Page 30 - Winter2010

speech entitled “Don’t Follow Us” in which I life shared by traditional farming communities
explicitly warned what fate was in store for the throughout the world. You cannot put a price on
Polish countryside if she joined the EU. I gave this immeasurably important quality. It is a deep,
some vivid examples of what had happened in lasting and genuinely civilized expression of life.
the UK over the past two decades: the ripping up So now the Poles, with their two million
of 35,000 miles of hedge rows; the loss of 30 per- family farms, were going to be subjected to the
cent of native farmland bird species, 98 percent same fate, and Jadwiga and I felt desperate to try
of species-rich hay meadows, thousands of tons to avert this tragedy. An uphill struggle ensued,
of wind- and water-eroded top-soil; and the loss which involved swimming strongly against the
from the land of around fifteen thousand farmers tide and risking the wrath of the agribusiness and
every year, accompanied by a rapid decline in the seed corporations who were gleefully moving in
quality of food. behind the mantle of EU free trade agreements
That night Rzeczpospolita, a leading na- while a bought-out government stood to the side.
tional broadsheet, carried a portion of this speech
under the intended heading “Don’t Follow Us.” PREDATORY CORPORATIONS
The piece appeared in exactly half the editions. What these corporations want (I use the
In the other half was an article praising the merits present tense as the position remains the same
of Poland joining the EU. That was in the autumn today) is to get their hands on Poland’s relatively
of 2001. unspoiled work force and land resources. They
want to establish themselves on Polish soil,
VICTORY OF PROPAGANDA acquire their capital cheaply and flog the end
Poland joined the EU in 2004 after an intense products of Polish labor to the rest of the world
publicity campaign calling upon Poles to “Say Yes for a big profit.
to the EU!” The propaganda machine went into Farmers, however, stand in the way of land-
overdrive with brash promises of “pots of gold” to based acquisitions, so they are best removed.
be showered on Poland, and farmers being offered Corporations thus join with the EU in seeing
generous agricultural subsidies and free advice through their common goals and set about inten-
. . . provided they played by the rules of the game. sively lobbying national governments to get the
That “game” was all too familiar to me. right regulatory conditions to make their kill.
It meant spending hours out of your work day Farmers, once having fallen for the Com-
filling in endless forms, filing maps, and mea- mon Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidy carrot,
suring every last inch of your fields, tracks and suddenly find themselves heavily controlled by
farmsteads. It meant applying for “passports” for EU and national officialdom brandishing that
What we your cattle and ear tags for your sheep and pigs, most vicious of anti-entrepreneurial weapons,
were losing resiting the slurry pit and putting stainless steel “sanitary and hygiene regulations,” as enforced

was our and washable tiles on the dairy walls, becoming by national governments at the behest of the
versed in HAASP hygiene and sanitary rules Common Agricultural Policy of the European
independence and applying them where any food processing Union. These are the hidden weapons of mass
and our was to take place, and living under the threat farmer destruction and the main tool for achiev-
freedom—the of convictions and fines should one put a finger ing the CAP’s aim of ridding the countryside of
out of place or be late in supplying some official small and medium-sized family farms and re-
slow rural way detail. placing them with monocultural money-making
of life shared Throughout this time, I clearly remember the agribusiness.
by traditional sense of losing something intangible, something Already by 2005, 65 percent of regional milk
which was not recallable. Something more valu- and meat processing factories had been forced to
farming able than that which was gained on the eventual close because they “failed” (read: couldn’t afford)
communities arrival of the subsidy cheque had been forever to implement the prescribed sanitary standards.
throughout lost. Some 70 percent of small slaughterhouses have
What we were losing was our indepen- also suffered the same fate. Farmers increasingly
the world. dence and our freedom—the slow rural way of have nowhere to to go to sell their cattle, sheep,
30 Wise Traditions WINTER 2010

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