The parallels between the ways that farmers defend their policies and thwart unwanted policy changes at the domestic and EU levels can be made clear by looking at a case in which a national government attempted to impose new costs on their agricultural community without offering compensation. In 2013, Socialist French President François Hollande attempted to implement the so called “eco tax” first put forward by his conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. The eco tax was intended to promote greener commercial transportation by imposing a tax on heavy vehicles. Under the plan, any vehicle over 3.5 tons would be taxed a flat rate of .13€ per kilometer traveled on 15,000 kilometers of roads included in the scheme. The government expected the tax to generate over €1 billion in revenue annually. The eco tax was slated to come into effect beginning 1 January 2014. The government’s proposal was immediately met with criticism from the main French farmers’ organization, the FNSEA. The organization described the tax as an “usine à gaz”, a situation where pipes are going everywhere and the system is overly complex. Through thus turn-of-phrase, the FNSEA meant to convey that the eco tax was a complicated procedure with little actual value or payoff. The FNSEA argued that the tax would place a significant burden on the agricultural community, particularly farmers in Brittany, who had suffered significantly from the financial crisis, and demanded that it be suspended immediately. Other critics raised concerns that Breton farmers might be driven out of business as a result of higher transportation costs. In addition to the concerns about its effects on Breton farmers, the FNSEA warned that French goods would pass through the tax gates more often than trucks carrying foreign goods, putting French farmers at a disadvantage compared to farmers’ goods arriving from abroad. Xavier Beulin,10 liter pot the leader of the FNSEA, promised immediate action against the proposal, directing members to target the “portiques” that were intended to scan the trucks as they passed underneath.

Beulin called on farmers from other parts of France, even from those areas without the tax scanners, to join the protests. The call for action was successful, as a wave of angry protests erupted in Brittany and across France. In Brittany, the heart of the demonstrations, protesters gathered in main town squares, many wearing red caps, or bonnets rouges in a reference to a 17th-century protest against a stamp tax proposed by Louis XIV. Some protestors threw stones, iron bars, and potted chrysanthemums at riot police, while others destroyed the electronic scanners intended to collect the fee from passing trucks. The protesters included not just farmers, but also the broader public, who were rallying to oppose taxes, with some also supporting the farmers specifically. In addition to the violent actions in Brittany, farmers elsewhere blocked roads with their tractors, including around Paris. Despite the disruptions these protests caused to the daily life of the average French citizen, the farmers did not face any negative public backlash, a further indication of the deep support and connections between farmers and urban France. Indeed, public polling concerning the image of farmers revealed that the public has a strong, positive image of farmers. According to a 2014 survey, shortly after the mass protests by farmers, just 26% of respondents were willing to describe farmers as selfish and only 16% of respondents agreed that farmers were violent. A resounding 80% agreed with the statement that farmers were trustworthy42 . After Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault met with local officials from Brittany, the government proposed to “suspend” the tax until January. This concession, though it was expected to cost the government €800 million in revenue, was seen as insufficient, and tens of thousands of protesters continued to gather in the epicenter of resistance to the proposal, the town square of Quimper in Brittany. The tax was finally suspended indefinitely, pending a new proposal from the government.

France’s eco tax then, like to efforts to change CAP income support systems or greening policies, demonstrates that it is nearly impossible to impose new costs on farmers, without some degree of compensation or widespread exemptions. For example, new CAP greening standards that are costly for farmers to adhere to are typically coupled with subsidies for compliance. When some form of compensation is not offered, the reform is almost certain to be defeated. Thus, the eco tax was had little chance of success, given that farmers were not offered any compensation in exchange for this new cost being imposed on them. In June 2014, the Hollande government unveiled the final version of the eco tax plan, now called “truck tolls”. The new plan applied only to trucks weighing 3.5 tons or more and included just 4,000 kilometers of road, as against 15,000 kilometers in the original plan. In addition, all proposed roads in Brittany, the epicenter of the protests, were exempted from the tolls. Trucks carrying agricultural goods, milk collection vehicles, and circus related-traffic were also exempted. As a result of the transportation exemptions and significantly smaller area of coverage, the toll is expected to generate only a third of the revenue of the original plan.The French eco tax example shares much in common with CAP reform, particularly in the area of environmental policy. Proposed environmental policies in the CAP often mean that new costs will be imposed on farmers who are forced to conform to stricter standards and modify their farming methods in some way. These attempted reforms are virtually always modified by farmers in one of two ways: by extracting a new or additional form of compensation for meeting these rules or by compelling reformers to adopt exemptions, often so extensive that barely any farmers are subjected to new rules. In the case of the French eco tax, farmers followed the latter course: when faced with a tax that would have imposed new financial burdens on producers, they successfully compelled the government to completely exempt agriculture. The victory is all the more significant since these exemptions cost the government badly needed tax revenue at a time of austerity. The successful campaign against the eco tax highlights some of the new sources of power that farmers have developed. Organizations were one important source of power.

The FNSEA demonstrated the ability to coordinate its membership and to rely on regional branches to place pressure on both national and local politicians. In the fight against this tax, the FNSEA deployed multiple tactics to exert influence on the policy making process, mobilizing members for public demonstrations while simultaneously lobbying local and national political officials. The protesting French farmers also benefited from a sympathetic public that did not begrudge the massive disruptions and disturbances caused by demonstrations and blockades. While French farmers were able to use their powerful organizations to avoid a new, uncompensated tax, the same cannot be said of other groups. At virtually the same time farmers were thwarting a new tax, a series of austerity-driven pension reforms went ahead. Unlike the case of the eco tax,10 liter drainage collection pot protests did nothing to stop the reforms, and the policy changes were adopted despite widespread civil unrest. In 2010, then-president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a series of reforms to the French pension system. The reforms included raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 along with increasing the age at which one qualifies for a full pension from 65 to 67. In addition, the number of years of required social security contributions increased from 40.5 to 41.5 years. In response to the proposed reforms, nearly 3 million people took to the streets, with plane and train travel severely disrupted and other sectors of the economy virtually shut down as the major unions called for strikes. Fuel shortages were a perpetual problem during the protests, as dock workers went on strike, leaving petrol stranded at ports. In addition, schools, ports, and airports were blockaded by demonstrators. In this case, however, coordinated protest was not able to compel the government to roll back reforms. Just a few years later, in 2014, Sarkozy’s successor, François Hollande enacted further reform to the French pension system. Contribution rates for both employers and employees were raised, a previously tax-exempt supplement for retirees who raised three or more children was made subject to taxation, and the number of years of required social security contributions was increased from 41.5 to 43 years. While France is generally viewed as farmer-friendly, the French case is not an outlier. Looking at other Western European countries, a similar pattern emerges. Pensions cuts were imposed, while national discretionary agricultural spending remained virtually untouched. Indeed, across Europe, pensions were significantly reformed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, placing new financial burdens on the average worker. This contrast between pension policies and agricultural expenditure is all the more glaring when the broader context is taken into account: less than two percent of the population benefits from agricultural support policies while all citizens are current or future pensioners.

Current spending levels are not a good indicator of reform, since much pension spending is locked in by decisions made decades ago. In the case of pensions, cuts are best identified by increases in the minimum retirement age or downward cost of living adjustments. Such reforms occurred in each of the four country cases, as summarized in Table 7.1.Germany reformed its pensions in 2007, just before the onset of the financial crisis, raising the retirement age from 65 to 67. In the UK, reforms raised the retirement age from 66 to 67. New reforms also increased the minimum number of years of contributions to qualify for a full pension from 30 to 35 years. A 2013 Dutch pension reform raised the minimum retirement age to 65 for workers currently under the age 55.While pensions were being cut across Europe, farmers were spared. At the EU level, in the first CAP reform after the financial crisis, spending on the CAP was not cut, and instead money was taken out of other areas in order to channel more support to farmers. Indeed, this reallocation of funds back into farming happened despite a stated objective of directing more money away from agriculture and into other objectives, like improving the provision of high speed internet. Spending on farmers was also preserved at the domestic level. European national governments spend some money on agriculture outside the CAP. National financing of agriculture comes via three main avenues: top-ups of Pillar 1 direct income payments; cofinancing of Pillar 2 programs ; and additional state aid payments to farmers by their national governments. Figure 7.1 tracks national agricultural expenditure as reported by the European Union in its annual statistical yearbook. The second mini case in this conclusion extends my claims about the politics of agricultural policy reform and the influence of the farming community beyond Europe to Japan. Like Europe, Japan has long committed to providing generous economic support to farmers in the form of subsidies, direct income payments, and protectionist trade policy. As in Europe, this support has persisted despite near simultaneous declines in the sector’s size and contribution to GDP. Figure 7.2 illustrates the decline in agriculture’s share of GDP in Japan, France, and the Netherlands. The latter two countries are the European Union’s top agricultural exporters.Like its European counterparts, agriculture’s contribution to GDP in Japan has dropped rapidly over the past 50 plus years. The economic decline of Japan’s agricultural sector has been quite similar to, if not more rapid than, the post-war economic decline of agriculture for Europe’s leading exporters. The decline in employment in agriculture over roughly the same period was also dramatic, and even more so in Japan. In a half century the sector went from employing nearly 40% of the population to under 5%, as Figure 7.3 illustrates. As in Europe, Japan’s agricultural sector has shrunk in size and economic importance since the end of World War II. In both of Europe’s top exporting countries and Japan, agriculture’s share of GDP is under 2% and the percent of the population employed in the sector has long been below 5%. Yet despite this decline, agricultural support has remained robust in both Europe and Japan. Figure 7.4 reports the Producer Support Estimate from 1986 to 2015 for Japan, the European Union and the United States, in millions of dollars.