THE splintering of farmers into special interest groups is depriving them of the unity necessary to tackle the big issues of our time, Piet Vanthemsche believes.
The president of Boerenbond, the Belgian farmers union, Mr Vanthemsche was talking about Belgium, but his address to the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists in Ghent had relevance for Australia.
“We are faced with a movement toward single issue farmers groups,” Mr Vanthemsche told the IFAJ.
“It is much easier to defend the interests of one sector, because you don’t have to take into account the interests of the other sector.”
“I think the development is very worrying. Single issue farmers organisations get a lot of media attention, and they are very keen and clever at using media.
“This for us is a new development - a development that is used by our opponents. We are a small part of our community. In Flanders, farmers are one or two percent of the population. When the Boerenbond was created, one half of the population produced food for the other half.
“When this two per cent defends its interests, we have to unite.”
Mr Vanthemsche related how he when he was director of the Belgian food safety agency, and later chief of staff for the country’s agriculture minister, he liked to see the farming lobby divided.
“When they were divided, I always won. When they were united, it was very difficult.”
“We have to ... take one position on the future of our farming community and bring that one position to politics and society.”
Farmers’ interests can be difficult to defend against countering opinions in society, he said.
He referred to “the climate discussion” and how the anti-meat lobby had spun climate change into an argument against livestock farming.
“Some people in our western societies want to go back in time. They want to take valuable farmland and turn it into nature. We will need every acre of farmland in Western Europe and the rest of the world to meet the food crisis.
“We must be prepared to change. The way we will farm today will change: with the climate debate, we will farm in a different way. We know that. We must help our farmers transition to a different model of farming, and therefore we need unity in our farming community.”
Mr Vanthemsche also urged farmers to get on the front foot in addressing the issues that confront them.
“When we are reactive, we are always in a defensive position,” he said.
“We have to be proactive in solving our problems. We must see the signals that come from society. If we don’t solve our own problems, others will try and solve them. And that’s always worse than if we do it ourselves.”
“But it’s not easy to be critical of ourselves.”
* Matthew Cawood was in Belgium courtesy of NSW Farm Writers.
Email a friend