![\"Support](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2024\/02\/1c156cd4-gp0stzhhu.jpg\" "\\"Support")
Farmers are facing a real crisis<\/h2>\n\n
Farmers\u2019 anger is legitimate and we share it. In just 15 years, the EU has lost almost 40% of its farmers, almost exclusively small and medium ones, who have either gone out of business or been bought up by their increasingly large competitors. Similar trends can be observed in other parts of the world: small and medium farms accounted for nearly half of all agricultural production in the U.S. in the 1990s, whereas today they represent less than a quarter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n At the same time, exploitative free trade agreements pushed by many governments like the EU Mercosur agreement add to the pressure, entrenching an extractive system that expands corporate profits and power to the detriment of workers, communities, family farmers and the environment, particularly in the global South<\/a>. Human activity has triggered a climate and biodiversity crisis, with global food systems in particular being the main driver of biodiversity loss<\/a>. Alongside conflicts and economic shocks, extreme weather events (and associated disturbed agricultural production) are the primary drivers of world hunger<\/a>. This is poised to only get worse as the climate crisis intensifies. A single climate disaster could crush small and medium-sized farms that are already struggling to stay afloat.<\/p>\n\n
The problem is the way industrial agriculture, and more broadly the global food system, is organised. It\u2019s a system that rewards with subsidies harmful farming practices that damages people\u2019s health, fuels the climate crisis, destroys nature and drives inequality by excluding smallholder farmers.<\/a> Farmers are at the mercy of bigger corporate players up the food chain that impose low prices on the farmers\u2019 products whilst at the same squeezing farmers at the source by raising the price of inputs, such as hybrid seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and animal drugs. This pushes smaller producers out of the market, as only factory farms can survive selling at low prices while bearing higher input costs. Big Ag’s bullying message to family businesses is: get big or get out!<\/p>\n\n
As the weakest link in the colossal machinery that produces our food, farmers are right to be concerned.<\/p>\n\n![\"Activists](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2023\/11\/57b0d644-gp0stwg3o-1024x683.jpg\" "\\"Activists")
Farmers are plagued by the impacts of the climate crisis\u2026 <\/h2>\n\n