Spain tractor protests leave Sanchez facing first bout of unrest

For Luis Sancha, who grows olives and cereals in the countryside near Madrid, a family tradition could soon die out because his son thinks the family farm may be doomed and doesn’t want to take it on.

“We got as far as the third generation but the fourth will be lost,” Sancha, 61, said in an interview outside the Agriculture Ministry in the Spanish capital, where he was taking part in a protest against worsening conditions for growers. “He can’t see a future in this work.” Instead, his son is studying and working as a hotel receptionist in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Demonstrations by tens of thousands of farmers across Spain in recent days are testimony to their fears about a growing list of complaints, including dwindling prices and the impact of Brexit and U.S. tariffs. The Spanish protests have left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez scrambling to contain the unrest as his new Socialist-led government settles into office.

A similar sense of angst has led farmers onto the streets in countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland in recent months. Hundreds of their peers in the U.K. will gather in London on March 25 to urge the government to safeguard British farming standards in post-Brexit trade deals.

Spain is the largest producer of fruit and fresh vegetables in the EU, accounting for around one-quarter of production value, according to the bloc’s statistics agency. That means the outcome of the talks between farmers and the government could ultimately impact the cost of those products. In a sign of how dire the outlook is for olive producers in particular, many growers say they are letting their fruit rot on the trees because the cost of picking them exceeds what they can earn selling them.

“Everything has exploded at the same time,” said Gabriel Trenzado, technical director at Spain’s Agro-alimentarias cooperative, which represents hundreds of olive growers. The U.S. administration’s tariffs have hit profits and “there’s frustration in the atmosphere,” he added.

President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on one kind of Spanish olive in August 2018 and then imposed additional duties on olive oil, one of Spain’s most emblematic exports, as part of a broader trade spat that targeted a range of European consumer goods.

“To produce a kilo of olives, it costs me 40 cents ($0.43) and I’m selling for 25 cents,” said Fidel del Olmo, a 62-year-old farmer at the Madrid protest. “I’m not picking. It’s not worth taking them off the trees.”

Multiple Grievances

The two sides will be hard-pressed to find longer-term solutions because the farmers’ grievances are multiple and deep-seated.

“It’s more of a protest of ‘the outraged,’” said Eduardo Moyano, a professor of rural sociology at various Spanish universities. “It’s not against anyone in particular.”

Farmers in Spain and elsewhere in the EU are worried that the exit of Britain, a net contributor to the bloc’s budget, could mean less financial support. For Spanish growers, the subsides from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, a nearly 60 billion-euro program, on average represent around one-third of their income.

“It seems inevitable to me that agricultural subsidies are going to decrease,” said Tomas Garcia Azcarate, a scientist at Spain’s National Research Council. “The Gordian knot is to ensure that farmers recover that income in the market,” Garcia Azcarate said.

Additional Whammy

That’s a tall order, though, particularly for the many olive farmers who are among the protesters.

The supply of olives in Spain, the world’s biggest producer, has increased significantly in recent years because of more irrigation and mechanization, but consumption hasn’t kept pace. That, along with the weak bargaining power of farmers’ co-operatives, has driven down prices.Then came the additional whammy of Trump’s tariffs.“Why do I have to pay for the problems between Airbus and Boeing?” said Juan de Dios Segura, a 60-year-old olive farmer in La Roda de Andalucia. He’s planning to attend a protest in Seville at the end of February, a sign that growers’ list of grievances won’t be easily addressed.