Last week, I had the privilege of attending the National Farmers Union conference in Birmingham. Meanwhile down in Dover, a somewhat less official band of British farmers used tractor rallies to protest against their treatment by the federal government and the large supermarkets.
Here the post-Brexit trade deals negotiated by government threaten – a lot of us argue – to undermine high animal welfare and food standards and undercut British farmers. The supermarkets strive to maintain food prices down for his or her customers but which means farmers are paid even less for what they produce.
And farming protests appear to be escalating in France too, indeed across Europe – from Belgium to Poland.
Tractor convoys have blockaded roads into Paris, Berlin and Rome, and gathered outside the EU Parliament in Brussels. The protests don’t appear to be co-ordinated. Each one raises concerns for the longer term of farming in their very own nations, but collectively they exhibit an outpouring of anger and frustration at a spread of regulations, policies and trade deals that hit the incomes and sustainability of farmers across the continent.
Across Europe, we see populist politicians appealing to rural voters, based heavily upon the view that their governments are ignoring them, that they care just for urban concerns and support climate change measures that they claim will put hard working farmers out of business.
We see this in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni has presented Italian food production as integral to national identity. We see it within the Netherlands where the populist Farmer-Citizen movement got here from nowhere last 12 months to turn out to be the biggest party within the upper chamber. We also see it in France, where the arrival of Macron on the Paris Agricultural show caused crowds of farmers to interrupt through security barriers and want holding back by riot police.
As Christians we should always resist attempts to pit groups against each other, especially when the problems are so complex. So we shouldn’t see climate change as a left wing agenda, or supporting farmers as only a priority for those on the appropriate. After all, a changing climate implies that farm land is being either desiccated or deluged and rendered unfarmable. If we wish to have enough to eat, then we want to support farmers and we want to tackle climate change.
But how will we balance the competing tensions of the necessity for reasonably priced food, safeguarding the vital work of our farmers and protecting the environment?
These concerns all form a part of our stewardship responsibilities set out in Genesis 2: “The Lord God took the person and put him within the Garden of Eden to work it and maintain it.”
We are charged with managing the land productively and responsibly and valuing its fruits. This includes giving farmers a good price for what they produce, and the conservation and protection of the environment.
Farmers have a closeness and rootedness to the land that a lot of us have lost as we view food when it comes to what we can purchase from the supermarket. But those living in Biblical times would recognise it: a dependence on the soil and the appropriate weather and environmental conditions.
In the Bible, abundant crops were seen as an indication of God’s blessing, and droughts or floods as punishments. Our theology doesn’t are inclined to make such direct links today, but we undoubtedly reap the results of our actions.
If the land is polluted by chemicals and sewage discharged into rivers, if government policies actively dissuade farmers from growing food, or reward corporate landlords for evicting tenants who’ve farmed the land for generations, all of these items undermine our ability to feed our people and take care of the environment.
As an MP for a rural constituency with over a thousand farms, and my party’s agriculture spokesman, I care deeply about farming – about prime quality food, high environmental standards and animal welfare.
Farmers’ livelihoods are precarious like only a few others. They not only depend on so many aspects they don’t have any control over, but small farmers must also wear multiple hats. They have to be businesspeople, animal experts, geology experts, expert administrators in a position to understand changing government laws and guidelines, practically expert and robust and in a position to turn their hand to the never-ending jobs list. A normal day, which will likely be each day – animals and crops don’t take days off – could possibly be from 4am until 11pm.
Farming is a high calling indeed since it involves each feeding the country and saving the planet. But it is also a really hard calling. This, together with other aspects like demographics and isolation, has led to a sense of rising hopelessness for a lot of farmers. Tragically, it’s the occupation with considered one of the very best suicide rates within the country.
The world is currently afflicted by warfare, democratic uncertainty, disrupted trade routes and displaced people. But all of us rely on God’s gift of our planet to sustain us, and we want to wish for trade deals and policies that uphold high standards of welfare and conservation and offer food security by supporting the farmers that feed us. We’re commanded to take care of the hungry and indeed to wish for our own each day bread. Let’s be thankful then for individuals who God has ordained to provide the food that we eat and consider the politics behind making their job easier, not harder.
Tim Farron has been the Member of Parliament for Westmorland and Lonsdale since 2005, and served because the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party from 2015 to 2017.Tim can also be the host of Premier’s ‘A Mucky Business’ podcast. His latest book A Mucky Business: Why Christians should become involved in politics is published in November.
