Europe's farming wealth gap widening

A protesting farmer walks past fires during a demonstration on Monday in Chalons-en-Champagne, in northeastern France, against the EU-Mercosur agreement. Analysis by the United Kingdom newspaper The Guardian showed that during the last 15 years, the wealth gap has doubled, at the same time as the number of small farms have fallen by a quarter, with a study by environmental group Greenpeace in October 2024 summing up the choice facing farmers as "go big or go bust". Arnaud Rousseau, leader of France's main farming union, the FNSEA, told television station BFM TV thousands of farms were already struggling, and Jordan Charransol, head of the Young Farmers Union in the southern region of Vaucluse, called the deal "a catastrophe for French agriculture". When the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party tried to latch onto protests at the start of 2024, extremism researcher Matthias Quent warned: "The farmers who are protesting must also ensure that their protests cannot be instrumentalized and exploited." Perhaps not coincidentally, after a winter of high-profile farming protests from Poland to Portugal, at the European Parliament elections in June 2024, the right wing made significant gains, with National Rally winning 31.3 percent of the popular vote in France, and AfD finishing well clear of the governing coalition parties in Germany.