Europe’s governing classes have long been estranged from the real economy – from the world of production, industry and agriculture. To these green-hued technocrats, the economy appears as little more than a set of figures on a spreadsheet, to be regulated and managed towards a ‘better’, ‘greener’ future. To be redesigned according to a schedule of abstract, arbitrary Net Zero targets. All the while, the actual activity of making the stuff we need and use everyday – from energy to food – has remained out of sight and, above all, out of mind.

That was until this year, when farmers from across Europe took to the streets to protest against measures that threaten their very existence. In doing so, they finally brought this aloof political class face-to-face with the destructive consequences of their policies.

The first stirrings of this continent-wide farmers’ revolt were glimpsed five years ago in the Netherlands. The Dutch government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions by 45 per cent across all industrial sectors, in order to meet EU-approved targets, might have sounded like a no-brainer for the environment. Yet, in practice, it threatened to devastate Dutch agriculture. Cutting nitrogen emissions would mean vastly reducing the use of fertiliser and slaughtering nearly half of the nation’s livestock. Faced by such a monumental act of self-harm, Dutch farmers understandably fought back. They staged massive protests in 2019, and again in 2021 and 2022, using their tractors to block roads, railways and bridges.

These protests proved overwhelmingly popular, winning the backing of many Dutch citizens well beyond the agricultural industry. Indeed, a farmers’ upstart political party, the Farmers’ and Citizens Movement (BBB), actually won provincial elections in 2023, before picking up several seats later that year in the Dutch General Election.

Elsewhere in Europe, this latent conflict between the policies of a distant ruling class and the needs of those who work the land has exploded into political warfare.

In Germany, fury was sparked by plans to abolish tax breaks on agricultural diesel, and introduce new taxes on farming vehicles. By early January, 30,000 agricultural workers and 5,000 tractors were rounding off a week of nationwide protests by laying siege to Berlin, bringing life in the German capital to a standstill.

A couple of weeks later, French farmers followed suit. Citing the strangulating effect of EU regulations, alongside the prospect of an end to agricultural-diesel subsidies, French farmers decided to blockade Paris, Lyon, Limoges and Toulouse. Days later, Irish farmers, in a show of solidarity with their continental counterparts, staged a series of tractor and truck convoys through towns and along motorways.

At the same time, farmers in Greece were forcing roads to close in protest against the government’s inaction over weather-inflicted damage to property and crops. And in Romania, they were filling the streets with their agricultural vehicles over exorbitant fuel and insurance prices.

By the end of January, it was possible to speak of a Europe-wide farmers’ revolt. Tens of thousands of people were clogging up the arteries of their nations’ roads in protest against the policies of their out-of-touch leaders. The farmers’ specific grievances, from agricultural-diesel taxes to fertiliser limits, may have varied between countries. But there has been little mistaking the common root to their fury – namely, the EU’s green agenda.

In the name of achieving the EU’s target of Net Zero by 2050, the key commitment of the 2020 European Green Deal, national elites have been slowly choking the agricultural industry for years now. They have been issuing demands from up on high, from reductions in fertiliser use to limits on pesticides, in order to meet the EU’s decarbonisation timetable. And this year, those whose livelihoods were about to be decimated at the stroke of a regulators’ pen decided it was time to push back.

They have had successes too. The desperately unpopular German government announced a delay to planned cuts in subsidies for agricultural fuel, and French farmers extracted millions of euros in additional grants. But no sooner had Europe’s wounded political elites temporarily quelled protest in one member state, then farmers rose up again somewhere else, from Portugal to Belgium. This shows that the fundamental tension between the interests of Europe’s technocratic elites and the needs of the real economy is not going away.

Indeed, the farmers’ revolt has now even spread to Britain. Over the past couple of months, thousands have staged large, quietly angry demonstrations in London, in protest against the Labour government’s plan to change so-called agricultural property relief (APR). The change to APR would subject farmers inheriting land and property worth over £1million to inheritance tax at an effective rate of 20 per cent. This poses a serious problem for those working the land. Not least because, thanks to the harsh economic realities of farming, from price-squeezing supermarkets to the rapid rise in fertiliser and feed costs, many farmers may be asset rich on paper, but are very much cash poor. Farmers will struggle to pay this new tax without having to sell off swathes of their farmland – something that will impact not only the landowners, but also the many workers and communities that work and rely on that farmland.

British farmers’ grievances may differ from those of farmers in the Netherlands, France and Germany. But like their continental counterparts, farmers here are confronting the same problem – an aloof governing elite intent on imposing livelihood-destroying measures on whole swathes of the productive economy.

For too long, Europe’s political elites – blissful in their ignorance of the reality and necessity of productive work and the communities that rely on it – have been getting away with purposely limiting our means of production. But no more. In 2024, the real economy started to exact its revenge.

Tim Black is a spiked columnist.