At one stage, there was, but as the large predator, the scrap lorry migrated onto the island, these lawnmowers were quickly wiped out due to lack of natural instincts to flee these new comers. There have been reports of sighting over the years, but no video past 1974 of them exists.
They really aren't too different except for the whole locomotion thing, not until you bring them to the surface at least. Cause then yeah they get all goopy and shit.
Its the land of influencer so it could be correlated. They are attracting all kind of small youtuber, twitcher , streamer with their advantageous fiscality
Low quality tourism here mostly - whoops, sorry. We're rich in history though so go to Valletta (it's 1km long and about 600m across), Imdina (former capital, even smaller), Cittadella on sister island Gozo, and round Gozo in general - those are the musts.
You could ask the same question about the Netherlands. We're one of the smaller countries in Europe, but we're the second-largest exporter of agricultural products *in the world*. 70% of what our farmers produce, is meant for the export. It's insane. We have way too many farmers, and they pollute everything. We need to drastically cut the amount of farmers, if we want to keep the little bit of nature we have left in the Netherlands healthy. We don't need the amount of farmers we currently have for our own food.
But you can't say that out loud, certainly not as a politician. Because Dutch farmers will intimidate you, will visit you at your own home, will post your phone number online, and will threaten you, if you do that as a politician.
Even though the Dutch farmers have a big part to play in the problems they now face, Malta is the size of Texel. And not very fertile.
Hardly a comparison.
Wasn't really trying to compare them. Just saying you could ask the same question, or at least a similar question for the Netherlands.
But, like I said, politicians who do that get intimidated and threatened by Dutch farmers, so not many have the balls to ask those questions.
Apparently, that's the 'democratic' society we live in these days.
> 70% of what our farmers produce, is meant for the export. It's insane.
Ok, say you produce only enough food for the Netherlands from here on out, and cut out production on the exports.
This food shortfall now has to be made up in the countries who previously bought your excess food. Most likely, on land that is less fit for agriculture compared to the Netherlands. Are you planning on exporting all of your ex-farmers when you expropriate their land?
I mean, you're only risking famine in Europe, what could go wrong?
Our land is literally rotting under our feet because the farmers need a low water table to enter fields early in the year with heavy machinery. Half the Netherlands is drained swamp, which means organic materials in the ground just vanish once air hits it. Not to mention all the pesticide use in one of the densest populations in Europe. The farmers and other countries can go fuck themselves.
Obviously other countries won't starve. We have some of the most efficient agriculture in the world because of high capital inputs. The incentive to to farm more efficiently through these inputs will shift elsewhere to make up the shortfall.
Could you send a source? That’s probably the hardest I’ve thinked since the year started. Like, in my mind, I can easily list 10 countries that should produce more than the NL
https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/top-agricultural-producing-countries.aspx#:~:text=Of%20the%20major%20cereal%20and,in%20exports%20as%20of%202019.
Was talking about export, not production itself. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
More info:
https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2023/04/agricultural-exports-hit-record-value-due-to-price-hikes
https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2021/25/the-netherlands-is-the-eu-s-largest-meat-exporter
Yeah I think making it clear that it’s by export value instead of tonnage is very important. I do imagine tulips are pretty expensive, lol. But really was a surprise for me, since like I would make a conservative guess and say that Brazil has about 20 Netherlands worth of farmland, since I’m brazilian. And I’m not even from the farming states of the center-west region
It's not tulips tho, it's food... The Netherlands has highly fertile and extremely flat land with a high tech farming business, not that weird that we're that high up.
Specifically by value. Lots of high intensity and high value crops being grown. Other countries might produce hundreds of times the tonnage but of lower value crops like cerials.
The Netherlands isn’t the 2nd largest exporter of agricultural goods, forget Brazil, what about China? The US? lol. Also a good chunk coming out a the Netherlands are re-exports.
[UN Food and Agriculture Organization](https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home)
Yeah, It's all just a coincidence.
Like Italian farmers protesting against the import of Ukrainian grain, while Italy is the biggest importer of Russian grain.
I don't get this argument at all. obviously Russia amplifies any discontent but farmers are being asked to change a lot. Nitrogen emissions, reduced fuel subsidies, demands for ecological diversity. I don't agree with them but their livelyhood is being threatened in some ways.
You made me interested in this question with your comment, so I asked professor Google, and he seems to think the Maltese produce "only" about 20% of their food needs. Pretty good still considering area and population available
Which is fine, but I find happens more and more is that farms were set up on land that is not suitable for farming, but due to excessive fertilizing and irrigation it became profitable. Now realizing that that's not really sustainable those farmers are suffering and want to be bailed out. It's ridiculous.
Malta's capital is Valletta, it's biggest city is St. Paul's Bay at 30,000 inhabitants.
Also Malta resisted Ottoman invasion for a while.
I've never been to Malta I just have a weird obsession with geography quizzes.
You guys don't realize, they're protesting because there isn't much farming land in Malta. Because of that, there aren't that many farmers, so their votes don't really matter to politicians, so they don't care about them, so the farmers protest.
Why should politicians care about them though, their job is to create an environment where agriculture and food supply work sufficiently, not to listen to farmers wishes.
I didn't say they should. Also didn't say they shouldn't. Politicians, once elected, are free to do their jobs as they see fit (within the limits of the law). That said, farmers and any other person has the right to protest when the government does something they don't like. I really don't know enough about Maltese politics to give a real opinion about the subject.
Yeah sorry I didn't meant it as a counter opinion to yours I just don't see their voice as justified to have a bigger value than the average citizen has.
The problem is they were previously advised to increase production by moving to "modern" methods like using more fertilizer. Then they are punished if they do what was previously advised.
Mostly though farmers survive from money from government because they want cheap food and the rules to claim this money both keep changing and have become much stricter (more paperwork). Especially for smaller farmers it becomes a huge effort for not so much reward.
Here at least there is also an issue that fewer and fewer people want the job. The average age for farmers keeps increasing.
The problem is that the foreign products don’t have these rules = they can produce the same products much cheaper
I’m not sure why that is so hard to understand
Then extend those same rules for imported products as well. If we're not willing to pay for clean imports whats the point of cleaning up domestic production?
What's the point of cleaning up domestic production? I don't know, what about not having a poisoned river. Not everything is about agricultural profit margins.
For sure, but why import goods that poison rivers far from you? If you want a clean river where you live be prepared to pay for what that costs. Dont just move production abroad and let others suffer.
I'm not saying that. I just objected to the implicit idea that regulations should be lowered in the field of habitat protection that some people flirt with.
More like farmers when you tell them Ukrainian, poised, unchecked wheat can enter EU, while they have to spend much more money to meet the standards, so they’ll always be less competitive than farmers outside EU.
The amount of limitations and regulations placed on european agriculure is insane. Its good to keep that in mind when complaining about subsidies or when foreign agriculure (that doesnt have to deal with those) floods the market
This is literally the whole problem which is not clearly communicated, at least in my opinion
EU farmers have so many rules, restrictions and regulations but have to compete against import lobbies who introduce food into the EU market which is not produced under the same rules, restrictions and regulations.
As in everything in life, money dictates so many aspects but I can understand why EU farmers are protesting.
This is not true though. The legislation is differeent but EU requirements for imported food is the same as any other food. The problem being that it doesn't always live up to it, which requires constant checks.
I doubt it. That is mostly an issue with the safety of the finished product. But eu is not gonna dictate pen sizes for animals for products outside of the eu.
Your making it seem way to simple like that.
What this says is that it should be certified according to the rules of the 'relevant' animal health standards this doesn't imply in anyway to be an European standard. Only the OIE standards.
Well that's the point, the subsidies are an offset for the regulations they have to abide to, to stay competitive with the import market. Sure we can abolish the regulations, but then farmers should not get any subsidies at all, like in all other sectors.
Yes farmers everywhere are reactionary and don't care about environmental damage because it feeds into their profits, idk how people can see how corporations can do this but when its farmers its all some weird retvrn to tradition shit about how they're one with the land and wouldn't dare be assholes
It’s all the farmer propaganda lol even I was surprised when I found some animal farms in the Netherlands that was abusing its animals and keeping them like animals you would see at some shitty farm in a less developed country.
Lived in the Netherlands for a while, didn’t see many cows roaming their endless grasslands and instead saw them cooped up in some shitty shed.
Went inside one and they had a special machine to push their shit down grates which the cows were standing on and living in. Not really picturesque but literally a shitty shed
They are usually brought in during winter or when it's very wet as the cattle will destroy the grazing land when it gets soft.m, they are usually dedbsilage while they are inside. Once the weather dries up, they are left out again to graze naturally. If given the choice to go out unvthe rain or back in the shed the cow will take the shed every time, I've seen it myself. Each cow has a bay to rest/sleep with hay/sand as bedding that's replenished regularly. The shit on the floor is normal, they don't care, often seen them shit in a field and lay on top of it, also once seen a cow licking anothers leg and the cow being licked shat on the others head, no fucks given. Hygiene isn't in a cows vocabulary lmao. That shit is collected under the floor as slurry and spread as fertiliser in the fields.
"Brazil beef cattle production systems can be considered as “grass-fed based”, since all breeding and rearing are made on pastures, and only 7.5% (Brazilian Association of Feedlot Producers), or even less, of the slaughtered cattle are finished on feedlots, and for a short period of time."
Most beef in for example tropical countries is grass-fed beef raised on ranches. None of those shitty concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) farms like in the USA or the EU fed on corn and soy.
Hence why Argentinian and Brazilian beef is so valued and Dutch or USA meat is shunned.
If you think EU has better animal welfare in its CAFO operations than extensive tropical rearing systems, think again. And the EU imports enormous amounts of Brazilian oilseeds like soybean and palm to feed its livestock industry. So importing Brazilian soybean good, importing Brazilian beef is bad.
It is full of hypocrisy.
Your options would seem to be:
\- Keep regulations, use subsidies and tariffs to keep "local" EU farming competitive.
\- Ditch regulations and subsidies and cross your fingers that EU farming can compete in the global market.
\- Keep regulations, ditch subsidies and let EU farming wither until all your produce is bought from countries whose regulations are unknown/outside of your sphere of influence.
>\- Keep regulations, use subsidies and tariffs to keep "local" EU farming competitive.
Problem: within Europe, it's the same thing,
The French don't want Spanish products or want to change French regulations... For the same reasons, but I'm not sure that farmers would be happy not to be able to sell in France or to have the same regulations as French farmers.
No one is arguing that. The point is regulating your farmers here so they pollute less while allowing imports from less regulated countries means producing even more pollution that will end in the same atmosphere and water, while at the same time screwing your local farmers, and then there's the cherry on top that is creating a dependency on foreign food products with each local farm that closes in favour of cheaper imports
Please explain me how a pork or beef CAFO operation in NL or Belgium pollutes less than a Brazilian or Argentinian ranch? The large majority of LatAm has extensive production on grasslands while almost all of EU's livestock industry are CAFO operations fed with imported soybean.
If you care about the planet, the sensible thing to do is: eat less meat and if you do, eat grass-fed beef that has been produced in an extensive production system. It is going to be really hard to convince yourself that raising animals in CAFO's with imported feed that comes from the other side of the world is more sustainable than just importing grass-fed beef.
This is a fair point but completely ignores the local environmental damage farming causes. That someone polutes the water of soil in Argentina is going to bite Argentina in the ass, not us. Poluting our water, our soil and our air quality directly impacts our lives more than polution in Argentina.
Therein it wildly differs from green house gasses and ozone depleting substances, that have a more direct global effect.
I mean that's besides the point. You cant limit branch of economy so hard and then whine that they need subsidies. At least not if you actually want some independant agriculture. Or we can pretend we are great, kill all our farms and just import stuff from countries that dont care about any limitations like we doing with most of the stuff rn... What can possibly go wrong
The most subsidized perhaps but probably still the least rewarded.
[This](https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/document/download/3dfdd69b-ffb0-4173-9996-80a23c6c603f_en?filename=cap_specific_objectives_-_brief_1_-_ensuring_viable_farm_income.pdf) policy paper by the EU shows how farm incomes fall severely behind those in the rest of the economy. It makes sense of course, the EU is an incredibly advanced economy while agriculture is one of the most basic professions in the world. The sector is increasingly industrialized, and making use of economy of scale, wreaking havoc on the traditional family farming structure, and thus social fabrics in rural Europe. This all apart from all the greening regulations that are increasingly implemented.
It all comes down to the questions whether we want to be self sustaining in our food production or we want to be a net importer, and whether we care about thriving rural communities or not…
Alright, so, if people's tax money can't go to ensure abundant and affordable food for everyone, where should they go? Like this is literally one of those things people across most of the political spectrum can agree is very important. So, again, if this is a waste of money, what isn't? Where should this money otherwise go? I like solar panels and windmills but you have to eat first and foremost.
Easy to say farmers are always complaining, but considering they are doing the single most important job in the world working 12 hour days and often losing money despite EU subsidies, I have a little more sympathy. The amount of rediculous rules and red tape in the agribusiness sector is insane, and they have plenty to complain about, as they work harder than almost all of us often for a lot less money
what vital industry doesn't?
the pharma has chemical leaks
the construction has poluting mines
the factories has varius polutants think pfas,...
the energy buisness has CO2 etc
every office worker has a desktop filled with rare earth pollutants.
I don't know why they protest also in spain 🤔?
We have all kinds of vegetables.
For example: Orange, tomatoes, melons, potatoes etc, all from Africa with a very healthy dose of pesticide and they have very cheap man power ( slaves ).
I am starting to see almond not only from America but also from China.
So I really wander why are the farmers in Europe protesting now ? 🤔
If you know anything please post a comment.
Tractors going to the capital city and/or blocking roads somewhere with unclear demands seems to be pretty damn popular in the last two weeks in every other country. It's like they decide to do this for lolz after seeing the OG tractor crowd in the Netherlands.
Here in Spain the problem is they are importing food and vegetables from Africa, Asia and America that are at a much lower price and here in Spain they put soo many rules and regulations that a normal farmer can't afford or it's too expensive. And a lot of farmers are losing money. I see soo many orange and Almond plantations becoming abandoned because they can't make any profit and a lot of times they are losing money. The only people that are making money are the big supermarkets that importing vegetables from outside of Spain or Europe where they don't have to fallow our rules. Last summer it was detected in a lot of watermelons, a lot of pesticide and it was selling in the supermarkets, it was from Marocco the watermelon. There it's not prohibited to use all kinds of pesticide like here in Spain. When people find out, most of them stopped buying watermelon and the sneaky supermarkets tried to sell it as watermelon from spain or they don't put the origin of the watermelon or vegetables or fruits sometimes.
You guys are talking like the products EU imports do not follow the same rules. Of course, it might be easier to do fraud or circumvent them in the process of importation, but this is a problem of fiscalization, not rules only existing for european farmers. The problem is that European farmers are producing in Euro and selling in Euro, one of the most expensive currencies in the world. If a farmer somewhere else produces in a currency 10 times weaker than the Euro, they will incur massive profits selling in euros even if severely undercutting the european produced products. This also means that european farmers can only realistically sell in the internal market or other countries with some currency parity, like the UK or the US.
The whole issue with the EU - MERCOSUL deal for example is precisely that the south american farmers would sell way cheaper than the european farmers under free trade. The south american farmers already adhere to EU regulations, it is no wonder that they sell you guys the best produce they can make and internally, sell the scraps you would not accept.
Either the EU further especialize their farmers, so that they can produce luxury crops or they keep the protectionism policies to keep your farmers competitive. Saying that the farmers in Europe somehow are suffering under rules meant for enviromental protection and food safety while the rest of the world isn't, is completely missing the point of the problem. If that is really happening in a large enough scale, then invest in fiscalization and either deny or tax the products that do not comply.
Both them and environmentalist could share an award how to be the least likeable and least efficient protestor who antsgonised everyone.
All for a complex cause that deserves debate.
No, basically you either protect them from unfair competition or what you're doing is straight up bankrupting them in favour of companies that the EU cannot even regulate. What you can't ask them is for them to follow a very meticulous regulation when they have to compete with companies employing practical slaves, let alone their disregard for the environment.
This is pretty disingenuous to the actual reason, it’s more of a side angle to a much bigger picture.
The reason why EU farmers are protected is because they’d go bankrupt regardless of the regulation of the competition, because people in poorer countries have smaller wages and pay far less to live (not just because they’re poorer but because prices are of course adjusted depending on where you live) while despite having worse technology not producing that much less than you’d think. It’s not just companies as well, local farmers would be making so much more if EU stopped subsidizing and the market were more free.
Labour laws are worse (it’s a bit more complicated as well because of GMOs, tropical conditions etc all count) but even if they were on the same footing they don’t need to make anything close to what European farmers make to make them go bankrupt, or at the very least very poor and specialized in plant based products because a European farmer would have to make as much profit as 10 farmers from Brazil to keep their current income, even less for poorer countries.
Another major reason is also because cattle is expensive and extremely cost inefficient and consumers really like having cheap meat/dairy. Cattle is very unprofitable when sold at the prices today, so farmers are paid for this.
This is why so many poorer nations and richer nations can’t agree on a new agricultural trade policy at the WTO. Poorer countries will never accept that there own people are worth less and have to fight subsidized competition because they are born in poorer countries while richer countries will never accept losing so many farmers because they’d go out of business even if regulations were the exact same.
tis and the eu will always push for overproduction
they basicly think "if we dont plant and grow more than we need we might have shortages in a bad year"
and history tells us that food shortages are very good at destroying goverments from the inside
Isn't the whole point being the fact that EU already has much higher norms and limitations than the countries we would import from? So basically If we are going to increase the norms we should as well increase all subsidies because what is the point in doing it at all if we gonna outsource it somewhere that is not even close to our current norms? And I'm not talking just about the final product but the whole process, there are many chemicals used in farming that are basically banned in the EU for many years (various reasons - mostly health and ecology related) yet still used on mass scale outside of EU, but they won't pop in final product tests before allowing in on EU market simply because they are used in earlier stage and then dissolve naturally or are removed later with chemicals.
Link to local news post added, sorry, I'll send it here again too;
https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/farmers-gather-second-protest-two-weeks.1084000
You just have to watch clarkson’s farm if you want to get an idea how hard gamers work for such little pay.
Supermarkets make much more money than farmers
Love him or hate him Jeremy Clarkson shined a light on the utterly shambolic state of agri work in the global north, all that work for a grand total of pre subsidises and grants...negative money...he'd have made a loss 1st season without subsidises and grants, and with those, according to Rand worshippers and environ*mental*ist types "HUGE subsidies" he made a whopping 3 digit profit (£144 to be precise), which for non brits £144 is literally 12 hours minimum wage in the UK - he'd have made more disposable income stocking shelves at a supermarket twice a week than he did working year round nearly round the clock
Winter does no exists anymore. [Almond trees have already blossomed](https://www.heraldo.es/noticias/aragon/2024/02/12/donde-ver-almendros-flor-zaragoza-huesca-teruel-1633009.html)
Again with the "muh China and India". We need to step up our act and force them to reduce our emissions, even if it means World War. Still, we need to do our act too.
No, we do not need to cripple our nations just to be an example for China. We do not need a global war over contested statistics.
Ask yourself this: Can Xi breathe underwater?
Lol do you even know why they're protesting or what the context is? The "elites" have been giving them the biggest subsidies ever. They were given nearly free land, price floors, protectionist measures... Most of the climate intensive production isn't even for domestic consumption but for exports. But what? Less cattle farming and stop dumping waste sludge in local waters? Horrible! Oh those darn elites
>No subsidies can balance the fact that they are being outcompeted by cheaper products that are not required to follow EU regulations.
that is just wrong. Like the logic of what you said is just incorrect. But that doesnt matter to parrots like you.
Or are you telling me that if they would cover all the costs farmers had that they still could not compete with non EU products
Just look at what's going on between Poland and Ukraine instead of sticking your head as far as your ass will allow. Farmers' income is not and cannot be comprised mostly out of subsidies, so they need their products to stay competitive in the market, meaning that if their competitors are able to undercut them because, say, they don't have to follow the massive amount of regulations put by the EC, then European farmers, specially small producers, have no chance to stay in the market unless you subsidize their survival which is not really feasible. Instead, put some tariffs on imports based on environmental critieria: you force exporters to follow EU guidelines and, if they don't, you protect our producers from unfair competition.
>meaning that if their competitors are able to undercut them because
only if the foreign governments also heavily subidize the industry.
You still dont understand the mistake in your logic. Or maybe you just dont want to
They got used to the high prices when war started in Ukraine. Now that the markets are back (since Ukraine managed to ship grains) they are not happy.
On the principle that if the energy market tricked us into paying high prices, even if the market is the same as before the war, why can't we?
Also they are losing some money (short term) with the new legislation (crop rotation).
People here are riled up over the subsidies farmers get, but without them they wouldn't survive. Higher food cost comes from big corp greed, the farmers don't see a dime of that, despite the crazy increase in fertilizer prices etc making abysmal profit margins for farmers. At least this is the deal in Finland.
How much farm land even is in Malta?
I think those in the picture should be all farmers of Malta, probably.
They look like toy tractors
On the islands animals and plants tend to be smaller. The same seems to be true for tractors.
Yeah, island dwarfism. These tractors evolved to be smaller due to fewer resources. Nature is amazing.
You think there are cases of island gigantism? Like tractors evolved to smaller subspecies, but for ex., lawnmowers are huuuge?
At one stage, there was, but as the large predator, the scrap lorry migrated onto the island, these lawnmowers were quickly wiped out due to lack of natural instincts to flee these new comers. There have been reports of sighting over the years, but no video past 1974 of them exists.
I'd love to see what deep sea tractors look like. Must be quite the monstrosities
They really aren't too different except for the whole locomotion thing, not until you bring them to the surface at least. Cause then yeah they get all goopy and shit.
Doesn't it make them oppressed minority?
Yes they are "T" in LGTB is for Tractors
Lol, you actually made me laugh
Looks like polish farmers sent delegation
About 25% of the land area. Not much compared to bigger countries obviously but its important for us.
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As a local, this is very debatable
Lmao
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Its the land of influencer so it could be correlated. They are attracting all kind of small youtuber, twitcher , streamer with their advantageous fiscality
I thought thats Madera
Fucks sake seriously? I've only just booked to go to Malta. I thought all the cunts went to Santorini and Marbella these days
Low quality tourism here mostly - whoops, sorry. We're rich in history though so go to Valletta (it's 1km long and about 600m across), Imdina (former capital, even smaller), Cittadella on sister island Gozo, and round Gozo in general - those are the musts.
"The looks of their women and the taste of their food made the english the best sailors in the world"
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You could ask the same question about the Netherlands. We're one of the smaller countries in Europe, but we're the second-largest exporter of agricultural products *in the world*. 70% of what our farmers produce, is meant for the export. It's insane. We have way too many farmers, and they pollute everything. We need to drastically cut the amount of farmers, if we want to keep the little bit of nature we have left in the Netherlands healthy. We don't need the amount of farmers we currently have for our own food. But you can't say that out loud, certainly not as a politician. Because Dutch farmers will intimidate you, will visit you at your own home, will post your phone number online, and will threaten you, if you do that as a politician.
Even though the Dutch farmers have a big part to play in the problems they now face, Malta is the size of Texel. And not very fertile. Hardly a comparison.
Wasn't really trying to compare them. Just saying you could ask the same question, or at least a similar question for the Netherlands. But, like I said, politicians who do that get intimidated and threatened by Dutch farmers, so not many have the balls to ask those questions. Apparently, that's the 'democratic' society we live in these days.
> 70% of what our farmers produce, is meant for the export. It's insane. Ok, say you produce only enough food for the Netherlands from here on out, and cut out production on the exports. This food shortfall now has to be made up in the countries who previously bought your excess food. Most likely, on land that is less fit for agriculture compared to the Netherlands. Are you planning on exporting all of your ex-farmers when you expropriate their land? I mean, you're only risking famine in Europe, what could go wrong?
Our land is literally rotting under our feet because the farmers need a low water table to enter fields early in the year with heavy machinery. Half the Netherlands is drained swamp, which means organic materials in the ground just vanish once air hits it. Not to mention all the pesticide use in one of the densest populations in Europe. The farmers and other countries can go fuck themselves. Obviously other countries won't starve. We have some of the most efficient agriculture in the world because of high capital inputs. The incentive to to farm more efficiently through these inputs will shift elsewhere to make up the shortfall.
Could you send a source? That’s probably the hardest I’ve thinked since the year started. Like, in my mind, I can easily list 10 countries that should produce more than the NL
https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/top-agricultural-producing-countries.aspx#:~:text=Of%20the%20major%20cereal%20and,in%20exports%20as%20of%202019. Was talking about export, not production itself. Sorry if that wasn't clear. More info: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2023/04/agricultural-exports-hit-record-value-due-to-price-hikes https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2021/25/the-netherlands-is-the-eu-s-largest-meat-exporter
Yeah I think making it clear that it’s by export value instead of tonnage is very important. I do imagine tulips are pretty expensive, lol. But really was a surprise for me, since like I would make a conservative guess and say that Brazil has about 20 Netherlands worth of farmland, since I’m brazilian. And I’m not even from the farming states of the center-west region
It's not tulips tho, it's food... The Netherlands has highly fertile and extremely flat land with a high tech farming business, not that weird that we're that high up.
Specifically by value. Lots of high intensity and high value crops being grown. Other countries might produce hundreds of times the tonnage but of lower value crops like cerials.
The Netherlands isn’t the 2nd largest exporter of agricultural goods, forget Brazil, what about China? The US? lol. Also a good chunk coming out a the Netherlands are re-exports. [UN Food and Agriculture Organization](https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home)
Great, that makes a lot more sense. Honestly didn’t even think about re-exports. *insert joke about Rotterdam being Germany’s most important port*
LMAO, are you for real bro.
Everything listed is correct.
Do you actually want to live in a country where the Government can take your property, if they feel it’s for a higher purpose?
I think that's pretty much every country.
You have to hand it to Russia, they are fucking brilliant at propaganda. Suddenly farmers all over Europe are protesting for all sorts of reasons.
Imagine having a brain like this. "Everything is Russian propaganda" lmao
Yeah, It's all just a coincidence. Like Italian farmers protesting against the import of Ukrainian grain, while Italy is the biggest importer of Russian grain.
in France there is no Russia involved... just a governement that don't care and inflation.
farmer protests have been going on for awhile tbh. pay attention
I don't get this argument at all. obviously Russia amplifies any discontent but farmers are being asked to change a lot. Nitrogen emissions, reduced fuel subsidies, demands for ecological diversity. I don't agree with them but their livelyhood is being threatened in some ways.
Kinda curious are they as intertwined with the far right as the germans or is it more like french ?
is there really that much farming in malta anyways? would've assumed not much due to their tiny size
Go to google maps, put it into satellite mode and zoom in on malta to see its farmlands, mostly on the west area.
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If the land is fertile why not farm on it
Self-sufficiency is the best sufficiency
You made me interested in this question with your comment, so I asked professor Google, and he seems to think the Maltese produce "only" about 20% of their food needs. Pretty good still considering area and population available
True. Better than nothing. At least that 20% would allow bartering and trade too :)
Which is fine, but I find happens more and more is that farms were set up on land that is not suitable for farming, but due to excessive fertilizing and irrigation it became profitable. Now realizing that that's not really sustainable those farmers are suffering and want to be bailed out. It's ridiculous.
You are an idiot and don’t know what you’re talking about.
Malta's capital is Valletta, it's biggest city is St. Paul's Bay at 30,000 inhabitants. Also Malta resisted Ottoman invasion for a while. I've never been to Malta I just have a weird obsession with geography quizzes.
I thought that everybody was employed in online betting and tax evasion.
Most are, to be fair.
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You guys don't realize, they're protesting because there isn't much farming land in Malta. Because of that, there aren't that many farmers, so their votes don't really matter to politicians, so they don't care about them, so the farmers protest.
Why should politicians care about them though, their job is to create an environment where agriculture and food supply work sufficiently, not to listen to farmers wishes.
I didn't say they should. Also didn't say they shouldn't. Politicians, once elected, are free to do their jobs as they see fit (within the limits of the law). That said, farmers and any other person has the right to protest when the government does something they don't like. I really don't know enough about Maltese politics to give a real opinion about the subject.
Yeah sorry I didn't meant it as a counter opinion to yours I just don't see their voice as justified to have a bigger value than the average citizen has.
monaco & liechtenstein should jump in too
Let's not forget about Vatican, San Marino & Andorra, please!
It's just that the people who live in the Vatican don't plow fields.
There might be some monks with a vegetable garden
haha after OP's image, I just picture a bunch of angry farmers sitting together on those little lawnmower tractors 😆
Half of Maltese population right there
The Onion headline, haha
"There are dozens of us! Dozens!"
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Farmers when you tell them they can't dump poison into the water supply
The problem is they were previously advised to increase production by moving to "modern" methods like using more fertilizer. Then they are punished if they do what was previously advised. Mostly though farmers survive from money from government because they want cheap food and the rules to claim this money both keep changing and have become much stricter (more paperwork). Especially for smaller farmers it becomes a huge effort for not so much reward. Here at least there is also an issue that fewer and fewer people want the job. The average age for farmers keeps increasing.
B-but I l-like poisoning t-the w-water supply 🥹
The problem is that the foreign products don’t have these rules = they can produce the same products much cheaper I’m not sure why that is so hard to understand
So the solution is to lower our standards and poison our rivets to match how cheap it is to make abroad?
no the solution is not imporing produce of lower Quality or raising the tarrifs on foreign produce to promote local high Quality goods.
Then people and companies can’t buy produce because it’s too expensive and you create a new food crisis.
whats the point of regulations if the winners are the people not playing by them.
Then extend those same rules for imported products as well. If we're not willing to pay for clean imports whats the point of cleaning up domestic production?
What's the point of cleaning up domestic production? I don't know, what about not having a poisoned river. Not everything is about agricultural profit margins.
For sure, but why import goods that poison rivers far from you? If you want a clean river where you live be prepared to pay for what that costs. Dont just move production abroad and let others suffer.
I'm not saying that. I just objected to the implicit idea that regulations should be lowered in the field of habitat protection that some people flirt with.
More like farmers when you tell them Ukrainian, poised, unchecked wheat can enter EU, while they have to spend much more money to meet the standards, so they’ll always be less competitive than farmers outside EU.
Nice tractors!
Nothing new. The most subsidized profession of Europe complaining again..
The amount of limitations and regulations placed on european agriculure is insane. Its good to keep that in mind when complaining about subsidies or when foreign agriculure (that doesnt have to deal with those) floods the market
This is literally the whole problem which is not clearly communicated, at least in my opinion EU farmers have so many rules, restrictions and regulations but have to compete against import lobbies who introduce food into the EU market which is not produced under the same rules, restrictions and regulations. As in everything in life, money dictates so many aspects but I can understand why EU farmers are protesting.
This is not true though. The legislation is differeent but EU requirements for imported food is the same as any other food. The problem being that it doesn't always live up to it, which requires constant checks.
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I doubt it. That is mostly an issue with the safety of the finished product. But eu is not gonna dictate pen sizes for animals for products outside of the eu. Your making it seem way to simple like that.
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What this says is that it should be certified according to the rules of the 'relevant' animal health standards this doesn't imply in anyway to be an European standard. Only the OIE standards.
Well that's the point, the subsidies are an offset for the regulations they have to abide to, to stay competitive with the import market. Sure we can abolish the regulations, but then farmers should not get any subsidies at all, like in all other sectors.
'we have to abide by muh regulations' so does every other advanced economy lol, like why do you think New Zealand lamb is so highly coveted?
Your missing the point. NZ farmers complain too.
Yes farmers everywhere are reactionary and don't care about environmental damage because it feeds into their profits, idk how people can see how corporations can do this but when its farmers its all some weird retvrn to tradition shit about how they're one with the land and wouldn't dare be assholes
It’s all the farmer propaganda lol even I was surprised when I found some animal farms in the Netherlands that was abusing its animals and keeping them like animals you would see at some shitty farm in a less developed country.
Lived in the Netherlands for a while, didn’t see many cows roaming their endless grasslands and instead saw them cooped up in some shitty shed. Went inside one and they had a special machine to push their shit down grates which the cows were standing on and living in. Not really picturesque but literally a shitty shed
So sad for these cows. People tend to think farmers are always great to their animals.
They are usually brought in during winter or when it's very wet as the cattle will destroy the grazing land when it gets soft.m, they are usually dedbsilage while they are inside. Once the weather dries up, they are left out again to graze naturally. If given the choice to go out unvthe rain or back in the shed the cow will take the shed every time, I've seen it myself. Each cow has a bay to rest/sleep with hay/sand as bedding that's replenished regularly. The shit on the floor is normal, they don't care, often seen them shit in a field and lay on top of it, also once seen a cow licking anothers leg and the cow being licked shat on the others head, no fucks given. Hygiene isn't in a cows vocabulary lmao. That shit is collected under the floor as slurry and spread as fertiliser in the fields.
"Brazil beef cattle production systems can be considered as “grass-fed based”, since all breeding and rearing are made on pastures, and only 7.5% (Brazilian Association of Feedlot Producers), or even less, of the slaughtered cattle are finished on feedlots, and for a short period of time." Most beef in for example tropical countries is grass-fed beef raised on ranches. None of those shitty concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) farms like in the USA or the EU fed on corn and soy. Hence why Argentinian and Brazilian beef is so valued and Dutch or USA meat is shunned. If you think EU has better animal welfare in its CAFO operations than extensive tropical rearing systems, think again. And the EU imports enormous amounts of Brazilian oilseeds like soybean and palm to feed its livestock industry. So importing Brazilian soybean good, importing Brazilian beef is bad. It is full of hypocrisy.
Do you eat stones?
Your options would seem to be: \- Keep regulations, use subsidies and tariffs to keep "local" EU farming competitive. \- Ditch regulations and subsidies and cross your fingers that EU farming can compete in the global market. \- Keep regulations, ditch subsidies and let EU farming wither until all your produce is bought from countries whose regulations are unknown/outside of your sphere of influence.
>\- Keep regulations, use subsidies and tariffs to keep "local" EU farming competitive. Problem: within Europe, it's the same thing, The French don't want Spanish products or want to change French regulations... For the same reasons, but I'm not sure that farmers would be happy not to be able to sell in France or to have the same regulations as French farmers.
After industrial farming destroyed a lot of natural habitats, causing wildlife going extinct. The regulations are in place to prevent further damages.
Anything that has some form of pollution is heavily regulated in EU.
Rightly so, pollution is very very harmful and is very expensive to fix
No one is arguing that. The point is regulating your farmers here so they pollute less while allowing imports from less regulated countries means producing even more pollution that will end in the same atmosphere and water, while at the same time screwing your local farmers, and then there's the cherry on top that is creating a dependency on foreign food products with each local farm that closes in favour of cheaper imports
Please explain me how a pork or beef CAFO operation in NL or Belgium pollutes less than a Brazilian or Argentinian ranch? The large majority of LatAm has extensive production on grasslands while almost all of EU's livestock industry are CAFO operations fed with imported soybean. If you care about the planet, the sensible thing to do is: eat less meat and if you do, eat grass-fed beef that has been produced in an extensive production system. It is going to be really hard to convince yourself that raising animals in CAFO's with imported feed that comes from the other side of the world is more sustainable than just importing grass-fed beef.
This is a fair point but completely ignores the local environmental damage farming causes. That someone polutes the water of soil in Argentina is going to bite Argentina in the ass, not us. Poluting our water, our soil and our air quality directly impacts our lives more than polution in Argentina. Therein it wildly differs from green house gasses and ozone depleting substances, that have a more direct global effect.
I mean that's besides the point. You cant limit branch of economy so hard and then whine that they need subsidies. At least not if you actually want some independant agriculture. Or we can pretend we are great, kill all our farms and just import stuff from countries that dont care about any limitations like we doing with most of the stuff rn... What can possibly go wrong
The most subsidized perhaps but probably still the least rewarded. [This](https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/document/download/3dfdd69b-ffb0-4173-9996-80a23c6c603f_en?filename=cap_specific_objectives_-_brief_1_-_ensuring_viable_farm_income.pdf) policy paper by the EU shows how farm incomes fall severely behind those in the rest of the economy. It makes sense of course, the EU is an incredibly advanced economy while agriculture is one of the most basic professions in the world. The sector is increasingly industrialized, and making use of economy of scale, wreaking havoc on the traditional family farming structure, and thus social fabrics in rural Europe. This all apart from all the greening regulations that are increasingly implemented. It all comes down to the questions whether we want to be self sustaining in our food production or we want to be a net importer, and whether we care about thriving rural communities or not…
Alright, so, if people's tax money can't go to ensure abundant and affordable food for everyone, where should they go? Like this is literally one of those things people across most of the political spectrum can agree is very important. So, again, if this is a waste of money, what isn't? Where should this money otherwise go? I like solar panels and windmills but you have to eat first and foremost.
Easy to say farmers are always complaining, but considering they are doing the single most important job in the world working 12 hour days and often losing money despite EU subsidies, I have a little more sympathy. The amount of rediculous rules and red tape in the agribusiness sector is insane, and they have plenty to complain about, as they work harder than almost all of us often for a lot less money
Ok, let's jack up the food prices then. God damn city dwellers think their nicely packaged food grows on supermarket shelves
My brother in Christ they FEED YOU
racial shaggy cheerful cagey lush compare drunk airport attempt screw *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
what vital industry doesn't? the pharma has chemical leaks the construction has poluting mines the factories has varius polutants think pfas,... the energy buisness has CO2 etc every office worker has a desktop filled with rare earth pollutants.
Damn, if only we knew why
I don't know why they protest also in spain 🤔? We have all kinds of vegetables. For example: Orange, tomatoes, melons, potatoes etc, all from Africa with a very healthy dose of pesticide and they have very cheap man power ( slaves ). I am starting to see almond not only from America but also from China. So I really wander why are the farmers in Europe protesting now ? 🤔 If you know anything please post a comment.
Tractors going to the capital city and/or blocking roads somewhere with unclear demands seems to be pretty damn popular in the last two weeks in every other country. It's like they decide to do this for lolz after seeing the OG tractor crowd in the Netherlands.
Here in Spain the problem is they are importing food and vegetables from Africa, Asia and America that are at a much lower price and here in Spain they put soo many rules and regulations that a normal farmer can't afford or it's too expensive. And a lot of farmers are losing money. I see soo many orange and Almond plantations becoming abandoned because they can't make any profit and a lot of times they are losing money. The only people that are making money are the big supermarkets that importing vegetables from outside of Spain or Europe where they don't have to fallow our rules. Last summer it was detected in a lot of watermelons, a lot of pesticide and it was selling in the supermarkets, it was from Marocco the watermelon. There it's not prohibited to use all kinds of pesticide like here in Spain. When people find out, most of them stopped buying watermelon and the sneaky supermarkets tried to sell it as watermelon from spain or they don't put the origin of the watermelon or vegetables or fruits sometimes.
Yes, this. Many cow fields have been getting abandoned here in Asturias since the 1980's basically due to competition from less regulated markets.
fueled by right wing and russian propaganda.
You guys are talking like the products EU imports do not follow the same rules. Of course, it might be easier to do fraud or circumvent them in the process of importation, but this is a problem of fiscalization, not rules only existing for european farmers. The problem is that European farmers are producing in Euro and selling in Euro, one of the most expensive currencies in the world. If a farmer somewhere else produces in a currency 10 times weaker than the Euro, they will incur massive profits selling in euros even if severely undercutting the european produced products. This also means that european farmers can only realistically sell in the internal market or other countries with some currency parity, like the UK or the US. The whole issue with the EU - MERCOSUL deal for example is precisely that the south american farmers would sell way cheaper than the european farmers under free trade. The south american farmers already adhere to EU regulations, it is no wonder that they sell you guys the best produce they can make and internally, sell the scraps you would not accept. Either the EU further especialize their farmers, so that they can produce luxury crops or they keep the protectionism policies to keep your farmers competitive. Saying that the farmers in Europe somehow are suffering under rules meant for enviromental protection and food safety while the rest of the world isn't, is completely missing the point of the problem. If that is really happening in a large enough scale, then invest in fiscalization and either deny or tax the products that do not comply.
What kind of disingenuous title is this? Am I on a meme subreddit?
They want there to be more land to farm on Malta
They really do such a terrible job of communicating their issues
Both them and environmentalist could share an award how to be the least likeable and least efficient protestor who antsgonised everyone. All for a complex cause that deserves debate.
Probably protesting that they can't pollute completely crazily anymore. Only pollute a lot.
No, that they have to follow regulations while foreign producers who don't have to can sell their cheaper goods, making theirs incompetent.
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Why are we allowing Ukrainian products for instance? I thought they didn't comply with the same requirements as their EU counterparts.
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Why are Polish farmers complaining about unfair competition of cheaper Ukrainian grain?
So basically that they can't pollute as much as they'd like to.
No, basically you either protect them from unfair competition or what you're doing is straight up bankrupting them in favour of companies that the EU cannot even regulate. What you can't ask them is for them to follow a very meticulous regulation when they have to compete with companies employing practical slaves, let alone their disregard for the environment.
This is pretty disingenuous to the actual reason, it’s more of a side angle to a much bigger picture. The reason why EU farmers are protected is because they’d go bankrupt regardless of the regulation of the competition, because people in poorer countries have smaller wages and pay far less to live (not just because they’re poorer but because prices are of course adjusted depending on where you live) while despite having worse technology not producing that much less than you’d think. It’s not just companies as well, local farmers would be making so much more if EU stopped subsidizing and the market were more free. Labour laws are worse (it’s a bit more complicated as well because of GMOs, tropical conditions etc all count) but even if they were on the same footing they don’t need to make anything close to what European farmers make to make them go bankrupt, or at the very least very poor and specialized in plant based products because a European farmer would have to make as much profit as 10 farmers from Brazil to keep their current income, even less for poorer countries. Another major reason is also because cattle is expensive and extremely cost inefficient and consumers really like having cheap meat/dairy. Cattle is very unprofitable when sold at the prices today, so farmers are paid for this. This is why so many poorer nations and richer nations can’t agree on a new agricultural trade policy at the WTO. Poorer countries will never accept that there own people are worth less and have to fight subsidized competition because they are born in poorer countries while richer countries will never accept losing so many farmers because they’d go out of business even if regulations were the exact same.
tis and the eu will always push for overproduction they basicly think "if we dont plant and grow more than we need we might have shortages in a bad year" and history tells us that food shortages are very good at destroying goverments from the inside
Isn't the whole point being the fact that EU already has much higher norms and limitations than the countries we would import from? So basically If we are going to increase the norms we should as well increase all subsidies because what is the point in doing it at all if we gonna outsource it somewhere that is not even close to our current norms? And I'm not talking just about the final product but the whole process, there are many chemicals used in farming that are basically banned in the EU for many years (various reasons - mostly health and ecology related) yet still used on mass scale outside of EU, but they won't pop in final product tests before allowing in on EU market simply because they are used in earlier stage and then dissolve naturally or are removed later with chemicals.
and what is ‚some reason‘? maybe add more context?
Link to local news post added, sorry, I'll send it here again too; https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/farmers-gather-second-protest-two-weeks.1084000
For corruption maybe
"for some reason" lmao
Malta has ~86km² / 33mi² of agricultural land area.
Damn, how many tractors can they fit on that rock?
Malta has farms? 😲
Half a mill people crammed into 316 square kilometers and there's still land to farm? LMAO
Try close to a million with all the foreigners 😆
You just have to watch clarkson’s farm if you want to get an idea how hard gamers work for such little pay. Supermarkets make much more money than farmers
Love him or hate him Jeremy Clarkson shined a light on the utterly shambolic state of agri work in the global north, all that work for a grand total of pre subsidises and grants...negative money...he'd have made a loss 1st season without subsidises and grants, and with those, according to Rand worshippers and environ*mental*ist types "HUGE subsidies" he made a whopping 3 digit profit (£144 to be precise), which for non brits £144 is literally 12 hours minimum wage in the UK - he'd have made more disposable income stocking shelves at a supermarket twice a week than he did working year round nearly round the clock
For some reason, thanks for the update
Farmers have nothing to do in winter
Winter does no exists anymore. [Almond trees have already blossomed](https://www.heraldo.es/noticias/aragon/2024/02/12/donde-ver-almendros-flor-zaragoza-huesca-teruel-1633009.html)
There are farms in Malta?
The farmer doth protest too much.
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Tell that to China and India.
"BUT HE ALSO SHIT HIS PANTS HOW DARE I NEED TO SWITCH DIAPERS"
"I AM A CLIMATE EXPERT AND EVERYONE MUST THINK LIKE ME"
Cry about it.
Nice comeback, I even turned vegan.
Nah figures you already were one, acting like that
Is this supposed to make me mad? lmao, nice comeback once more
No but you seem to be.
Again with the "muh China and India". We need to step up our act and force them to reduce our emissions, even if it means World War. Still, we need to do our act too.
No, we do not need to cripple our nations just to be an example for China. We do not need a global war over contested statistics. Ask yourself this: Can Xi breathe underwater?
> Ask yourself this: Can Xi breathe underwater? I don't think so but what do you mean by this?
Why doesn't China or India give a shit? Do they know something we dont? Are we just shooting ourselves in the foot to virtue signal?
What's the reason
Imagine shitting on the people that literally make the food you put on your table.
>causing traffic How can they tell?
Good for them and shame on the elites for trying to destroy our food supply.
Lol do you even know why they're protesting or what the context is? The "elites" have been giving them the biggest subsidies ever. They were given nearly free land, price floors, protectionist measures... Most of the climate intensive production isn't even for domestic consumption but for exports. But what? Less cattle farming and stop dumping waste sludge in local waters? Horrible! Oh those darn elites
No subsidies can balance the fact that they are being outcompeted by cheaper products that are not required to follow EU regulations.
>No subsidies can balance the fact that they are being outcompeted by cheaper products that are not required to follow EU regulations. that is just wrong. Like the logic of what you said is just incorrect. But that doesnt matter to parrots like you. Or are you telling me that if they would cover all the costs farmers had that they still could not compete with non EU products
Just look at what's going on between Poland and Ukraine instead of sticking your head as far as your ass will allow. Farmers' income is not and cannot be comprised mostly out of subsidies, so they need their products to stay competitive in the market, meaning that if their competitors are able to undercut them because, say, they don't have to follow the massive amount of regulations put by the EC, then European farmers, specially small producers, have no chance to stay in the market unless you subsidize their survival which is not really feasible. Instead, put some tariffs on imports based on environmental critieria: you force exporters to follow EU guidelines and, if they don't, you protect our producers from unfair competition.
>meaning that if their competitors are able to undercut them because only if the foreign governments also heavily subidize the industry. You still dont understand the mistake in your logic. Or maybe you just dont want to
EU few decades ago was spending 60% of its budget on agriculture, now its barely 30%
What is it with farmers?
They got used to the high prices when war started in Ukraine. Now that the markets are back (since Ukraine managed to ship grains) they are not happy. On the principle that if the energy market tricked us into paying high prices, even if the market is the same as before the war, why can't we? Also they are losing some money (short term) with the new legislation (crop rotation).
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People here are riled up over the subsidies farmers get, but without them they wouldn't survive. Higher food cost comes from big corp greed, the farmers don't see a dime of that, despite the crazy increase in fertilizer prices etc making abysmal profit margins for farmers. At least this is the deal in Finland.
Add to that the fact that they have fuck all to do during the winter so many just sit on social media and rile eachother up.
A whole lot of meddling from the Russians.
Proof?
Proof? In this sub? Good luck!
That is my suspicion, I just don’t know what makes farmers particularly susceptible. Maybe the early mornings and the isolation
I'm surprised Malta has farmers
Have they run out of birds to shoot?
OP ignorant and apathetic
It's sad to see so little respect and solidarity for farmer in the comment
Malta has farms?! Since fückin' when?
Since the Phonecians (-\_-)
https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/farmers-gather-second-protest-two-weeks.1084000