Farmers gathered at the European Agricultural Forum in Jasionka are considering running candidates in the European Parliament elections to become “a force that everyone in Europe can count on.” Most farmers interviewed by PAP positively assess the changes to the Green Deal proposed by the European Commission.
Last Friday, the European Commission published a draft amendment to two regulations related to the Green Deal. The proposals include, among others: abolition of the obligation to fallow, choice between crop diversification and rotation, simplifications regarding the maintenance of soil cover. These proposals were positively assessed by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Czesław Siekierski.
The European Agricultural Forum began on Tuesday in Jasionka, during which, among others, to a meeting of farmers who have been protesting for several weeks with Minister Siekierski. One of the topics of conversation will be the Green Deal.
As Sylwester Dziewulski from the Lublin Chamber of Agriculture (LIR) said, the EC’s proposals are to postpone the problems “in a year” and wait out the elections. “This is how we perceive it, because today there are local government elections and soon there will be elections to the European Parliament. Unfortunately, our representation there is weak, I regret it. I would like this to change and farmers to have a strong representation,” he said.
According to Dziewulski, none of the previous governments in Poland had people who seriously thought about agriculture and had ideas for this area.
Therefore, as farmers, we are seriously thinking about building a structure that will allow us to run in the European Parliament elections. We want to build a committee that will allow us to nominate candidates – real farmers who know how to deal with our matters – he emphasized.
In Dziewulski’s opinion, with such social support as the agricultural protests now enjoy, such a scenario is very likely.
As the LIR representative said, the first talks are already underway to have such candidates appear in each voivodeship.
I hope that this idea of presenting farmer candidates will be used throughout Europe, not only in Poland. We also see abroad that farmers are not taken seriously. Then farmers would become a force that everyone in Europe would respect, he said.
Szmulewicz: Changes to the provisions of the Green Deal are a step in the right direction
Meanwhile, the president of the National Council of Agricultural Chambers, Wiktor Szmulewicz, noted in the interview that the EC’s changes in the provisions of the Green Deal are a step in the right direction.
– We are moving away from penalties and towards incentives. Let’s also create good ecological schemes, but let practitioners do it so that it makes good sense, he said.
In Szmulewicz’s opinion, the idea of running candidates-farmers in the European Parliament elections is good, but – as he noted – difficult to implement. He mentioned several problems in this context. One of them is the divergence of farmers’ interests and the too small number of them. He estimated that today farmers constitute approximately 4-5 percent of society.
This number of voters is unable to elect their representatives to the European Parliament. Our weakness is also what is visible today – we have about 400 protests, and in fact we do not have a main leader to coordinate it all. That’s why I think it will be impossible in these elections, he said.
In Szmulewicz’s opinion, the most important demand of farmers today is to get rid of surplus grain from our country. – The grain pile is currently 9 million tons, and we need to remove 5 million tons, because we can cope with 4 million tons. These 5 million tons need to be exported, but this is the task of the government and the EU, he said.
The second, in his opinion, most important issue for agriculture is the activation of compensation for farmers in connection with the economic problems they are currently experiencing.
These compensations must be provided because farmers have no money to buy fertilizers. This is very important, said the president of KRIR.
In turn, Roman Kondrów, leader of Podkarpacka Oszukana Wieś, told PAP that he had received proposals to appoint a candidate in the European Parliament elections who would have the trust of farmers. “I am in favor of the idea of putting forward our candidates, but we don’t have time for it because we are protesting all the time. Besides, spring is approaching and we have to take care of the land. If we don’t do it, there will be no point in entering the fields in some time.” ” – he said.
Kondrów assessed that the changes proposed by the EC in the Green Deal are good, but insufficient. In his opinion, currently the biggest “pain” is the inflow of technical grain from Ukraine and its surplus on the market.
Farmers’ protests have been going on for several weeks in Poland and other EU countries. In Poland, their demands include abandoning the provisions of the Green Deal, sealing the borders against the inflow of agri-food products from outside the EU and defending animal breeding in Poland.
The European Green Deal introduces many guidelines, including: agriculture, which are to enable Europe to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The idea is to introduce more ecological and less emission-intensive production through the use of land set aside, reducing the use of fertilizers and plant protection products by half, and obligatory allocation of 25% area of land for organic crops.
