriorated environment, which goes against the interests of farmers. The rural crisis does not justify a war between farmers and environmentalists. There are many other underlying reasons that explain the crisis in the countryside, manifested with those tractors on the roads:
One of the reasons for the rural crisis in Europe has to do with something that environmental and development organizations have been denouncing for years: these are trade agreements that have caused asparagus to be purchased from China at 2.5 euros and from Navarra at 6. 9 euros. And in the same supermarket.
The tariff liberalization promoted since the end of the last century has promoted a landing of large agri-food companies in the southern hemisphere, many European, from where they promote monocultures that impact the environment and expel local farmers outside the Spanish borders. “The WTO emerged in 1995 with the liberalization of agricultural trade. Then, it was good for the EU because its subsidized agriculture was triumphing abroad, sinking local productions, but the panorama has changed and now it turns out that in Spain we have lost 400,000 agricultural holdings since 1999, and 4.2 million in the EU," recalls the researcher Marta G. Rivera, from the Ingenio center (CSIC-UPV), who has been an author of the IPCC.
Agreements such as the Mercosur agreement, pending approval, which seeks to further facilitate imports from South America, have been repeatedly denounced by the most important environmental organizations, both in Spain and at the European level.
For years, scientific and environmental studies have been denouncing that the community agricultural policy (CAP), which grants aid according to hectares of crops, benefits large businessmen in the sector, harms small farmers. SEO/Birdlife has warned that the crisis in the countryside responds to this model, because “they have ignored the importance of nature; and the environment in a sector totally dependent on the good state of natural resources: water, soil and biodiversity.”
CSIC scientist Fernando Valladares recalls that this system promotes “production for today and hunger for tomorrow.” The expert considers inexplicable the reversal that has occurred in the first measures that were going to reduce the environmental impacts of the CAP, promoting sustainability instead of productivity. For this expert, "it makes no sense to eliminate this environmental protection" and allow the entry of products "that arrive from abroad without environmental or social certificates, only because they leave more margins for large agro-industry," he points out.
Fuels and inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) are at the risk of geopolitical crises. Also the seeds. They are products in the hands of large multinationals. Celsa Peiteado, from WWF Spain, highlights that the price increases are a reflection of a systemic crisis in the agroindustry and the dependence on these products since the Green Revolution. But now they are reaching the 'peak', that is, the moment at which more than what remains has been extracted. “FAO itself highlights that this system has a hidden cost of 10% of global GDP,” she recalls.
From another angle, Valladares explains how “agricultural soil is a physical support that requires bugs. It cannot be sterile, because if you kill everything, if you burn the stubble, pests enter and you need more pesticides and fertilizers. With agroecology and regenerative agriculture, in the first years less is produced, but in a short time there are fewer costs for inputs and the increases affect less. "Also, with less use of tractors, fuel would be saved because we know that it is not necessary to plow as much."
Another of the ills that afflict the primary sector is confusing information, when not erroneous or manipulated in an interested way, about what really affects them. Hoaxes such as that environmentalists are against extensive livestock farming, when they have been defending it for years, that they release pests, supposed fumigations so that it does not rain... "We environmentalists have been denouncing for a long time that the industrial food system harms farmers and proposing alternatives," he says. Tom Kucharz, from Ecologists in Action.
Valladares, for his part, defends that "we must let the farmers speak about the tractor units and then make them see the contradictions so that they do not allow themselves to be manipulated and do not defend what goes against them." Along the same lines, food sovereignty expert Gustavo Duch highlights how this concept is being used without understanding it: “They get carried away by populism. The movement for food sovereignty does not seek to oppose farmers from other countries and, in addition, defends social improvements.
In Spain there are many organic farmers who are invisible and exist within that 4% of the agricultural population.” “We do many campaigns for the consumption of local, seasonal foods and we work with associations that are not on the streets,” says Peiteado, from WWF, for her part. “Another reality is being built in which the democratic system is strained and lost, the 2030 Agenda is criticized without knowing what it means to fight against poverty and for a future based on ideological populism,” criticizes Valladares.
22% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, forestry and land use, according to the 2023 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. The sector is, therefore, responsible in that part of the scarcity of water and rain and the extreme phenomena caused by climate change, which in turn generates losses and damages. Despite this, today emphasis is placed on irrigation in semi-desert areas and the exploitation of aquifers, while water transfers are required. Environmentalists and scientists have been pointing out for some time that production must be adapted to the new climate scenario.
“You cannot convert a desert into an irrigated area due to pressure from investors and then demand water. Furthermore, we already produce more food than we need, although another thing is how it is distributed,” recalls the CSIC scientist. “Without water,” adds Peiteado, “there is no agriculture.” And it is getting worse: according to a recent report by Ecologists, 36% of the surface area in the country is already contaminated by agrochemicals.
74% of the Spanish territory “is susceptible to desertification”, calculates the Ministry of Ecological Transition. In Almería alone, a third of its land has become arid in the last decade, points out the CSIC. The causes: climate change and human action on the soil, that is, agricultural overexploitation and the inadequate and inefficient use of water. This desertification, according to the FAO and the EU, which are based on science, must be combated by restoring soils, for which the new CAP measures, reduced before their entry into force, were aimed at supporting those who leave land fallow. or a minimum vegetation cover that prevents its loss with the rains, or those who rotate crops so that the soils are nourished.
“Agroecology reduces pesticides and fertilizers and, in addition, generates employment, while ecosystems pushed to that saturation limit are less productive. Supporting the industrial production model goes against the autonomy of farmers, it makes them more vulnerable,” highlights Marta G. Rivera. Added to this is that a country where desertification is increasing exports water (in the form of meat, vegetables and fruits) to Europe and China, markets accessible to large companies. “Cultivating rotation crops is known to work for agricultural soils, it even makes fallow unnecessary, but it is not interesting because it is not a business for those who insist on overexploiting,” adds Valladares.
The industrial agrarian system is behind the loss of biodiversity, which in turn is impacting agriculture. According to SEO/Birdlife, in Spain, 48% of habitats and 30% of species are threatened by intensive agricultural activity, and 80% of habitats associated with extensive agriculture are in an unfavorable state of conservation. Only birds associated with the agricultural sector, an indicator of the health of the countryside, have decreased by 55% in Europe in the last 30 years.
Once again, agrochemicals and the aforementioned overexploitation of available water favor its disappearance. Science has shown that protecting biodiversity is essential because it promotes pollination, mobilizes nutrients from the soil and allows the control of pests and diseases, among other advantages. “Crops without a ladybug, spider, or ant generate a total dependence on industrial inputs,” says Valladares.
Another factor in contention that has nothing to do with environmental defense is the phenomenon of concentration of land ownership. Rural abandonment and the aging of the population (41% are over 65 years old) have led to the landing of investment funds in the countryside, as highlighted by the Ocampo web platform in its report “Investment in rural land 2023”. That is where Peiteado focuses, denouncing how the PAC does not favor young people receiving aid to buy land, so now they receive farms only by inheritance, while these investment funds keep those that are for sale.
Researcher Marta G. Rivera also highlights this handicap. "With the closure of farms, the land is being concentrated in the hands of large companies that are going to exploit it to the maximum, leaving out an agroecology that works and generates employment." “They are large delocalized investors who push the production of money,” concludes Fernando Valladares.
The economic margins that the links in the distribution of agricultural production take have not stopped increasing in recent years. A minority part of the agricultural sector, in fact, has gone to protest at logistics distribution facilities and large stores that impose prices below the cost of production, unaffordable without large farms. The government approved the Food Chain Law in 2021 to prohibit sales at a loss, but it is not enforced. “The distributors are not worried about the protests, they continue to earn a lot of money because we would continue eating even if the entire sector stopped because we receive products from large companies from abroad,” says Gustavo Duch.
And, as Kucharz points out, "the WTO also approved liberalizing the distribution sector and now it turns out that states cannot set limits and protect prices, neither for small businesses nor for small producers." In fact, he mentions, only 10 companies in the world transport 90% of the food, another 10 have all the food processing in their hands and a dozen more sell 30% of all the food consumed, more so in Spain.
Changes are being introduced in consumer trends, from a Mediterranean diet to a globalized one in which the consumer introduces into their menu products that were exotic or that are produced out of season and have a great environmental cost, inside and outside the national territory. . This is the case of avocado, whose cultivation has grown more than 50% in a decade; of mango, 200% more; or kiwis, which are already produced in Valencia.
The avocado in Malaga is significant, given the water consumption it entails in an area that already has consumption restrictions due to the drought. The buyer also finds products that come from other parts of the world, such as melons from Brazil, which flood supermarkets in winter, coming from large monocultures in few hands. “The agribusiness magnates make cash, but there is a lack of brave states and politicians who put a stop to their benefits,” says Valladares.
