Estonia's agriculture minister thanks his country's farmers for not protesting

While Estonia's farmers have not joined in with the pan-European Union protests, including those ongoing in the heart of Brussels, the union can do more to resolve the plight of those earning a living in the agricultural sector, Minister of Regional and Rural Affairs Madis Kallas (SDE) told weekly Maaleht.
The minister said that farmers in the EU generally should be treated more leniently than has been the case so far, saying that fewer fines should be issued and the EU should not necessarily have to achieve its goals only by using a stick, but also by using a carrot.*
Minister Kallas is taking part in an EU agriculture ministers' summit in Brussels today, Tuesday, which aims to find solutions to the concerns of protesting farmers, across Europe.
Kallas noted that: "Farmers are protesting all over Europe, and even today we see hundreds and hundreds of tractors around our building in Brussels," referring to the Europa Building the main seat of the European Council.
"Without exception, all the European countries recognize that the situation in agriculture is now critical: Farmers' incomes have fallen, rural areas are dying out, and, in some regions, as is the case in Estonia, farmers are affected by tough weather conditions," Madis Kallas went on, according to Maaleht.
That said, Estonian farmers have not been protesting, which Minister Kallas put down to pragmatism – since dialogue with the Estonian Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce (EPKK) as well as with agro-businesses separately is ongoing with his ministry, there is little concrete to protest about, he said.
"I want to thank our farmers separately for not protesting, but for recounting what issues are critical to them," Kallas said.
"Together we will find solutions, be it through additional grants frin the Rural Development Foundation (Maaelu Edendamise Sihtasutus) or by promoting cooperation between various sectors," he added.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has thrown out of balance the agriculture sector and its market, Kallas said, and an excise duty on red diesel, ie. diesel for agricultural use, is being hiked in many member states just as agricultural subsidies are being cut.
Kallas added that various proposals have been made to improve the situation – one of Estonia's is that more rights should be granted to member states.
The original Maaleht piece is here.
Farmers have clashed violently with police in the European quarter of Brussels, in some cases spraying officers with liquid manure and setting fire to mounds of tires as the agriculture ministers, including Madis Kallas, met to discuss the crisis in their sector.
The protests more broadly have been going on several months now and are directed at several issues include EU bureaucracy, the effects of the green transition and moves towards synthesized foodstuffs, and also competition from cheap imports – including from Ukraine – from non-member states not subject to the same relatively high EU grain quality standards.
The protests have also spanned the hypothesized old Europe-new Europe divide.
Farmers have protested not only in Belgium but also in the Netherlands, Germany and in Poland – in the latter case blockading the border with Germany to the West, as Ukraine imports come over the border with Ukraine to the East, and, at the time of writing, in Warsaw itself.
Additionally farmers from as far afield as Spain and Portugal have traveled to Brussels for the current protests there.
In a year in which European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen is likely to be seeking re-election and, in any case, heads of the EU institutions will be voted on or chosen following this summer's European Parliament election, the union has already made concessions to farmers in relation to its green 3 deal plan on areas such as emissions; it has also ditched a law aimed at curbing pesticide use and has delayed targets which would require EU famers leave fallow land in the interests of promoting biodiversity.
The EU has reportedly also introduced safeguards to avoid Ukrainian imports flooding the market too much. A tariff-free scheme on Ukrainian grain was introduced after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, now into its third year.
Ukraine has continued to export grain via the Black Sea despite the Russian invasion and more distant challenges such as the Red Sea crisis.
Poland has around a million small-holding farmers making it, like France for instance, a country with a large agricultural sector and a proven willingness to challenge authority even when doing so might seem fruitless, as evidence in the Solidarity movement in the early 1980s.
Due in part to the nature and manner in which land reforms were put in place after Estonia became independent, and replacing the old Soviet system, as well as to its small population overall, the farmers' lobby is not very strong in Estonia, and many producers take the form of cooperative businesses, some of them foreign-owned.
*Or in Estonian, a whip and a cookie.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
Source: Maaleht, Guardian, AP, Reuters