The Guardian view on Europe's rural revolt: sustainability is in farmers' interests too | Editorial

The current wave of protests endangers environmental progress. But imaginative politics can get the green deal back on trackAnother day, another tractor blockade. Earlier this week, all economic activity at the Belgian port of Antwerp ground to a halt as hundreds of farmers prevented access to freight. In Spain, tractors blocked motorways near Seville and Granada, and in Catalonia. As a rolling wave of rural discontent has made itself felt across Europe since the start of the year, only four EU member states have remained unaffected.Numerically, farmers account for only 4% of Europe's working population. But as Europe's political leaders are belatedly coming to realise, the burgeoning crisis has outsize implications. A perfect storm of factors - including rising energy costs, competition from lightly regulated foreign imports and supermarket profit-gouging - have driven angry farmers off the land and on to the streets of capitals. But in disputes that touch on some of the faultlines of contemporary culture wars, there is a growing danger that the EU's green deal takes the rap for a crisis incubated elsewhere. Continue reading...