They come to protest in long convoys of tractors, sometimes bringing with them months’ worth of food supplies. Their demands may vary, but concerns about rising costs and falling incomes are common. From Paris and London to all over the world, the anger of farmers is increasing since 2021. DelhiAnd their protests are increasingly looking alike.
In London, hundreds of farmers this week stormed Whitehall, the center of Britain’s government, to protest a proposed 20% inheritance tax, saying it would be a stab in the back.
Their anger reflects widespread discontent among many farming communities around the world, especially since the pandemic, including in India and mainland Europe. Dozens of farm groups across six continents have been protesting farm policies since 2021, according to the Center for International Policy Studies.
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The scenes in London evoked memories of the standoff outside Delhi, where a revolt by farm unions during 2020-21 prompted the government to repeal three market-oriented farm laws.
There are even more echoes of Delhi in London. “No farmers, no food,” one protester said on the BBC. Another held a placard: “Small farmers will die. They will have to borrow to pay the taxes.” “Tax business, not farm. 20% inheritance tax? It’s ridiculous if you ask me,” said Sarah Bolden, a farmer from Wiltshire in southwest England.
These concerns are similar to the main issues raised by farmers in food bowl states like Punjab. “The reasons are different. The demands are different. But what may be common (about disillusionment) is the feeling that governments do not realize that the old ways are gone, and the new problems are new,” said Jeremy Clarke, London-based campaigner for the World Farmers Organization (WFO). Said. ), over the phone on Wednesday.
The latest challenges around the world largely stem from changing markets, declining profits and climate change, Clark said, resulting in an “unprecedented crisis.”
Celebrity TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson and James Dyson, a prominent business tycoon who supports Brexit, also joined the protest in London.
Farm unions in India, the world’s second-largest wheat and rice producer, are demanding a guarantee backed by law for minimum purchase prices of crops.
In Europe, farmers in the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy and France etc. have imposed restrictions on how much fertilizer they can use and even how many acres they can sow by driving tractors in their countries. Are. The EU’s new measures are part of concrete steps it is taking to meet climate and emissions targets. Subsidies for crop inputs are being cut. In India, experts say subsidies alone are not enough for producers to meet farming costs.
Farmers have also become politically wise. “In Europe, protests were held ahead of the EU parliamentary elections, while in India too farmers were seen intensifying protests ahead of key elections,” said Mukul Paranjape, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Although India does not tax agricultural income, farmers have long claimed that they never get federally set minimum prices for many commodities. Studies have shown that Indian farmers are “net taxed” or indirectly taxed due to the government’s efforts to keep food prices low.
India’s agriculture sector has not been generating enough revenue to keep farmers profitable for nearly two decades, according to a landmark 2018 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a 36-nation grouping, and think tank ICRIER.
The study looked at the agricultural sector’s gross receipts – or total assets without adjusting expenses – among other indices. Agriculture in India faces negative total revenues despite large subsidies, as income opportunities are missed due to frequent export bans and restrictions on storage. Therefore, the prices paid by farmers have exceeded the prices earned by them.
Agricultural movement is nothing new. The Farmers’ Alliance, an American agricultural movement during the 1870s, sought to improve economic conditions through collective bargaining through cooperatives and political advocacy.
Farmers in the US then faced the same problems as those in developing economies, such as India, a country with surplus agricultural labor and small landholdings. Small land plots generally lack economies of scale, which refers to falling costs with increasing production.
In January 1979, about 5000 farmers drove tractors to Washington, DC, in a movement known as the Tractorcade in protest of the Carter administration freezing all credit, as North Indian farmers did in Delhi in January 2021, A protest that turned violent.
The group leading the rebellion, Samyukta Kisan Morcha, has planned a new phase of protests from next month with its old demand: guaranteed minimum prices. The Central Government announces Minimum Support Price for more than 20 crops to determine the minimum rate, so that farmers can get basic price assurance.
However, government agencies procure only rice and wheat at assured rates in sufficient quantities, which means that many other produce, such as soybean, groundnut, mustard, millet, pulses and maize etc., are procured at any price depending on market offer. But are sold. ,
“These problems are not unique to India in the sense that European farmers think that regulations to make farming eco-friendly will affect their earnings. It is ultimately an income issue,” Paranjape said.
The centre-left Keir Starmer government will impose a 20% tax on inherited agricultural properties worth more than £1m from April 2026, which were previously exempt. Nevertheless, this is half the non-agricultural inheritance tax rate.
The argument for an inheritance tax has been influential, especially after the radical French economist Thomas Piketty published his book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, which proposed imposing a “confiscation” tax on inherited wealth to reduce inequality. The call was made.
Piketty, who managed centuries of data, argued that wages will always grow much slower than wealth and profits earned, leading to an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. Their solution is a globally coordinated wealth tax, so that wealthy wealth owners cannot move their assets to tax havens.
In a recent paper, Piketty has suggested a similar tax for India. “Raise an exceptionally large tax revenue while keeping 99.96 percent of adults untaxed. In the baseline scenario, a 2 percent annual tax on net wealth exceeds 33 percent inheritance tax on property worth Rs 10 crore and more A valuation of Rs 10 crore would yield revenue of 2.73 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP),” his India paper suggested.
In the UK, farm inheritance tax will similarly apply to large estates worth more than £1 million. However, farmers say that although they are “asset rich” in terms of the land they own, many are cash poor. Clarks said many farmers would be forced to sell their property.
“Farmers have no objection in paying taxes. Bring them forward, provided farmers can make profits that are equal to non-farm income,” Clarks said. The rising cost of farming is a common concern among farming communities.
According to the UK Department of Agriculture, there are approximately 210,000 agricultural estates worth £1 million or more that may be subject to inheritance tax. Clarks says pig farming costs have risen 54%, cattle farming costs 44% and grain farming costs 43% due to higher prices of feed, fuel and fertilizer as subsidies decline following Brexit .
According to government estimates, an average farm made a profit of around £45,300 last year. But farmers say this is an exaggerated estimate because it does not include low-income farms. Even in India, farmers complain of uncertainties from rising costs and bad weather.
India sets inflation-indexed minimum support prices such that they provide one and a half times the return on cost. However, farmers want these prices to be legally implemented. Furthermore, they want the government to comprehensively measure the cost of farming.
The government uses the so-called “A2” formula, a narrow measure that includes all out-of-pocket expenses, as well as the value of family labour. Farmers instead want the government to use the “C2 formula”, which includes actual payment costs (on seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, etc.) and interest on owned land and capital plus the estimated value of family labor and rents.
“Agriculture around the world is on its knees. Farmers have reached the end of the rope,” Clark said. Indian farmers also make the same allegations. There is a sense of a crack in the “social contract” between farmers and governments.
