This week the 2023 EU Agricultural Outlook Conference will delve into the future of European agriculture. In one of it’s opening panels, as a young farmer Mathieu Courgeau, farmer from La Conféderation paysanne and member of ECVC was asked to share his hopes and ideas for agriculture of the future, and imagine what his farm may look like in 2040. When we spoke to him to understand his point of view, Mathieu gave a insight into the realities and worries of young farmers today, calling for action to address these issues.
"In 2040, my farm will no longer exist. At least, given the rate at which small and medium-sized farms are disappearing in the European Union, this is the most likely scenario. I'll be doing something else and my farm will have been absorbed by the expansion of another. And today, that’s what we, small-scale farmers, are fighting to change.
By 2040, I hope that we have long since overcome this infernal cycle of farms and farmers disappearing. I hope that instead of there being only 20 farmers left in my village, there are 30 or 40. I have no doubts that we'll need more hands and more brains to meet all the challenges we face, whether they be nutritional or environmental.
I also hope that my cows will be able to graze grass in the meadows. That may sound simple enough, but in reality, this will mean we have succeeded in tackling the climate crisis and are not plagued by the extreme weather events that make this more and more difficult.
I hope that the children in school canteens in my village will mostly eat products made by us, the local farmers, and not from the other side of the world, from New Zealand or Mercosur as will likely be the case if we continue to sign free trade agreements.
And, of course, I hope to earn a decent living and that my income is essentially made up, not of CAP subsidies or carbon credits, but of income from selling the food I produce, because that's what our profession is all about: producing food to feed people. When it comes to achieving prices that are both remunerative and stable, the choice is clear. We need to regulate agricultural markets.
Unfortunately, hope is not enough. Instead, we need coherent policies and the political will to break with the status quo at present. We need to stop listening to the interests of industry lobby groups and start putting the needs and health of citizens first. We need to work with nature, and not against it. It’s tough, but peasant farmers have concrete solutions to offer, if policy makers are willing to listen.
As a small-scale farmer, I hope that food sovereignty, the vision that farmers like me have been working towards for the past 30 years, can be transformed into policies that put people, not profits, at the heart of our food systems.
My final hope for 2040, is that my daughters will be proud of the job I've done: feeding people and protecting a small corner of our planet. Because yes, being a farmer is still the best job in the world. We just need policy makers have the vision and bravery to do what is needed to protect us."
Many of the concrete solutions that peasants as to offer are outlined in ECVC's Manifesto for Agricultural Transition to Address Systemic Climate Crises, where you can read more about the actions that the Institutions must take to ensure the survival of Farms like Mathieu.
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Manifesto for Agriculture to Address Climate Crises
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