Page 29 - Winter2010

THE WEAK POSITION OF FREEDOM servant in Warsaw, Jadwiga and I were able The European
It was only in 1989 that Poland finally threw to address a meeting with the Brussels-based
off the last repressive regime of occupation in committee responsible for negotiating Poland’s Union is
their land, the Russian communists. The last agricultural terms of entry into the EU. It proved simply not
nineteen years of freedom have been the longest to be an ominous foretaste of things to come. interested in
historical period of non-occupation for a very The first thing that struck us was the fact
long time. that out of the twelve people sitting in the room at small farms.
The Nobel prize-winning writer, Thomas the European Commission, not one was Polish. I
Mann, who fled Nazi Germany just prior to explained to the attendant body that in a country
World War Two, remarked just before he died in where 22 percent of the working population is in-
1969 that he feared that although the Nazis had volved in agriculture—and the majority on small
been defeated, fascism had not. “I am concerned farms—it would not be a good idea to follow the
about the weak position of freedom in post-world same regime as had been operated in the UK and
war Europe and North America,” he is reported other EU member countries, in which “restruc-
to have said. turing” agriculture had involved throwing the
We can surely identify with his concern. best farmers off the land and amalgamating their
“The weak position of freedom” is insidiously farms into large scale monocultural operations
manifesting itself throughout our increasingly designed to supply the predatory supermarket
pacified Orwellian society, and it has recently chains. You could have heard a pin drop.
come to undermine the long-standing traditions After clearing her throat and leaning slowly
of the Polish countryside, and particularly the forward, the chair-lady said, “I don’t think you
independence of the peasant and family farms understand what EU policy is. Our objective is
and the hugely biodiverse Polish countryside of to ensure that farmers receive the same salary
which they are the prime trustees. parity as white collar workers in the cities. The
The communists failed to quell the small only way to achieve this is by restructuring
Polish peasant farmers into submission during and modernizing old-fashioned Polish farms to
their period of occupation, which left the country enable them to compete with other countries’
with a rich, if rather confusing, legacy of approxi- agricultural economies and the global market. To
mately one and a half million small scale family do this it will be necessary to shift around one
farms (average size 18 acres) dotted around the million farmers off the land and encourage them
Polish Provinces, but particularly prevalant in to take city and service industry jobs to improve
the south and east. their economic position. The remaining farms
When I was first invited in November of will be made competitive with their counterparts
2000 by Jadwiga Lopata, founder of The Interna- in Western Europe.”
tional Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside There, in a nutshell, you have the whole
(ICPPC), to come to Poland as a co-director of tragic story of the clinically instigated demise of
this newly established non-governmental orga- European farming over the past three decades.
nization, the country was preparing itself—or We opined that with unemployment running
more correctly—was “being prepared for” entry at 20 percent, how would one provide jobs for
into the European Union. Opinions were strongly another million farmers dumped on the streets
divided concerning the merits of such an action of Warsaw? This query was greeted with a stony
and those most against included the farmers. silence which was eventually broken by a lady
from Portugal, who rather quietly said that since
WARNING FROM THE WEST Portugal had joined the European Union, sixty
One of our first tasks, as I saw it, was to warn percent of small farmers had already left the land.
Poles just what joining the EU would mean for She added, “The European Union is simply not
the farming population, for rural communities, interested in small farms.”
and for the renowned biodiversity of the coun- A month or so after this encounter, we were
tryside. invited to the Polish parliament to address the
Through the auspices of a senior civil government’s agricultural committee. I gave a

WINTER 2010 Wise Traditions 29

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