Farmers protesting in the EU

Call me calloused, but the EU's regulatory over-reach and inability to resist putting their thumbs-on-the-scale in every nook and cranny of the economy is coming back to bite them.

A healthy economy is like an ecosystem where resources percolate through the complex web of relationships. Rather than letting the economy freely find its own equilibriums (yes, plural) the EU bureaucrats in Brussels could not resist favoring some groups at the expense of others.

That horse-trading was from the very beginning as various nations sought to protect their domestic industries. For example, France demanded that the EU rule that wine could ONLY be made from grapes that were genetically 100% Vitis vinifera. France's motivation was two-fold: Hybrid grapes are much more resistant to diseases and can grow in colder climates and areas with shorter summers. France was home to corporations whose profits depended on manufacturing fungicides for grapes and French grape-growers could not compete with the lower cost producers in more eastern regions. 

Furthermore, France petitioned the EU to make it illegal to make wine from grapes grown on irrigated ground. France also faced market pressure from the Iberian Peninsula and from southern Italy.

By freezing-out emerging technologies, France was able to maintain its market-share of wines at the expense of southern and eastern Europe.

The EU also favored corporations that produce hybrid seeds by creating arbitrary requirements to produce marketed to the public. If you want to sell cucumbers, for instance, it has to meet certain length and straightness requirements. That favored the highly uniform hybrids.

Freezing out

In a similar way, quotas were assigned to every-single-producer. If you had 100 sheep then you were given a quota (generally of 100 producing ewes) that was subject to revision. The quota defined the MAXIMUM number of units you could produce. The plan was to stabilize prices at high levels by restricting production.

Efficient producers who wanted to expand had to pay less efficient producers and lease their production rights if they wanted to exceed their EU assigned quotas.

Eastern Germany, most of Poland and Hungary are all low-precipitation regions where nutrient leaching is a non-issue.

The quota system also made it difficult for the industry to migrate. If the soil close to Netherlands were saturated with manure and nutrients and if the cost of labor in Netherlands was extremely high, the normal equilibrium mechanism of having the livestock industry migrate to Central Europe is stymied.

---Disclosure: This was the state of affairs in the mid-1990s. It is possible that it has changed.---

Can't let people starve

After creating monopolies for the corporations (hybrid seed producers, chemical pesticide producers) and eliminating the possibility of increased productivity through increasing economies-of-scale, the governments had to create subsidies to keep farmers in business.

Those subsidies (and the quotas for how many animals you are allowed to produce) are the third rail in European politics. Dare to touch those subsidies and you have farmers  blocking roads and shutting down capitol cities. There is no graceful way to unwind the overly-wound spring.

The case for subsidies and land-use restrictions

Historically, European countries have seen significant wars every thirty years or so. If you have port cities then you have the potential to import foods if your city is cut-off from major food producing regions.

On the other hand, if you do not have a navy capable of protecting merchant shipping or if you don't have commercial ports capable of handling significant tonnage, then you are in a world-of-hurt if hostilities sever shipping between you and those fertile plains. Even if your country is not engaged in the hostilities.

The horror of starvation is deeply ingrained into the European psyche. One might venture to say the fear approaches "paranoia" but paranoia implies that the fear is not rational.

I read the first book in Peter Nealen's Maelstrom Rising series. One of the quirks of his writing is that he uses the terrain of real cities as the basis for his battles. He even lists names of streets.

I was able to go on-line and LOOK at the (fictional) battlefields.

These images are from the south end of Nitra, Slovakia (Peter's battle-space was the north end but that is all factories).

The top image shows the demarcation between "city" and "agricultural" with almost no blurring due to suburban development.

This screen shot is not totally random but it is typical of much of the city.

It shows back-yards completely covered with gardens. There may be a few flowers tucked in here-and-there but these look like vegetable gardens.

Even though it might be distasteful to most Americans, even I can admit that seen through the lens of the last 500 years of European history, this arrangement is very rational.

Here in the states...

There are thousands of images of protesters shutting down roads.

Antifa, Palestinians, BLM, Trans-activists...the list of people with grievances seems to be endless.

Pack your own parachute. Have a plan. Start executing the plan NOW so you will have some practice under your belt before you need it.