The Potato Throwers
Foodthink Commentary
Last winter, I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and stood before his masterpiece, *The Potato Eaters* (1885). In the dim light of the canvas, a family is gathered around a table for dinner; the only items on the table are a plate of steaming boiled potato chunks and a few cups of coffee.
The potato was once a staple of rural European livelihoods and a symbol of dignity for the continent’s working classes. To this day, it remains one of Europe’s most important agricultural products. Through this painting, Van Gogh intended to convey precisely this: “Those who eat potatoes by the light of an oil lamp use the very same hands to till the soil; the work speaks of manual labour and shows how they have honestly earned their food.”
As I left the museum, still pondering the painting, a breaking news alert flashed on my phone. Just 200 kilometres away in Brussels, nearly 10,000 farmers from across the EU were taking to the streets in protest. And the “weapons” in their hands were potatoes grown in their own fields.
From *The Potato Eaters* to *The Potato Throwers*, the potato – originally meant for the dinner table – became a formidable weapon of protest in the hands of producers.
What unsettled EU farmers and drove them into the streets was the EU–Mercosur Free Trade Agreement, which was being negotiated and was about to be signed inside the EU headquarters at the time. Since negotiations for the deal began in 1999, opposition and protests from EU farmers have never ceased.
Why have EU farmers opposed this agreement so fiercely and persistently?
I. The Trauma of Plummeting Grain Prices
This trauma traces back to the shelling in the Black Sea. When the Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted, maritime grain routes from Ukraine through the Black Sea were blocked, forcing shipments to be rerouted to landlocked European countries. In response, from June 2022 the EU introduced “Autonomous Trade Measures” (ATMs), temporarily suspending import tariffs and quotas on Ukrainian agricultural goods. Although this measure officially ended in June 2025, the well-intentioned removal of tariffs produced unintended consequences.
Because land transport is more expensive, vast quantities of Ukrainian grain, poultry, and other produce did not flow to distant markets. Instead, they were sold in neighbouring Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary, where transport costs were lower. The influx of cheap agricultural goods undoubtedly crushed local market prices in Eastern Europe, while the EU failed to provide effective market protection or compensation.
During the recent protests in Brussels, a Polish farmer demonstrated in an interview, saying, “Wheat prices in Poland halved, dropping from over 1,000 złoty to 600 złoty per tonne (approximately RMB 1,300 at the time). And it was not just wheat; poultry, honey, and many other agricultural products were also affected.”
The EU’s market-opening policy, triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war, delivered more than just an economic blow to farmers; it sparked a crisis of trust. Beyond market volatility, what frustrated and disillusioned farmers most was the sluggishness and inefficiency of the EU’s post-crisis relief mechanisms.
Consequently, when the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement emerged, EU farmers saw not opportunity but the threat of history repeating itself – a foreseeable “market invasion” that would be larger in scale, cheaper, operate under looser rules, and dwarf the influx of Ukrainian grain.
II. Conflicting Environmental Standards
Since negotiations began in 1999, the deal has been under discussion for over 25 years. In the early stages, significant disagreements persisted between the EU’s stringent environmental thresholds and Mercosur’s protection of domestic industries. Despite several rounds of progress, the two sides remained deadlocked over “environmental” and “agricultural” issues.
Over the past two years, geopolitical uncertainty stemming from US policy has instead accelerated the urgency to sign the agreement. Although previous waves of farmers’ protests had delayed the signing on multiple occasions, this time resistance proved futile. The agreement was formally signed in Asunción, Paraguay, on 17 January 2026, but it still requires ratification by the European Parliament and parliamentary approval from each Mercosur member state before it can enter into force.
For EU farmers, this is far more than a routine trade document. On the agricultural front, under the agreement, the EU will open 82% of its import tariff lines for agricultural goods in exchange for Mercosur reducing tariffs on 91% of the EU’s high-value-added products (such as cars and machinery). At its core, the negotiations see the EU leveraging agricultural market access as a bargaining chip to pry open growth opportunities for its dominant industrial sectors.
Once implemented, the main arteries of the EU’s agricultural economy – grain and livestock – will be hit first and hardest, dealing a severe blow to European farming. This has been the primary catalyst for the repeated protests by EU farmers in recent years.
Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay are all major livestock producers. What worries EU farmers most are beef products from these core Mercosur members. The deal has even been vividly characterised as a pact for “trading cars for beef”.
To appease the opposition of farmers in EU member states such as France and Poland, the EU insisted on strict quota management for the most sensitive agricultural products within the agreement. For instance, the annual tariff-rate quota for beef is limited to just 99,000 tonnes. Imports within the quota attract a preferential tariff of 7.5%, while those exceeding it remain subject to high duties. This volume represents only about 1.5% of the EU’s own beef production and is less than half of current import levels from Mercosur. Similar quota restrictions apply to poultry, pork, and other products.
However, due to fundamental differences in production resources and standards between the two sides, this seemingly free and fair trade agreement has, from the outset, stripped EU farmers of the ability to compete with Mercosur’s livestock sector.
Behind Mercosur’s robust livestock capacity and export competitiveness lies an often-overlooked environmental and regulatory cost.
The price advantage of South American beef relies on the region’s vast pastures and enormous herds, a natural endowment that has been recklessly overextended. In Brazil, approximately 70% of deforested Amazon land has been converted into cattle ranches. Beyond the expansion of grazing land, the large-scale monoculture of soybeans for animal feed is also sacrificing the biodiversity of the Cerrado. Meanwhile, ongoing deforestation and livestock operations have generated massive carbon emissions, further exacerbating global climate change. In 2025, Brazil surpassed the US for the first time to become the world’s largest beef producer.
3. Agricultural Green Transition: A Tightening Noose
Yet farmers will bear the heavy transition costs. They must invest in new machinery, switch to more expensive organic inputs, and leave portions of their land fallow in exchange for ecological subsidies.
Although the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy channels subsidies back into the transition, practical issues such as ongoing disputes and lengthy implementation cycles persist. The crux of the matter is that EU subsidies largely fund ongoing support during the transition rather than upfront capital investment. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) estimates initial investment costs at €2,000 to €5,000 per hectare, with payback periods stretching up to nine years; even with subsidy support, farmers still face funding shortfalls. Furthermore, regarding the target to halve chemical pesticide use, studies modelling a shift to green agricultural production for cereals and oilseeds indicate a tangible risk of yield reduction. Farmers find themselves caught between environmental mandates and livelihood survival.
More critically, the subsidy distribution itself suffers from structural flaws. Data reveals that 80% of agricultural subsidies flow to just 20% of agricultural entities. This bias towards technologically advanced large enterprises leaves the very small and medium-sized farmers who need assistance most struggling to benefit. Meanwhile, market uncertainty stemming from energy price volatility and trade competition further erodes farmers’ confidence in pursuing a green transition, given that it represents a long-term, high-stakes investment.
4. The Green Transition Cannot Be Shouldered by Farmers Alone
The core of the EU farmers’ protest is not a rejection of agricultural transition, but a demand to know who will bear its costs. When market liberalisation and high environmental standards advance simultaneously, the costs invariably fall on producers first.
This is not a dilemma unique to the EU. Since “green agriculture” was first inscribed in the Central Document No. 1 in 2016, the 2026 iteration introduced the term “low-carbon agriculture” for the first time. Chinese agriculture has similarly embarked on its own path of transformation.
A report published in February this year, authored by government-affiliated experts and scholars with participation from multiple social organisations, titled *Agricultural Green Transition in the Context of Chinese-Style Modernisation*, posits that China has advanced rapid agricultural modernisation and green transition concurrently over the short term. This “concurrent” effect has led to the coexistence of conventional input-intensive farming and green agriculture, alongside a gap between the formulation and implementation of green agricultural policies. Moreover, the pace and direction of green transition vary significantly across different agricultural operators, regions, and business models, presenting a highly diverse landscape. Tensions also persist during the transition between standardised large-scale agriculture and diverse smallholder farming. Compounding these challenges are China’s vast population, upgrading consumption patterns, and scarce per capita resources.
When policy ideals reach the fields, can “green” truly become a choice that farmers can afford, understand, trust, and sustain? Or will it once again devolve into a passive mandate?
In practical production, green agricultural inputs are substantially more expensive than conventional alternatives. For instance, the cost of fully biodegradable mulch films often exceeds double that of standard films, while the procurement and transportation costs of organic fertilisers continue to rise annually. For smallholders operating in fragmented plots, this translates into a sharp escalation in individual input costs.
Yet, within the broader context of low grain prices and limited arable land, farmers have grown accustomed to a singular growth model predicated on “high input, high output”. On one hand, chemical fertilisers and pesticides deliver immediate results visible within a single season. On the other, green transition demands a lengthy wait, with returns not materialising for at least three to five years. Faced with basic sustenance and livelihood, farmers have little room for hesitation.
Simultaneously, the green agricultural transition faces barriers in technology dissemination. Shedding reliance on chemicals, enhancing yields and quality through soil improvement, and mastering complementary cultivation techniques all require systematic guidance. Farmers’ capacity to absorb new methods varies greatly. Particularly among the current backbone of grain production—farmers who have relied on chemical inputs their entire lives under the guidance of agri-suppliers and policy incentives—there has been a degree of “deskilling”. Re-educating them to adopt ecological and green farming practices proves exceptionally difficult.
Along China’s path to agricultural green transition, farmers confront not only frontline production challenges but also certain “invisible” hidden costs. When straw burning is banned under a “one-size-fits-all” mandate, environmental pressures may appear to ease, yet the labour and machinery costs for straw disposal are shifted onto individual farmers, lacking corresponding compensation mechanisms. In tackling the thorny issue of straw management, many regions are beginning to explore alternative solutions, evolving towards collaborative mechanisms guided by government and driven by market participation.
Even so, a deeper question remains: The green transition extends far beyond technology and subsidies; it fundamentally concerns the structure of returns.
Within the current agricultural product market system, a stable mechanism for green product premiums has yet to fully materialise. Signals of consumer willingness to pay a higher price for “green” are often diluted across supply chain layers, making it difficult for value to reach producers directly. Farmers absorb upfront investments and risks but are not guaranteed stable market returns, leaving green agriculture in practice to remain “driven more by policy than by market forces”.
Furthermore, the generational structure of producers is shifting. New-type agricultural operators, represented by new-generation farmers, align more closely with the long-term value of ecological agriculture. They are more willing to embrace and proactively learn new technologies, and more adept at accessing subsidy information. Yet they also confront practical hurdles such as high land lease costs, financing difficulties, and unstable scale. In contrast, older generations of farmers bring rich experience but tend towards caution and conservatism.
Therefore, the crux of agricultural green transition may lie not in how advanced the underlying philosophy is, but in whether a “risk-sharing and benefit-sharing” mechanism can be established, involving government, producers, enterprises, and consumers alike. If costs manifest solely at the production end while returns remain trapped in circulation channels or policy documents, the transition will inevitably fracture.
The “potato projectiles” in the streets of Brussels serve as a reminder that any structural transformation must answer the same question:
How exactly should the costs of idealism be distributed fairly within the institutional framework?
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0005V1962
[2]CMG Live Coverage: Tens of Thousands of Farmers from Across Europe Gather in Brussels for Protests
https://news.yunnan.cn/system/2025/12/19/033788429.shtml
[3]EU Potato Sector: Production and Trade in 2023
https://www.patafest.eu/news/eu-potato-sector-production-and-trade-2023
[4]Farmers Harvest 2,000 Tonnes of Potatoes but Discard 400? Germany Grapples with ‘Potato Surplus Crisis’, Experts Say It’s Not an Isolated Incident
[5]Mercosur and the EU Officially Sign Free Trade Agreement
https://www.news.cn/20260118/f31218c5b1c244fb84b7938ac343bc59/c.html
[6]After 25 Years of Negotiations, Lula’s Economic Policy Catalyses EU-Mercosur Free Trade Deal
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_32399943
[7]Polish Farmers: EU Support for Ukraine Must Not Harm Poland’s Interests
http://news.cnhubei.com/content/2023-12/14/content_17104820.html
[8]EU Scraps Tariff-Free Policy for Ukrainian Agricultural Products
https://m.gmw.cn/2025-06/06/content_1304052885.htm
[9]Refusal to Take Over Ukrainian Grain! Black Sea Corridor Disrupted, Poland and Five Other Nations Immediately Issue ‘Self-Defence Statement’
https://m.cls.cn/detail/1410106
[10]Brazil Surpasses US to Become World’s Largest Beef Producer
https://swt.fujian.gov.cn/xxgk/jgzn/jgcs/mzdyzc/gbxx_553/202601/t20260119_7081982.htm
[11]Halting the expansion of pasture in the Brazilian Amazon
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332224005360#bib1
[12]Long-term relationships of beef and dairy cattle and greenhouse gas emissions: Application of co-integrated panel models for Latin America
https://agris.fao.org/search/en/records/6748c35c7625988a3720a48b
[13]What the European Green Deal means when exporting to the EU
[14]Italy Secures Protection for 58 Food Products in Mercosur Deal as Geneva Act Expands Geographical Indication Safeguards
[15]The European Green Deal
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en
[16]Pesticide reduction targets – Progress
[17]Trends in the use and risk of chemical pesticides and in the use of more hazardous pesticides
[18]European Green Deal: Commission prepares new initiatives to boost the organic farming sector
[19]Closing the Gap: An analysis of the costs and incentives for regenerative agriculture in Europe
[20]The impact of the EU’s farm-to-fork strategy on member states’ economies: which countries will suffer the most?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40100-025-00354-w
[21] Global Watch · EU | Reporter’s Observation: Agricultural Policy “Out of Touch” Sparks Fears of a “Rightward Shift” in European Politics
https://www.news.cn/world/20240411/ee5f8c36b27f4a0b8a3427cf63941f84/c.html
[22] How to Steer Agricultural Development onto the “Green Track”
https://caas.cn/xwzx/mtxw/0ad3c984ed494885994c7431969f437a.htm
[23] A Look Back at Four Years of Central Document No. 1: How Have Ecological Requirements Changed?
https://sthjj.km.gov.cn/c/2023-02-21/4677027.shtml
[24] Clearing the “Last Mile” for the Promotion of Green Agricultural Technologies
https://xczx.fjsen.com/2025-05/19/content_31906595.htm
[25] Fruit Cultivation: Why Are Growers Reluctant to Use Organic Fertiliser?
[26] Why Is It So Hard to Popularise Organic Fertilisers and Biopesticides? Unpacking the Truth and Solutions Behind “Praised but Unpopular” Green Agriculture
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/kKBxxQmmXCpPV6sHj-sA-w
[27] The Sower – Van Gogh Museum Official Website
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0029V1962
Editor: Xiaodan