The European Union has caved in to angry protests from farmers, cutting its target to scrap specific agricultural emissions which formed part of the bloc’s net zero drive.
A demand to reduce nitrogen, methane and other emissions linked to farming by almost a third has been removed from a wider Brussels plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90 per cent by 2040.
This is so sad. We need a better plan to implement these goals, keeping things as easy and profitable as possible, not abandon them altogether. Now I fear we’re at another point of just doing nothing, making matters worse each year for everyone, especially farmers.
The smaller farmers are in a death cult, that demands to maintain the conditions on which the large agricultural industry can destroy them in a continued mass and price battle. We would desperately need smaller farms again, to implement sustainability and it would come at no or only modest price increases as currently the prices are made by the food processing industry and supermarkets, instead of the farmers.
Europe is spending hundreds of billions to destroy it’s food security in the long run and the farmers demand to be destroyed alongside, as nobody wants to ask the question, why we run a system like this.
I often enjoy your comments and this one is no exception.
There are communes you can buy from and there are food subsciption services from local farms but they are significantly more expensive. It’s absurd that the method of farming that will not kill us is priced out of reach of the majority of people, while the method of farming that will kill us is subsidized by our own tax dollars (depending on the country, of course).
Same with energy. In the U.S., the fossil fuel industry is subsidized to the tune of about $20 billion a year, while green energy (although it does have some minor tax breaks for individuals etc.) is mostly left to compete in a “free market” a.k.a. unsibsidized. It’s utter madness. Either allow a real “free market” (renewables are now cheaper) or give the subsidy to the method of production that doesn’t threaten every single living thing on the planet.