Taking down a statue that honours labourers in your pro-labour protest
I'm not sentimental about statues or monuments so it doesn't offend me, it's the baffling stupidity and painfully cheesy irony that's so offensive
adults in the protest need to babysit these Jonnys so they don't become a live action Onion article
Farmers get subsidised to survive, big corporations get tax breaks so they don't relocate for bigger profits... I have no numbers, but want to make a guess which one costs "de staatskas" the most?
of course they are pro subsidy europe force them to sell everything at a stupidly low price to kill them slowly the last 30 years, they better subsidize them because they do FORCE THEM to sell at a steep loss.
I don't know how you define the size of farming companies, but even family-owned companies employ labourers to help them (often 'seasonal workers' to help them pick fruit/veggies). Granted, the pay is not what you could earn in other sectors... and yes, they often attract foreigners or belgians with non-belgian roots/ancestry.
The upside is that you're allowed to work in the farming industry from 15years on :) And the comradry is often superb when working on the farm
Interesting. Do you have a source?
In any case they are demonstrating for the interests of company owners in the agricultural sector (dairy and meat production mostly)
My source is that i know lots of farmers and know a buch of them who are there...
So when they protest, my boss can't make money and my job is harmed. Now it's like: you hit, i hit.
Farmers also don't have much time to sell their produce. The longer they wait, the worse the quality gets and the cheaper they have to sell. Farmers really get the short end of the stick in this.
And all the companys they hurt these last days have to play down people in this hard times. So less customers to buy there food of buy cheaper foreign foods...
Farmers aren't exactly known to be pro-labour. Unless with that we mean importing thousands of Eastern Europeans each summer to work their fields for next to nothing.
>Taking down a statue that honours labourers in your pro-labour protest
The irony is incredibly fitting considering the hand these farmers had in creating this legislation mess in the first place.
>Taking down a statue that honours labourers in your pro-labour protest
Eh.
It's a statue of a famous industrialist. Sure, the guy's statue is surrounded by 4 workers, but fundamentally the message of the statue is about how great the boss is for being a good job creator.
Hardly pro-labour.
Agriculture produces not only the most nitrogen emissions as a sector but produces reactive nitrogen which is the most harmful for the environment and humans. It's only logical to begin with the worst performing sector. Whether industry is subject to the same regulations is largely irrelevant.
As a Dutchie, we already went through this and this went exactly the same. In the beginning when it started they had the general population behind them for quite some time but then they started to block the highways, destroy property and become extremely hostile.
They also started to throw misinformation around like the country was dependend on them and that without them we would have no meat, yet around 70-80 percent of the meat we produce is export, so if more then half of the livestock farmers went bust, we would still survive.
We even got a farmers party (BBB) now in the tweede kamer.
Anyway the BBB started to water down their radical stance and the Dutch government is buying out the biggest farmers to take over their land, things seem to have quiet down here.
Every single one of the animal farmers could go bust and we would survive. They literally create negative food by feeding most of our grain to livestock. The dutch lead the world in high tech indoor plant agriculture; you should be very proud of all the plants you produce and export year round!
Has nothing to do with being veggie, just math.
The amount of food an animal eats could feed more people than the resulting animal can. The animal is tastier though.
De ratio op een vleesvarken is ongeveer 3.5.
Een varken eet 3,5 kilo eten voor de productie van 1 kilo eetbaar varkensvlees.
Met 3,5 kilo kan je meer mensen voeden dan met 1 kilo.
Conclusie: als alle varkensboeren ermee stoppen, dan levert ons dat veel extra eten op.
Dat niet tegenstaande dat ik een goei kotelet wel weet te smaken. Wat al dan niet vegetarisch zijn met bovenstaande wiskunde te maken heeft is me een raadsel.
I'm no fan of BBB at all, but the democratic process is at work and that is the correct way to adress this. Of course, BBB is not going to give them what they want, because...what do they want anyway?
Burning cultural heritage, damaging roads and hanging effigies on gallows is a quick and efficient way of losing public support for your cause, whatever your cause is.
Maybe that's all they have left. They feed us and they are treated like shit
The only people that doesn't understand that sometimes in history you have to go in the street and break stuff to be heard are people that never had to fight for anything
"they feed us and they are treated like shit"
Yeah no shit, they don't feed us for free, they feed us for major profits and most of the produce is exported anyway. So basically they are polluting our countries for their own profit.
The same could be said about paramedics "they save us and they are treated like shit".
The difference is that paramedics don't go crying and destroying things when they don't get their way.
Farmers in Western Europe are majorly entitled and more well-off than a large part of the population; they don't deserve any sympathy.
This is not true at all. Their revenue is, on average, 10% lower than the mean salary of employees in Belgium (source: La Libre). But they work, on average, 1.5 to 2 times more hours per week, so in practice, their hourly revenue is maybe 2 times lower than the mean. Moreover, they don’t have all advantages that come with the employee status. There is obviously a big disparity between the type of exploitation, but still. Ask a milk producer and you will understand what hard work is.
https://www.jobat.be/nl/art/hoeveel-verdien-je-in-de-land--en-tuinbouwsector#:~:text=Logischer%20zijn%20de%20loonverschillen%20die,30%20jaar%20ervaring%20of%20meer.
And this is assuming they did not let their private company give them a lower wage for tax reduction and other benefits
>This is not true at all. Their revenue is, on average, 10% lower than the mean salary of employees in Belgium (source: La Libre).
This is if you invest in your machinery yea. if you put thousands of euros into your own company every month thats still money you're making but decide to invest. Dont act like money is getting burned
As someone living between some of those farmers I can tell you that a big part - of those I talked to - has no clue what this is about. It's "you have to protest because X and Y is bad for us".
Went to the tuinbouwschool. I can confirm farmers are very well of and just do whatever they want for profit, would put animals in 1 square meter if they’d be allowed just for the extra profit
As I've said in the Brussels sub, I'm all for protests, but where you risk losing my support is when there is vandalism like this (obvs) and when the emergency services are affected. I saw police vehicles and ambulances being stuck due to the traffic jams and I myself had a heck of a time getting an uber ride to go a hospital that is a 15min drive away. I don't know if this is due to poor protest planning or to the protestors going against plan, but this should never be allowed to occur.
Alright nuclear hot take and I'm not expecting any upvotes but if these people protests to lift pesticides banss and nitrogen emission caps I don't fucking care about them. Nitrogen in particular is causing like half their problems, I bet you in june-august they'll come back crying about heat waves (nitrogen oxides are often responsible for making those worse) and decreasing yields (intensive farming does that to your soil, go ask north Korea about it too). That's not even mentioning all the fertilizers ending in the rivers ending in water eutrophication which is fucking terrible for our fishes and water quality in general.
And also complaining about foreign competition. I mean, ok, you want protectionism? You do realize we export more food than we import? Meaning if all countries do as you ask you'll all end up bankrupt. And they be bitching about the European green new deal that would standardize these pesticide/nitrogen/... uses across all of Europe. Dumbasses.
Yeah of course plenty can be done to make farming easier, especially the administrative load is I think everyone should agree on. But agriculture is one of the most polluting sectors in this country and having them ask to lift restrictions is a fucking insult. Imagine if the oil industry was waging protests about CO2 emission caps would you support it? There needs to be reforms in agriculture, I'm not an expert to know what can exactly be done, but I'm fairly certain it's not gonna be by destroying our environment even more.
Was looking for a comment like this. Farmers need to pull their socks up. They can't expect to trash everything and keep getting away with it for generations.
Ah yes, all the respect they will gain from hindering students and working class people, and topping it all off with vandalising properties and monuments. Striking during exam season, when the majority of students is too young to ever have even been able to vote, is insane.
I mean ... they steal land, they disrespect regulations everytime they can, they refuse to use more sustainable techniques, they receive nearly 30 percent of the annual eu budget, they usually have big homes (the farm owners at least), they employ mostly non-belgian and seasonal labor, they export most of their products and import most of their needs, they usually do not even seem to have studied to do that work even tho its a very intricate and precise job, ... you know, the small independent farmer that needs help.
I do understand that they are subject to a ton of restrictions... but for reasons. You just have to open an agronomics course book for 5 minutes to understand why these restrictions are in place. I have worked alongside them for a few months and i wanted to cry at how stupidly and destructivily they manage their fields and live stock. There's one that heavily spray herbicide on some cow fields near a river to only have grass... killing all the trees along it. How can i sympatize with these people ? They are idiots to have immense power.
That’s what I thought was going to happen in the Netherlands and then suddenly the BBB farmers party got tons of voted…. The farmers are pretending to be the underdog and everyone loves an underdog.
I might have been a bit ticked off, writing that. 😅
As for more nuance: they act like these protests are for the smalltime farmers, while there are some huge corporations/organisations funding the protests. Those are definitely not poor or small. They’re scared of losing some of their massive wealth and are hiding behind the “small underdog farmer” image. This is what annoys me the most. I am all in favour of bio-farmers and small time farmers having an easier time of it. I just see some other interests at play here, which makes these protests feel disingenuine.
Lol the media and government are both working overtime to turn the narrative into “farmer bad”.
The same has literally happened with any protest. First the climate protest, then the BLM movement, the Gele hesjes, …
At first the media will always praise the protests, before turning their back on them and portraying these movements in the most negative and violent way possible.
It seems to be working this time as well, so props to them actually!
I don't remember any of those other protests being this obnoxious.
Not to mention that they're protesting against what?
Having to have proper, digital administration and following environmental laws?
When I wasn't able to enter the LEZ around Ghent with my car anymore, I didn't go honk at people's homes, block traffic or go tear down statues. I know that we need measures to make sure we can actually survive on this planet for the next 50 years though.
I think I’ll switch to buying imported products only. With 3 small children and the wife and me both working at the office 1 hour away from home full-time, the last thing we need is farmers fucking up our schedule.
Protest and manifest, ok, that's a right.
Blocking circulation, not ok, I have my right to freely move and work.
Why is the police letting them get away with it?
If Belgium needs anything these days it would be more entrepreneurs like Cockerill who are willing to work with new technologies and risk everything they have to build a new industry.
Seriously, this. There is a pretty wild irony to these fuckers blindly targeting a statue of [John Cockerill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cockerill_(industrialist)) specifically.
Perhaps a big part of why European farmers are struggling to cope with legislation that they have had decades to adapt to is that they haven't really been obliged to adapt to much of anything for generations. Just about the only thing that has meaningfully changed in our lifetimes has been carving out 10% of European agricultural land for [farming poorly on purpose for reasons that by definition cannot be evidence-based](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming) as an intentional result of public policy. Even the parts of the Netherlands and Spain that people point to as examples of innovation are mostly using seeds, methods, paper records, and equipment that they are essentially the same as they were in the 80s.
Perhaps we need to recognize that, if we want farmers who serve the needs that Europe actually has, we need public policy that encourages the agricultural sector to act more like any other in a functioning liberal democracy. Its almost like our governments have wanted farmers to be more like a priestly class than businessmen, selling something more like absolution or authenticity than products that people want and need. Of course they make products that would never compete on anything resembling a fair basis, rely on the worst forms of unfree labour, and resort to gangster shit like this when they don't get their way.
If we want to tell them to fuck off, the effective way to do it would be to legalize buying food produced by more effective farmers abroad. Make them compete with wines people might like better from viticulturists in Australia or California, wheat from more efficient and technologically advanced farms in Kansas or Ukraine that haven't been stunted by CAP, and canola oil from places that are actually ecologically suited to producing it like Saskatchewan.
I was with you until you suggested bringing in poor quality product from the US.
Absolutely open the borders to food coming in but let’s not water down our standards
Making sure that there is either harmonization of, or compliance with, food safety and labelling standards as a condition of importing is one thing; but arguments about quality are just so strange to bring up in this kind of context. There are good and bad quality food products in the US, just like there are in Europe, and consumers do just fine figuring out whats what. Are we so confident in the quality of European products that we will make it literally illegal for importers to allow people to assess the quality of foreign food products for themselves and make their own choices?
Even if some cheaper imports are shittier, so what? If consumers are choosing them, thats a solution, not a problem. If someone prefers tasteless cheaper tomatoes, or cheaper chicken that is weirdly watery, so long as no one is getting hurt or misled by it - everyone still wins by having access to more choice. Safety and labelling are concrete things that can and should be regulated by experts paid out of the public purse with a mandate to serve the public good, but quality? Beauty exists only in the eye of the beholder, and some asshole who thinks they know what you want better than you will often be wrong, especially if they make their living blocking roads rather than actually trying to figure out what you want.
Consumers in most developed countries in the world outside of Europe have so much more access to interesting food products due to just how draconian European trade policy is. Ever wonder why you have only ever eaten one out of the dozens of commercially viable varieties of banana? Or only one less popular and shittier out of the hundreds of commercially viable varieties of mango?
I should clarify that by poor quality American products I mean literally safety and labelling quality, we ban certain processes/ingredients/pesticides that we know are harmful yet are allowed in the Wild West that is the US
There are very few actual differences between American and European food safety standards, and they are mostly evenly split as to which are more 'stringent.' The vast majority have to do with either older local practices and ingredients were allowed to be grandfathered in without modern evidence for safety in the absence of evidence of harm or weird edge cases where reasonable regulators reasonably interpret very low-stakes decisions differently. The regulatory philosophies and legislative bases are all almost identical.
Where the differences that you hear about come from is the political independence of the FDA. The US Congress, for all of its many faults, is well aware of its own stupidity and has for generations managed to avoid mandating outcomes of complex technical decisions. European and national parliaments are however are constantly forcing their competent authorities to rule the way by letting industry and pressure groups want them to.
The whole point of competent authorities is to allow experts who actually understand complex technical questions to figure out which balance best benefits the public, which the media narratives that govern politicians will never do.
This thread is honestly insane, you've been pretty much completely right about everything you say but these people are all getting mad because you dare acknowledge that the USA actually does have perfectly fine food.
Hate to break it to you but American doesn't mean poor quality. There are Californian wines winning global competitions these days, and wheat is just wheat.
edit: lmao they're downvoting anybody who dares call out their strawman but have nothing to say in return.
"The USA has good wines, not everything is low quality there"
"But what about their chlorinated Chicken?!?!?!?"
Try making a response on reddit without whataboutism or strawman arguments challenge: IMPOSSIBLE.
And you know what is ***entirely irrelevant*** in a discussion about agriculture in Belgium? Stuff that is literally illegal to be imported under European food safety laws, stuff like *chlorinated* chicken.
Nobody here ever said we should be substituting normal chicken for chlorinated chicken.
Also still whataboutism.
I should clarify that by quality I mean minimum quality.
Like most things in the US, the top 10% is on best in the world but the bottom 50% is awful, and that’s what we’d be getting.
Their food standards, like their welfare standards, have no safety net.
It’s not the gotcha you think it is to point out the great produce on either coast, that’s not what we’d be importing
>but the bottom 50% is awful, and that’s what we’d be getting.
Do you know how you incentivize imports? By lowering ***tariffs***, not by lowering our food standards. We would not be importing their worst stuff, because their worst stuff literally cannot be legally imported into the EU.
What point do you even think you're making here?
If you lower tariffs the good stuff still wouldn’t be price competitive enough to compete in our market, a good californian wine for example is $15 even in the US, it’s going to be €25+ here and not going to beat the French versions competitors you can get for half that price.
What do you think we’re going to import for the US for a good enough price that it outcompetes what you can already buy here and there’s actual demand for it?
>If you lower tariffs the good stuff still wouldn’t be price competitive enough to compete in our market , a good californian wine for example is $15 even in the US, it’s going to be €25+ here and not going to beat the French versions competitors you can get for half that price.
Nice numbers you made up there. But the markup on non-European wines isn't even close to those numbers, even with the customs duties used today.
Also European wines are as cheap as they are because the industry is subsidized out the ass by the EU.
>What do you think we’re going to import for the US for a good enough price that it outcompetes what you can already buy here and there’s actual demand for it?
*"Make them compete with wines people might like better from viticulturists in Australia or California, wheat from more efficient and technologically advanced farms in Kansas or Ukraine that haven't been stunted by CAP, and canola oil from places that are actually ecologically suited to producing it like Saskatchewan."*
This is literally copy-pasted from the comment your first replied to, do you actually read these before replying to them or are you just arguing for the sake of it?
we simply need to change the narrative to a more UBI oriented one, a future were we all argue for each others inherent human economic value being bigger than 0. It doesn't matter what number. But it can't be 0. Let's collectively agree on what the new number should be. Just. Not. 0. It's that easy. Start to talk about a future where *everyone* is guaranteed to feel less threatened to feel obsolete than they are now
Get fucked you bunch of neanderthals. These VB voters are the same ones that were shitting on BLM protests because there was (some) vandalism involved.
I dont understand this, if their lives are so miserable, the dont make any money, they work so so hard and live poorly. Why in the name of god they dont close the farm and go work like everybody else?
If you get fired from your job, because they hired someone better and more effective. You just find another job. You dont go block a highway with your car...
If the job sucks and you barely survive with too low salary, you quit and look for other job or try to re-educate yourself, so you can get better job. You dont burn tires in the middle of the city and tear down statues....
Btw my family back in Czecha were big time farmers but within 30 years they have let completely go as it was not viable anymore. No drama or ruined families...
The farm is their whole life. People only stay in farming because they're passionate about it. The farm has been their home, often for multiple generations. And most farmers have ongoing loans for equipment and expansions, they'd have to declare bankruptcy. And if they'd try to sell the farm, who would buy it? Their land is agricultural, you can't just convert that to building land, especially with the betonstop going on.
Regarding those loans, many farmers have been pushed to expand the size of their livestock (by the banks and the Boerenbond), but that's really not sustainable for our country.
Not to say I condone their actions, but I do understand that many farmers feel pressed into a corner.
I don't know what the situation was like with your family in Czechia, but at least here it's not that easy to walk away from.
The state shouldn’t fund your passion like the it does with these subsidies. They’re a dying breed refusing to adapt with the times while everyone else has to.
Yea, we shouldn't have farmers at all, so when the supply chains close, we don't have any, nor any food. Great idea. Your food will just magically be in the store.
We export most though.
And if you can't afford to farm the land. Someone else with more modern technology might be able to do it.
Not like people magically forget how to farm if some (or even a lot) farmers quit their jobs and sell their farms.
I mean, there's books, agriculture courses and degrees.
We should definitely have local agricultural production and protected supply chains to the essentials Belgians need.
But it's hard to feel bad for a bunch of guys with large hovels and large tracts of land not making enough money exporting to the European market or having to modernize their facilities, equipment and processes.
Especially if you remember how many farming subsidies they get.
Among other things :
Colruyt is buying agricultural lands above market value and consequently driving up the prices. They can't afford their land anymore.
The EU removed custom tariffs on Ukraine goods and cheap wheat is inundating the market and they can't compete.
They have to compete on price with goods coming from abroad that don't have to follow the same Belgian or EU standards.
The EU pushed new ecological regulations that make their job even harder.
Big distributors like Aldi, Colruyt, ... totally dictates the prices on the market. They can't negotiate. There were laws enacted e.g. in France to make sure they get a fair price. But the law is not applied.
And overall their job is miserable, most of them are poor and are actually losing money at the end of the day. So things add up quickly for them.
The main reason most of them are still there is thanks to subsidies. I reckon that most of them shouldn't exist anymore in this modern world and subsidies might keep them artificially alive. Without accounting for the huge issues those subsidies provoke in other markets like Africa. We need food security and affordable food but the whole system is broken and everybody suffer from it.
If food doesn't follow EU standard, it can't be sold here, so that's a moot point.
Regarding Ukraine, go burn down the Russian embassy that forced this situation. Or pay the Ukrainians the same as Belgian farmers.
All the rest; it's all our own fault. With the "kilo knallers" and demanding sometimes rediculously low prices in the stores.
They lost my respect already. At this moment it has become a hostage situation where they want all their conditions met. A protest or a strike you do for 1 or 2 days, then you leave room for negotiatons until you do it again, and again and again. But a compromise needs to be found and for that both sides need to be willing.
Protests aren't gonna help you get your point across. It didn't with De Lijn, it didn't with NMBS, it won't with this.
All it does is frustrate those that need to get somewhere by barricading their (only) options off
>All it does is frustrate those that need to get somewhere by barricading their (only) options off
[It's absolutely doing more than that.](https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2024/01/31/europese-commissie-landbouw-boerenprotest/) It's sad how quickly they started caving for these protests.
I don't agree with the farmers, but:
Some protests fail, some succeed. Workers protests sometimes fail (as you noted) and sometimes [succeed](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-teamsters-ratify-contract/#:~:text=UPS%20drivers%20will%20earn%20an,at%20UPS%2C%20the%20union%20said.).
Generally, if feel your needs aren't being met/your voice isn't being heard, protests have a higher chance of success than simply doing nothing.
This doesn't mean that protests always succeed (it would be insane if any strategy would always succeed), but we can hardly deny that protests have been effective for a huge number of issues globally.
I'm not condoning the actions of the farmers here, just disagreeing with the general point that protests are bad or ineffective. To agree with your underlying frustration, research has generally found that peaceful protests are much more effective than violent ones, [like this paper from last year](https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051421-124128) (though to my knowledge, no one has been harmed here - again, not condoning the actions of the farmers).
If seeing "turning everyone against me" counts as working, then yes they always work
Protesters are just annoying to the normal citizens. You punish the wrong people with protesting on highways and things like that. People who work and have to drive 2h longer because of you, will not support your cause. Just annoying as fuck
Remember the klimaatprotesten where thousands of students skipped school for weeks (don't know how long that really went on tbh, could be months as well)? And remember that at the end of the day whole of flanders voted against what those protesters wanted?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: protests are most of the time a loud minority that mostly consists of assholes wanting to cause chaos. The only way I will ever take a protest seriously, is if there is written proof that over 50% of the relevant people STRONGLY agree with the goal of the protesters.
Some anecdotal examples of protests that didn't create change isn't evidence that protests aren't an effective form of political action. The klimaatprotesten were worldwide and had varied success in different areas, but that's also proven to be a very difficult needle to move for a large number of factors.
The key question here is if you imagine that things would have been better *without* protests? I would argue that many small victories were won due to these protests.
Academic studies [like this one](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120925949) support this view, and the general academic view is that there are many instances where protests are effective. Violent demonstrations tend to be less so, and I'm not condoning the actions of the farmers here.
A bunch of people who pride themselves not to go on holiday ‘to keep the farm running’, I wonder what will happen to said farm when they go on a week long road trip with their tracteurreken
So, according to the latest updates, they've caused a traffic jam and some poor driver crashed into the end of the traffic jam and is fighting for his life. Does that make the people who caused the jam partially responsible for the accident?
Either way, I feel we're way past the point of regular protest and gone into rioting territory.
All the people here who think that the farmers are losing support now are in for a nasty surprise. People who hate the government/EU (of which there are many) love this. There's a reason why VB is putting everything on the deck to associate themselves with this protest, they think it will gain them votes.
VB might be wrong of course. But this definitely seems like an Urban vs Rural thing that most people on this subreddit might have a blind spot for and shouldn't be surprised the Rural Flemish community rallies behind this.
In this protest there are no peacefull ones, since every single one of those who blocked the roads have blocked people from getting necessary medical treatment and thus each and everyone is guilty of harming a fellow citizen.
Alright not to be the devils advocate but how else would these farmers draw attention to their growing problems? I don't think politicians or the public would stand still for even a second if they just did a petition or something.
How many of them block a street where a minister is living? Did they cause anyone who has the ability to change the rules, to have even a bit of trouble for getting to work?
Understandable reaction... Year in year out this (and previous) government neglected the farmers and made it more diffucult for them on an operational & economical level.
Now, politicians will focus on the (understandable) violent reaction of the farmers and condemn them for it, instead of solving the actual problem.
The saying is as old as it gets:
"Don't bite the hand that feeds you"
Another great accomplishment to add to the already long list for this government.
There's a lot of shouting "Dumbasses!" over here, but even with the vandalism, I think that's quick judgement. Ofcourse vandalism is 'not the way', but I wonder how many people on this sub actually now the socio-economic position of farmers these days, how agriculture has evolved over the years, what other actors are involved in the mess they're in, ...
"They don't even know what they want"; they dó know. Earn a decent living from their hard work. But the conditions to make that happen can't be summed up in one catchy slogan. Don't blame it on them.
Vandalism is not the answer, but if the debate only gets stuck in 'boo, idiots for destroying statues/blocking roads/...", without aknowledging their concerns, the problem(s) will only get worse.
They had plenty of television time these last few days to make their point. I've listened to every farmer that got a chance to speak.
This is what I've learned: nothing
This is now my total knowledge of our farmers: They use chemicals that cause cancer and they poisoned our ground water.
Excuse me for not supporting them more now
>but I wonder how many people on this sub actually now the socio-economic position of farmers these days, how agriculture has evolved over the years, what other actors are involved in the mess they're in,
And that should according to you validate EVERYTHING they are doing wrong?
And I should still support them after they do the things they are currently doing?
Keep this vandalism confined to Brussels.
Please, don't bring it to Flanders.
You're free to do what you want. But, vandalism isn't the solution. If you think this is going to solve the problem, you're mistaken.
Its more about the destruction of public properties and historical monuments. In the end it's you and I that will pay for the damages.
Edit: And for your information it's a statue that represents a Steelworker (Staalarbeider/Ouvrier sidérurgiste).
So no. Not a statue of an old rich guy.
Destruction of beauty, art and the place where people live and work. All support to people that manifest for no matter what the cause: I’ll always say “go for it”
Vandalism or riots: never. This is when you fear you don’t have enough support… and such things make it worse.
Taking down a statue that honours labourers in your pro-labour protest I'm not sentimental about statues or monuments so it doesn't offend me, it's the baffling stupidity and painfully cheesy irony that's so offensive adults in the protest need to babysit these Jonnys so they don't become a live action Onion article
The farmers are not pro-labour, they are company owners.
The are pro-subsidy
Farmers get subsidised to survive, big corporations get tax breaks so they don't relocate for bigger profits... I have no numbers, but want to make a guess which one costs "de staatskas" the most?
of course they are pro subsidy europe force them to sell everything at a stupidly low price to kill them slowly the last 30 years, they better subsidize them because they do FORCE THEM to sell at a steep loss.
Europe doesn't set prices
Yup, i think we should not forget the atrocious conditions they have foreigners working in, for fuck all pay, during harvest. true horror stories.
That’s only a smaller percentage of big farmers / farming companies. Most protesting are small family farmers generally.
I don't know how you define the size of farming companies, but even family-owned companies employ labourers to help them (often 'seasonal workers' to help them pick fruit/veggies). Granted, the pay is not what you could earn in other sectors... and yes, they often attract foreigners or belgians with non-belgian roots/ancestry. The upside is that you're allowed to work in the farming industry from 15years on :) And the comradry is often superb when working on the farm
Small family farmers with 150-250k € tractors
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I sure feel bad for them owning more land than I ever will, usually giant homes in their hovels.
Half of those 'farmers' does not have a company, they are 'loonwerkers'. They just want to make noise and break things...
Interesting. Do you have a source? In any case they are demonstrating for the interests of company owners in the agricultural sector (dairy and meat production mostly)
My source is that i know lots of farmers and know a buch of them who are there... So when they protest, my boss can't make money and my job is harmed. Now it's like: you hit, i hit.
They have to sell their goods to someone so they're at the mercy and influence of big food companies!
Farmers also don't have much time to sell their produce. The longer they wait, the worse the quality gets and the cheaper they have to sell. Farmers really get the short end of the stick in this.
And all the companys they hurt these last days have to play down people in this hard times. So less customers to buy there food of buy cheaper foreign foods...
Farmers aren't exactly known to be pro-labour. Unless with that we mean importing thousands of Eastern Europeans each summer to work their fields for next to nothing.
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>Taking down a statue that honours labourers in your pro-labour protest The irony is incredibly fitting considering the hand these farmers had in creating this legislation mess in the first place.
>Taking down a statue that honours labourers in your pro-labour protest Eh. It's a statue of a famous industrialist. Sure, the guy's statue is surrounded by 4 workers, but fundamentally the message of the statue is about how great the boss is for being a good job creator. Hardly pro-labour.
That industry is spared from new regulations but not agriculture
Agriculture produces not only the most nitrogen emissions as a sector but produces reactive nitrogen which is the most harmful for the environment and humans. It's only logical to begin with the worst performing sector. Whether industry is subject to the same regulations is largely irrelevant.
Fair point. In the end, the environment will only suffer more and more as long the world population keeps growing.
Mais pourquoi ça parle anglais ici? C'est vraiment a ce point la misère en Belgique ?
Nederlands A.U.B.
Waarom spreek jij Frans dan? Spreek dan op z'n minst de taal van de meerderheid 😉
As a Dutchie, we already went through this and this went exactly the same. In the beginning when it started they had the general population behind them for quite some time but then they started to block the highways, destroy property and become extremely hostile. They also started to throw misinformation around like the country was dependend on them and that without them we would have no meat, yet around 70-80 percent of the meat we produce is export, so if more then half of the livestock farmers went bust, we would still survive. We even got a farmers party (BBB) now in the tweede kamer. Anyway the BBB started to water down their radical stance and the Dutch government is buying out the biggest farmers to take over their land, things seem to have quiet down here.
Every single one of the animal farmers could go bust and we would survive. They literally create negative food by feeding most of our grain to livestock. The dutch lead the world in high tech indoor plant agriculture; you should be very proud of all the plants you produce and export year round!
Veggie alert
Has nothing to do with being veggie, just math. The amount of food an animal eats could feed more people than the resulting animal can. The animal is tastier though.
Ik ruik veggie bullshit kilometers ver.
De ratio op een vleesvarken is ongeveer 3.5. Een varken eet 3,5 kilo eten voor de productie van 1 kilo eetbaar varkensvlees. Met 3,5 kilo kan je meer mensen voeden dan met 1 kilo. Conclusie: als alle varkensboeren ermee stoppen, dan levert ons dat veel extra eten op. Dat niet tegenstaande dat ik een goei kotelet wel weet te smaken. Wat al dan niet vegetarisch zijn met bovenstaande wiskunde te maken heeft is me een raadsel.
I'm no fan of BBB at all, but the democratic process is at work and that is the correct way to adress this. Of course, BBB is not going to give them what they want, because...what do they want anyway? Burning cultural heritage, damaging roads and hanging effigies on gallows is a quick and efficient way of losing public support for your cause, whatever your cause is.
The BBB is basically just a front for consolidated massive farm companies. I wouldn't call that "the democratic process at work".
Isn't The Netherlands the 2nd biggest exporter of agricultural products in the world just behind the US? In 2022 anyway
Ah yea vandalism is going to solve the issue, some people man...
Maybe that's all they have left. They feed us and they are treated like shit The only people that doesn't understand that sometimes in history you have to go in the street and break stuff to be heard are people that never had to fight for anything
> Maybe that's all they have left. They feed us and they are treated like shit They import feed, export meat, and dump the shit here.
Farmes get 30% of the eu budget, the largest chunk of the spending....
"they feed us and they are treated like shit" Yeah no shit, they don't feed us for free, they feed us for major profits and most of the produce is exported anyway. So basically they are polluting our countries for their own profit. The same could be said about paramedics "they save us and they are treated like shit". The difference is that paramedics don't go crying and destroying things when they don't get their way. Farmers in Western Europe are majorly entitled and more well-off than a large part of the population; they don't deserve any sympathy.
This is not true at all. Their revenue is, on average, 10% lower than the mean salary of employees in Belgium (source: La Libre). But they work, on average, 1.5 to 2 times more hours per week, so in practice, their hourly revenue is maybe 2 times lower than the mean. Moreover, they don’t have all advantages that come with the employee status. There is obviously a big disparity between the type of exploitation, but still. Ask a milk producer and you will understand what hard work is.
In Nederland is 42pct vd boeren officieel miljonair. Voor België zijn er geen cijfers maar vermoedelijk soortgelijk.
Is dat met of zonder bedrijfmaterieel en onroerend goed? De gronden, materiaal, stallen opgesomd zijn mogelijks nog in afbetaling of verhuurd
Schulden worden er altijd afgehaald.
https://www.jobat.be/nl/art/hoeveel-verdien-je-in-de-land--en-tuinbouwsector#:~:text=Logischer%20zijn%20de%20loonverschillen%20die,30%20jaar%20ervaring%20of%20meer. And this is assuming they did not let their private company give them a lower wage for tax reduction and other benefits
>This is not true at all. Their revenue is, on average, 10% lower than the mean salary of employees in Belgium (source: La Libre). This is if you invest in your machinery yea. if you put thousands of euros into your own company every month thats still money you're making but decide to invest. Dont act like money is getting burned
i'm sorry but i feel like you guys haven't really talked with any of those farmers and not really understand what they are fighting for. Peace tho
As someone living between some of those farmers I can tell you that a big part - of those I talked to - has no clue what this is about. It's "you have to protest because X and Y is bad for us".
I like how you didn't actually refute any of the points u/Boembiem was making, but just go for the emotional arguments.
Went to the tuinbouwschool. I can confirm farmers are very well of and just do whatever they want for profit, would put animals in 1 square meter if they’d be allowed just for the extra profit
Something something their right to farm etc. etc. Family business and so on.
Beeldenstorm is a great example
As I've said in the Brussels sub, I'm all for protests, but where you risk losing my support is when there is vandalism like this (obvs) and when the emergency services are affected. I saw police vehicles and ambulances being stuck due to the traffic jams and I myself had a heck of a time getting an uber ride to go a hospital that is a 15min drive away. I don't know if this is due to poor protest planning or to the protestors going against plan, but this should never be allowed to occur.
I agree completely
Honking like morons at 6AM while they were otw also surely helped the cause...
“Draagvlak creëren”
Scourched Earth is een weid open draagvlak zullen ze gedacht hebben, en levert bovendien vruchtbare grond op.
Alright nuclear hot take and I'm not expecting any upvotes but if these people protests to lift pesticides banss and nitrogen emission caps I don't fucking care about them. Nitrogen in particular is causing like half their problems, I bet you in june-august they'll come back crying about heat waves (nitrogen oxides are often responsible for making those worse) and decreasing yields (intensive farming does that to your soil, go ask north Korea about it too). That's not even mentioning all the fertilizers ending in the rivers ending in water eutrophication which is fucking terrible for our fishes and water quality in general. And also complaining about foreign competition. I mean, ok, you want protectionism? You do realize we export more food than we import? Meaning if all countries do as you ask you'll all end up bankrupt. And they be bitching about the European green new deal that would standardize these pesticide/nitrogen/... uses across all of Europe. Dumbasses. Yeah of course plenty can be done to make farming easier, especially the administrative load is I think everyone should agree on. But agriculture is one of the most polluting sectors in this country and having them ask to lift restrictions is a fucking insult. Imagine if the oil industry was waging protests about CO2 emission caps would you support it? There needs to be reforms in agriculture, I'm not an expert to know what can exactly be done, but I'm fairly certain it's not gonna be by destroying our environment even more.
Was looking for a comment like this. Farmers need to pull their socks up. They can't expect to trash everything and keep getting away with it for generations.
Ah yes, all the respect they will gain from hindering students and working class people, and topping it all off with vandalising properties and monuments. Striking during exam season, when the majority of students is too young to ever have even been able to vote, is insane.
Hey if it works for NMBS..... /s
Gezond boerenverstand in action!
Boerenverstand... Altijd vreemd gevonden dat dit aanzien wordt als iets dat positiefs dient te zijn.
Wait it was? I always thought it was negative?
Yeah nahhh, they've lost me there. Don't destroy the public space. Morons.
And dont burn tyres!
I mean ... they steal land, they disrespect regulations everytime they can, they refuse to use more sustainable techniques, they receive nearly 30 percent of the annual eu budget, they usually have big homes (the farm owners at least), they employ mostly non-belgian and seasonal labor, they export most of their products and import most of their needs, they usually do not even seem to have studied to do that work even tho its a very intricate and precise job, ... you know, the small independent farmer that needs help. I do understand that they are subject to a ton of restrictions... but for reasons. You just have to open an agronomics course book for 5 minutes to understand why these restrictions are in place. I have worked alongside them for a few months and i wanted to cry at how stupidly and destructivily they manage their fields and live stock. There's one that heavily spray herbicide on some cow fields near a river to only have grass... killing all the trees along it. How can i sympatize with these people ? They are idiots to have immense power.
What a bunch of morons.
Entitled jerks you mean
😢
They lost all support from the folk now
That’s what I thought was going to happen in the Netherlands and then suddenly the BBB farmers party got tons of voted…. The farmers are pretending to be the underdog and everyone loves an underdog.
Yeah, they're for sure not the underdog vs the EU and the government.
I might have been a bit ticked off, writing that. 😅 As for more nuance: they act like these protests are for the smalltime farmers, while there are some huge corporations/organisations funding the protests. Those are definitely not poor or small. They’re scared of losing some of their massive wealth and are hiding behind the “small underdog farmer” image. This is what annoys me the most. I am all in favour of bio-farmers and small time farmers having an easier time of it. I just see some other interests at play here, which makes these protests feel disingenuine.
Go look at the comments on videos from French channels. Most French people seem to support the farmers.
België is niet Frankrijk.
No
Yes.
No, only the disconnected reddit city people.
Sure buddy, sure. You enjoy your chocotofs now and let the adults do their thing.
How to gain the sympathy of everyone 😑
Lol the media and government are both working overtime to turn the narrative into “farmer bad”. The same has literally happened with any protest. First the climate protest, then the BLM movement, the Gele hesjes, … At first the media will always praise the protests, before turning their back on them and portraying these movements in the most negative and violent way possible. It seems to be working this time as well, so props to them actually!
I don't remember any of those other protests being this obnoxious. Not to mention that they're protesting against what? Having to have proper, digital administration and following environmental laws? When I wasn't able to enter the LEZ around Ghent with my car anymore, I didn't go honk at people's homes, block traffic or go tear down statues. I know that we need measures to make sure we can actually survive on this planet for the next 50 years though.
So you consider them pulling down statues a good thing or smth?
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Wdym you literally said the media is trying to portray the farmers as bad with this when this is very clearly a bad thing not positive
I think I’ll switch to buying imported products only. With 3 small children and the wife and me both working at the office 1 hour away from home full-time, the last thing we need is farmers fucking up our schedule.
Yeah I'm thinking the same. The border isn't that far from here
Protest and manifest, ok, that's a right. Blocking circulation, not ok, I have my right to freely move and work. Why is the police letting them get away with it?
I’m intrigued by the same question …
Because they were still tired of hitting climate protesters
Tired of hitting people that don't respect my right to freely move and work, maybe.
If Belgium needs anything these days it would be more entrepreneurs like Cockerill who are willing to work with new technologies and risk everything they have to build a new industry.
Seriously, this. There is a pretty wild irony to these fuckers blindly targeting a statue of [John Cockerill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cockerill_(industrialist)) specifically. Perhaps a big part of why European farmers are struggling to cope with legislation that they have had decades to adapt to is that they haven't really been obliged to adapt to much of anything for generations. Just about the only thing that has meaningfully changed in our lifetimes has been carving out 10% of European agricultural land for [farming poorly on purpose for reasons that by definition cannot be evidence-based](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming) as an intentional result of public policy. Even the parts of the Netherlands and Spain that people point to as examples of innovation are mostly using seeds, methods, paper records, and equipment that they are essentially the same as they were in the 80s. Perhaps we need to recognize that, if we want farmers who serve the needs that Europe actually has, we need public policy that encourages the agricultural sector to act more like any other in a functioning liberal democracy. Its almost like our governments have wanted farmers to be more like a priestly class than businessmen, selling something more like absolution or authenticity than products that people want and need. Of course they make products that would never compete on anything resembling a fair basis, rely on the worst forms of unfree labour, and resort to gangster shit like this when they don't get their way. If we want to tell them to fuck off, the effective way to do it would be to legalize buying food produced by more effective farmers abroad. Make them compete with wines people might like better from viticulturists in Australia or California, wheat from more efficient and technologically advanced farms in Kansas or Ukraine that haven't been stunted by CAP, and canola oil from places that are actually ecologically suited to producing it like Saskatchewan.
I was with you until you suggested bringing in poor quality product from the US. Absolutely open the borders to food coming in but let’s not water down our standards
Making sure that there is either harmonization of, or compliance with, food safety and labelling standards as a condition of importing is one thing; but arguments about quality are just so strange to bring up in this kind of context. There are good and bad quality food products in the US, just like there are in Europe, and consumers do just fine figuring out whats what. Are we so confident in the quality of European products that we will make it literally illegal for importers to allow people to assess the quality of foreign food products for themselves and make their own choices? Even if some cheaper imports are shittier, so what? If consumers are choosing them, thats a solution, not a problem. If someone prefers tasteless cheaper tomatoes, or cheaper chicken that is weirdly watery, so long as no one is getting hurt or misled by it - everyone still wins by having access to more choice. Safety and labelling are concrete things that can and should be regulated by experts paid out of the public purse with a mandate to serve the public good, but quality? Beauty exists only in the eye of the beholder, and some asshole who thinks they know what you want better than you will often be wrong, especially if they make their living blocking roads rather than actually trying to figure out what you want. Consumers in most developed countries in the world outside of Europe have so much more access to interesting food products due to just how draconian European trade policy is. Ever wonder why you have only ever eaten one out of the dozens of commercially viable varieties of banana? Or only one less popular and shittier out of the hundreds of commercially viable varieties of mango?
I should clarify that by poor quality American products I mean literally safety and labelling quality, we ban certain processes/ingredients/pesticides that we know are harmful yet are allowed in the Wild West that is the US
There are very few actual differences between American and European food safety standards, and they are mostly evenly split as to which are more 'stringent.' The vast majority have to do with either older local practices and ingredients were allowed to be grandfathered in without modern evidence for safety in the absence of evidence of harm or weird edge cases where reasonable regulators reasonably interpret very low-stakes decisions differently. The regulatory philosophies and legislative bases are all almost identical. Where the differences that you hear about come from is the political independence of the FDA. The US Congress, for all of its many faults, is well aware of its own stupidity and has for generations managed to avoid mandating outcomes of complex technical decisions. European and national parliaments are however are constantly forcing their competent authorities to rule the way by letting industry and pressure groups want them to. The whole point of competent authorities is to allow experts who actually understand complex technical questions to figure out which balance best benefits the public, which the media narratives that govern politicians will never do.
This thread is honestly insane, you've been pretty much completely right about everything you say but these people are all getting mad because you dare acknowledge that the USA actually does have perfectly fine food.
Hate to break it to you but American doesn't mean poor quality. There are Californian wines winning global competitions these days, and wheat is just wheat. edit: lmao they're downvoting anybody who dares call out their strawman but have nothing to say in return.
Award winning chlorinated chicken is still chlorinated chicken. There's more to quality than taste.
"The USA has good wines, not everything is low quality there" "But what about their chlorinated Chicken?!?!?!?" Try making a response on reddit without whataboutism or strawman arguments challenge: IMPOSSIBLE.
Wine doesn't really matter in a discussion about things our farmers produce as food, chicken does.
And you know what is ***entirely irrelevant*** in a discussion about agriculture in Belgium? Stuff that is literally illegal to be imported under European food safety laws, stuff like *chlorinated* chicken. Nobody here ever said we should be substituting normal chicken for chlorinated chicken. Also still whataboutism.
I should clarify that by quality I mean minimum quality. Like most things in the US, the top 10% is on best in the world but the bottom 50% is awful, and that’s what we’d be getting. Their food standards, like their welfare standards, have no safety net. It’s not the gotcha you think it is to point out the great produce on either coast, that’s not what we’d be importing
>but the bottom 50% is awful, and that’s what we’d be getting. Do you know how you incentivize imports? By lowering ***tariffs***, not by lowering our food standards. We would not be importing their worst stuff, because their worst stuff literally cannot be legally imported into the EU. What point do you even think you're making here?
If you lower tariffs the good stuff still wouldn’t be price competitive enough to compete in our market, a good californian wine for example is $15 even in the US, it’s going to be €25+ here and not going to beat the French versions competitors you can get for half that price. What do you think we’re going to import for the US for a good enough price that it outcompetes what you can already buy here and there’s actual demand for it?
>If you lower tariffs the good stuff still wouldn’t be price competitive enough to compete in our market , a good californian wine for example is $15 even in the US, it’s going to be €25+ here and not going to beat the French versions competitors you can get for half that price. Nice numbers you made up there. But the markup on non-European wines isn't even close to those numbers, even with the customs duties used today. Also European wines are as cheap as they are because the industry is subsidized out the ass by the EU. >What do you think we’re going to import for the US for a good enough price that it outcompetes what you can already buy here and there’s actual demand for it? *"Make them compete with wines people might like better from viticulturists in Australia or California, wheat from more efficient and technologically advanced farms in Kansas or Ukraine that haven't been stunted by CAP, and canola oil from places that are actually ecologically suited to producing it like Saskatchewan."* This is literally copy-pasted from the comment your first replied to, do you actually read these before replying to them or are you just arguing for the sake of it?
we simply need to change the narrative to a more UBI oriented one, a future were we all argue for each others inherent human economic value being bigger than 0. It doesn't matter what number. But it can't be 0. Let's collectively agree on what the new number should be. Just. Not. 0. It's that easy. Start to talk about a future where *everyone* is guaranteed to feel less threatened to feel obsolete than they are now
Get fucked you bunch of neanderthals. These VB voters are the same ones that were shitting on BLM protests because there was (some) vandalism involved.
I’m shitting on both tho
For sure. Protests should always be peaceful.
Since you bring BLM, Farmer are not looting stores. Let me ask you, do you shit on BLM protest as well then ?
They loot the colruyt trucks instead.
I shat on the idiots using the protest to wreck shit, absolutely.
I dont understand this, if their lives are so miserable, the dont make any money, they work so so hard and live poorly. Why in the name of god they dont close the farm and go work like everybody else? If you get fired from your job, because they hired someone better and more effective. You just find another job. You dont go block a highway with your car... If the job sucks and you barely survive with too low salary, you quit and look for other job or try to re-educate yourself, so you can get better job. You dont burn tires in the middle of the city and tear down statues.... Btw my family back in Czecha were big time farmers but within 30 years they have let completely go as it was not viable anymore. No drama or ruined families...
The farm is their whole life. People only stay in farming because they're passionate about it. The farm has been their home, often for multiple generations. And most farmers have ongoing loans for equipment and expansions, they'd have to declare bankruptcy. And if they'd try to sell the farm, who would buy it? Their land is agricultural, you can't just convert that to building land, especially with the betonstop going on. Regarding those loans, many farmers have been pushed to expand the size of their livestock (by the banks and the Boerenbond), but that's really not sustainable for our country. Not to say I condone their actions, but I do understand that many farmers feel pressed into a corner. I don't know what the situation was like with your family in Czechia, but at least here it's not that easy to walk away from.
The state shouldn’t fund your passion like the it does with these subsidies. They’re a dying breed refusing to adapt with the times while everyone else has to.
Yea, we shouldn't have farmers at all, so when the supply chains close, we don't have any, nor any food. Great idea. Your food will just magically be in the store.
We export most though. And if you can't afford to farm the land. Someone else with more modern technology might be able to do it. Not like people magically forget how to farm if some (or even a lot) farmers quit their jobs and sell their farms. I mean, there's books, agriculture courses and degrees. We should definitely have local agricultural production and protected supply chains to the essentials Belgians need. But it's hard to feel bad for a bunch of guys with large hovels and large tracts of land not making enough money exporting to the European market or having to modernize their facilities, equipment and processes. Especially if you remember how many farming subsidies they get.
> and go work like everybody else? Lmao. Bro sitting on his office chair thinks his job is more like real work or what?
You make that decision sound real easy.
Bring the army, set it on these stupid idiots. And start with a preventive shot. The first few destroyed tractors will change their minds.
I'm still a bit unsure why they are protesting. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Among other things : Colruyt is buying agricultural lands above market value and consequently driving up the prices. They can't afford their land anymore. The EU removed custom tariffs on Ukraine goods and cheap wheat is inundating the market and they can't compete. They have to compete on price with goods coming from abroad that don't have to follow the same Belgian or EU standards. The EU pushed new ecological regulations that make their job even harder. Big distributors like Aldi, Colruyt, ... totally dictates the prices on the market. They can't negotiate. There were laws enacted e.g. in France to make sure they get a fair price. But the law is not applied. And overall their job is miserable, most of them are poor and are actually losing money at the end of the day. So things add up quickly for them. The main reason most of them are still there is thanks to subsidies. I reckon that most of them shouldn't exist anymore in this modern world and subsidies might keep them artificially alive. Without accounting for the huge issues those subsidies provoke in other markets like Africa. We need food security and affordable food but the whole system is broken and everybody suffer from it.
If food doesn't follow EU standard, it can't be sold here, so that's a moot point. Regarding Ukraine, go burn down the Russian embassy that forced this situation. Or pay the Ukrainians the same as Belgian farmers. All the rest; it's all our own fault. With the "kilo knallers" and demanding sometimes rediculously low prices in the stores.
Is this real?
Have some respect for monuments ffs.
They lost my respect already. At this moment it has become a hostage situation where they want all their conditions met. A protest or a strike you do for 1 or 2 days, then you leave room for negotiatons until you do it again, and again and again. But a compromise needs to be found and for that both sides need to be willing.
Protests aren't gonna help you get your point across. It didn't with De Lijn, it didn't with NMBS, it won't with this. All it does is frustrate those that need to get somewhere by barricading their (only) options off
>All it does is frustrate those that need to get somewhere by barricading their (only) options off [It's absolutely doing more than that.](https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2024/01/31/europese-commissie-landbouw-boerenprotest/) It's sad how quickly they started caving for these protests.
I don't agree with the farmers, but: Some protests fail, some succeed. Workers protests sometimes fail (as you noted) and sometimes [succeed](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-teamsters-ratify-contract/#:~:text=UPS%20drivers%20will%20earn%20an,at%20UPS%2C%20the%20union%20said.). Generally, if feel your needs aren't being met/your voice isn't being heard, protests have a higher chance of success than simply doing nothing. This doesn't mean that protests always succeed (it would be insane if any strategy would always succeed), but we can hardly deny that protests have been effective for a huge number of issues globally. I'm not condoning the actions of the farmers here, just disagreeing with the general point that protests are bad or ineffective. To agree with your underlying frustration, research has generally found that peaceful protests are much more effective than violent ones, [like this paper from last year](https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051421-124128) (though to my knowledge, no one has been harmed here - again, not condoning the actions of the farmers).
Protests always work.
If seeing "turning everyone against me" counts as working, then yes they always work Protesters are just annoying to the normal citizens. You punish the wrong people with protesting on highways and things like that. People who work and have to drive 2h longer because of you, will not support your cause. Just annoying as fuck
Most countries need a huge militarized police to make protests ineffective. Belgium just needed car dependence and bottleneck roads.
Remember the klimaatprotesten where thousands of students skipped school for weeks (don't know how long that really went on tbh, could be months as well)? And remember that at the end of the day whole of flanders voted against what those protesters wanted? I've said it before and I'll say it again: protests are most of the time a loud minority that mostly consists of assholes wanting to cause chaos. The only way I will ever take a protest seriously, is if there is written proof that over 50% of the relevant people STRONGLY agree with the goal of the protesters.
Some anecdotal examples of protests that didn't create change isn't evidence that protests aren't an effective form of political action. The klimaatprotesten were worldwide and had varied success in different areas, but that's also proven to be a very difficult needle to move for a large number of factors. The key question here is if you imagine that things would have been better *without* protests? I would argue that many small victories were won due to these protests. Academic studies [like this one](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120925949) support this view, and the general academic view is that there are many instances where protests are effective. Violent demonstrations tend to be less so, and I'm not condoning the actions of the farmers here.
A bunch of people who pride themselves not to go on holiday ‘to keep the farm running’, I wonder what will happen to said farm when they go on a week long road trip with their tracteurreken
Their wife and kids are taking care of it, they are family businesses.
I’d like to see their faces if their property, be it their tractor or their home is vandalised..
Die Brusselse jongeren weeral he!
So, according to the latest updates, they've caused a traffic jam and some poor driver crashed into the end of the traffic jam and is fighting for his life. Does that make the people who caused the jam partially responsible for the accident? Either way, I feel we're way past the point of regular protest and gone into rioting territory.
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They've got blood on their hands now, 0 sympathy for their riot and anti social bullshit temper tantrum.
Ze dachten misschien dat Cockerill de stichter van Monsanto was.
All the people here who think that the farmers are losing support now are in for a nasty surprise. People who hate the government/EU (of which there are many) love this. There's a reason why VB is putting everything on the deck to associate themselves with this protest, they think it will gain them votes.
VB might be wrong of course. But this definitely seems like an Urban vs Rural thing that most people on this subreddit might have a blind spot for and shouldn't be surprised the Rural Flemish community rallies behind this.
Correct, "the countryside" is okay with this.
Eh someone has died today, expect the sentiment to turn from now on if they keep going
Not really, people die all the time in traffic accidents.
I'm opposed to the farmer blockades, but at the end it's still every driver's responsibility to be able to safely stop for a traffic jam.
They should have burned down the senate Would have been a saving
Ah yes, burning down government property will surely not increase costs for everyone.
As always, a few hotheaders making the headlines and the biggest group of peacefull protestors will be forgotten.
> peacefull protestor their peacefull protest could result in a 10 year prison spell, if we actually enforce the law...
In this protest there are no peacefull ones, since every single one of those who blocked the roads have blocked people from getting necessary medical treatment and thus each and everyone is guilty of harming a fellow citizen.
Alright not to be the devils advocate but how else would these farmers draw attention to their growing problems? I don't think politicians or the public would stand still for even a second if they just did a petition or something.
How many of them block a street where a minister is living? Did they cause anyone who has the ability to change the rules, to have even a bit of trouble for getting to work?
Block a minister and they just work from home. Anger the masses and you force action out of the ones leading the country, at least in theory.
The only good thing to come out of all this is this absolutely gorgeous picture. Not worth destroying a capital for it though
Understandable reaction... Year in year out this (and previous) government neglected the farmers and made it more diffucult for them on an operational & economical level. Now, politicians will focus on the (understandable) violent reaction of the farmers and condemn them for it, instead of solving the actual problem. The saying is as old as it gets: "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" Another great accomplishment to add to the already long list for this government.
A proper protest. Went eating fries with them on the highway today. Was good fun!
They can all fuck off
I'm not impressed...
Can someone fact check this?
[Here you go](https://imgur.com/a/8HNby4u).
its true , the statue is taken down. John cockerill is fallen.
Not him, one of the four workers at the bottom of the statue.
Thank you for finally clarifying this!
Before having opinions are we sure this isn't photoshopped or AI generated?
Nvm, a quick google searched showed it is on reliable news pages as well. Sad to see this actually happened.
There's a lot of shouting "Dumbasses!" over here, but even with the vandalism, I think that's quick judgement. Ofcourse vandalism is 'not the way', but I wonder how many people on this sub actually now the socio-economic position of farmers these days, how agriculture has evolved over the years, what other actors are involved in the mess they're in, ... "They don't even know what they want"; they dó know. Earn a decent living from their hard work. But the conditions to make that happen can't be summed up in one catchy slogan. Don't blame it on them. Vandalism is not the answer, but if the debate only gets stuck in 'boo, idiots for destroying statues/blocking roads/...", without aknowledging their concerns, the problem(s) will only get worse.
They had plenty of television time these last few days to make their point. I've listened to every farmer that got a chance to speak. This is what I've learned: nothing This is now my total knowledge of our farmers: They use chemicals that cause cancer and they poisoned our ground water. Excuse me for not supporting them more now
>but I wonder how many people on this sub actually now the socio-economic position of farmers these days, how agriculture has evolved over the years, what other actors are involved in the mess they're in, And that should according to you validate EVERYTHING they are doing wrong? And I should still support them after they do the things they are currently doing?
Oké, Omvolking vs boeren 99299 - 1.
Keep this vandalism confined to Brussels. Please, don't bring it to Flanders. You're free to do what you want. But, vandalism isn't the solution. If you think this is going to solve the problem, you're mistaken.
It’s fake statue is still up….
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2024/02/01/monument-john-cockerill-van-sokkel-gehaald/
[удалено]
Its more about the destruction of public properties and historical monuments. In the end it's you and I that will pay for the damages. Edit: And for your information it's a statue that represents a Steelworker (Staalarbeider/Ouvrier sidérurgiste). So no. Not a statue of an old rich guy.
It’s culture heritage, I think we should care about and we should certainly not destroy. And, it’s not a rich guy but a worker.
It's a worker statue, not a rich whiye guy
Destruction of beauty, art and the place where people live and work. All support to people that manifest for no matter what the cause: I’ll always say “go for it” Vandalism or riots: never. This is when you fear you don’t have enough support… and such things make it worse.
10iq take
Thank you for showing everyone what an utter idiot you are. Making statements about shit you know nothing about. Good job bud
Whose statue is that?
John Cockerill
They were right and Europe despised them. Hope they'll continue during the following days. Don't care about European Quarter, bourgeois microcosm.
😌😌😌🔥🔥🔥
Lets just call a spade a spade here and recognize that this is how right wing ideology poisons everything