Then they erupted across the continent. For the past few weeks, roads and city plazas in nearly every country in the European Union have been blocked by farmers angry about a number of regulations, including policies intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. E.U. officials, who met earlier this month mere feet from protesters clashing with police<\/a> in Brussels, scrapped plans for the bloc\u2019s first-ever target to reduce climate pollution specifically from food production. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The protests have revealed just how tough it is for governments to curb agricultural emissions, not just in Europe but worldwide, policy analysts told Grist. Farming accounts for about 10 percent of climate pollution in both Europe and the United States, and climate scientists largely agree that curbing those emissions is key to limiting global warming. The E.U.\u2019s reversal on agriculture-specific climate goals highlights the need for a meticulously-planned \u2018just transition\u2019 \u2014 a shift toward climate-friendly farming that doesn\u2019t ignore farmers\u2019 economic needs, said Tim Benton, who directs research on food production and the environment at Chatham House, a think tank based in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFarmers are increasingly fed up with being seen as the whipping boy of food-systems emissions, in terms of them being told they are bad people and bad managers of the land,\u201d Benton said. \u201cIf we are going to do transitions, then we have to bring people along with us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With echoes of France\u2019s populist yellow vest<\/a> protests in 2018, farmers from Spain to Slovenia have been choking off highways with tractors, leaving hulking piles<\/a> of dirt and manure in front of government buildings, hurling eggs<\/a> and firecrackers at police, and setting hay bales and tires on fire. The farmers have a litany of complaints<\/a> \u2014 high fuel and fertilizer costs, cheap imports and competition with foreign producers, volatile commodity prices \u2014 but one thing in particular has united them: the European Union\u2019s climate policies, which they view as out of touch and overbearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n E.U. officials, who agreed in 2020 on a target to make the continent carbon-neutral by 2050, were planning to make a recommendation this month to cut pesticide use in half and slash 30 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. After farmers took to the streets of Brussels, the European Commission \u2013 the E.U.\u2019s executive branch \u2014 nixed the proposal, although they kept a broader target to reduce 90 percent of the bloc\u2019s total emissions by 2040. Officials also delayed a recommendation to leave some farmland fallow to preserve biodiversity, and they abandoned a plan to promote lab-grown and plant-based meats to limit climate pollution from the livestock industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen this slide, this reversal from a really ambitious agenda a few years ago to basically nothing left,\u201d said Patty Fong, director of the climate program at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food in the Netherlands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The proposals would\u2019ve needed approval by the E.U. parliament after elections in June, when the far-right is expected to make gains. Eyeing the polls, right-wing politicians in Europe have tried to capitalize on the farmers\u2019 discontent as they<\/a> push to dismantle the E.U.\u2019s climate policies, according to Danielle Resnick, a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. \u201cThe discourse is being hijacked in some quarters,\u201d Resnick said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lacking popular support, top-down mandates and emissions targets don\u2019t tend to work, Benton and other policy researchers told Grist. The key, they said, likely will involve investing billions of dollars to incentivize farmers to take up environmentally friendly growing practices and to ensure that they\u2019ll make a living even if yields decline as a result of those changes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As an example of a step in the right direction, Benton cited the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate bill that the U.S. Congress passed in 2022. That legislation wasn\u2019t accompanied by a specific target for lowering agricultural emissions, but it directed $20 billion to \u201cclimate-smart\u201d farming and tens of billions of dollars more to spur the renewable energy transition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Europe, lawmakers have set ambitious climate goals, but they haven\u2019t done the extensive planning \u2014 or investing \u2014 that the transition calls for, analysts told Grist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo one\u2019s really proposing a long-term plan saying, \u2018We need to transition. We need massive amounts of funding to be able to do this transition to more sustainable agrifood systems. This is how we\u2019re going to pay for it. And this is how we\u2019re going to support farmers in this transition,\u2019\u201d said Julia Bognar, head of the land use and climate program at the Institute for European Environmental Policy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A daunting task for governments is figuring out where to get all that money to help farmers along. Bognar pointed to the vast subsidies that the E.U. already doles out: About one-third of its entire budget \u2014 some 56 billion euros<\/a> ($60 billion) each year \u2014 goes to farmers, agricultural companies, and rural development. Bognar suggested that reallocating some of those payments would be one way to free up cash. For example, the E.U. could reduce funds that support environmentally harmful practices, like intensive livestock production at factory farms, and boost funds for practices that curb emissions (say, planting carbon-storing perennials like trees).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, dairy and meat companies probably wouldn\u2019t let those livestock subsidies slide without a fight. And there\u2019s no guarantee that money set aside for \u201cclimate-smart\u201d agriculture will actually go to practices that help the planet. In the U.S., a good chunk of the Inflation Reduction Act funding, for example, could flow to equipment at factory farms, like methane digesters<\/a>, which capture methane emissions from manure but still tend to pollute the air and water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to say we must have a just transition,\u201d Benton said. \u201cBut I can\u2019t think of an example where we\u2019ve really managed it.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline What Europe’s egg-hurling farmers can teach us about climate progress<\/a> on Feb 20, 2024.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/grist.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Europe-farmers-protests-Berlin-Brandenburg-Gate.jpg?quality=75&strip=all\")