The earlier target represents a loss for the German Greens who, ahead of a three-day party congress in Lyon this weekend, had pushed for the climate neutrality target to be delayed to 2045, according to amendments seen by POLITICO.
The election manifesto, which was adopted by a large majority of national delegations, warned that meeting these climate objectives “must not rely on false solutions such as geo-engineering.”
The Greens are at risk of losing about a third of their seats in the European Parliament at the EU election in June, while a backlash against Brussels’ green agenda has been sweeping across the Continent in recent weeks. The party’s response has been to redouble the push on its core demands for higher climate ambition.
The final manifesto, for example, calls for the EU energy system to rely on 100 percent renewable sources and to phase out all fossil fuels by 2040, “starting with coal by 2030.” It also calls on the EU to adopt a plan for phasing out “fossil gas and oil as early as 2035 and no later than 2040.”
That point is another loss for the German Greens, who had pushed for deleting phaseout dates for fossil gas and oil from the manifesto.
The Greens have also been fighting back against the conservatives’ and far right’s attacks blaming them for farmers’ current struggles and for forcing the green transition to quickly on the sector.
Over the weekend, the Greens amended their manifesto to respond to farmers’ discontent, saying they will campaign for “a new agricultural model that reduces emissions, protect the environment, and foster social justice.”
The text insists that “farmers should make a decent income of their work,” and that the Greens will push to “make sure farmers are not exposed to unfair competition from products not respecting the same standards, including those imported from third countries” — which have been key demands of farmers’ unions during the recent demonstrations.
Polish farmers ended a blockade of a Poland-Ukraine border crossing after reaching an agreement with Warsaw that met their demands, defusing a dispute that had become an early test of the new government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Newly appointed Polish Agriculture Minister Czesław Siekierski signed the deal with Polish farmers blockading the Medyka-Shehyni border crossing with Ukraine late Saturday. The protest — which started over a month ago — was called off on December 24 following an agreement with the government, but it resumed on Wednesday amid farmers’ mistrust over the deal.
Farmers accused the new Polish government of failing to defend them against Ukrainian grain imports, but also demanded a series of financial support measures. Saturday’s deal finally implemented those financial demands — which include launching corn production subsidies, maintaining agricultural taxes at 2023 levels and increasing preferential liquidity loans — but didn’t include restrictions on Ukraine imports.
The measures “will be implemented after the legislative process is completed and acceptance by the European Commission is obtained,” the Polish Agriculture Ministry said.
Despite calling off the blockade, protesting farmers said that the “most important” demand now is “to limit the inflow of goods from Ukraine.” EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski told Polish media on Friday that he would demand an EU-wide restriction on items like sugar, eggs and poultry from Ukraine.
“These imports are growing in a way that threatens the competitiveness of the EU sector, including Polish poultry and sugar production,” he said. The Polish commissioner has already clashed with other members of the European Commission over full trade liberalization with Ukraine, which the EU executive is expected to recommend as early as next week.
“Ukraine is such a country that they just want to take, take, take, and give nothing back,” Roman Kondrów, one of the protest leaders, told POLITICO by phone on Thursday, warning about the risks of allowing the country to join the EU without restrictions.
In the meantime, Polish truckers are continuing to protest as they want the government to end an EU-Ukraine agreement that liberalized road transport rules in an effort to help the Ukrainian economy, crippled by the Russian invasion.
Underpinning the narratives of both groups are doomsday scenarios about the impact on Poland of Ukraine one day becoming a member of the EU. At a summit in December, EU leaders agreed to open accession talks with Ukraine.
LONDON — President Joe Biden has quietly shelved plans for a “foundational” trade agreement with the U.K. ahead of the 2024 election — following Senate opposition and disagreements over the scope of the deal.
A draft outline of the pact and its 11 proposed chapters, prepared by the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) office earlier this year, indicated negotiations would begin before the end of 2023.
But after facing multiple headwinds, the deal is not expected to go ahead, two people briefed by the British and U.S. governments respectively told POLITICO.Both were granted anonymity to speak on a sensitive matter.
“I don’t think we’re going to see that re-emerge,” said one of the people briefed on the proposed negotiations.
The proposal’s timeline for talks — which would not consider market access or meet the World Trade Organization’s definition of a free trade agreement — set out that negotiations would wrap up ahead of elections in Britain and the U.S. next year.
The deal was closer in substance to the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) — which tackles regulation and non-tariff barriers — than a full trade agreement.
But last month IPEF talks fell apart after senior Democrats criticized the Biden administration’s negotiation of trade provisions that did not contain enforceable labor standards.
The British government has long coveted a trade agreement with the U.S. as a significant post-Brexit prize.
The draft was considered a road map to eventually securing a full-fledged, comprehensive deal. Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch pitched the IPEF-style deal in April during Biden’s visit to Belfast, Bloomberg reported, to reinvigorate talks first started under the Trump administration.
Congressional oversight
Key voices in the U.S. have expressed concern about the nature of a pact with the U.K.
“Trade negotiations should be driven by substance,” said a spokesperson for Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, which provides congressional oversight for trade.
“It is Senator Wyden’s view that the United States and United Kingdom should not make announcements until a deal that benefits Americans is achievable,” the spokesperson added.
When POLITICO first reported on proposed talks in October, Wyden said it was “extremely disappointing” the Biden administration was attempting to proceed “with a ‘trade agreement’ that will neither benefit the American public, nor respect the role of Congress in international trade.”
Wyden’s spokesperson said Congress “must have a clear role in approving any future trade agreements” and that the senior Democrat “believes it is important for USTR to be significantly more engaged with Congress on any future negotiations.”
‘The vibes were quite tough’
USTR has gone back to Congress to ask for its input on a potential U.K. trade deal. But major outstanding issues between the U.S. and U.K. remain, including agriculture and whether any agreement would benefit American workers.
In a recent meeting with U.S. diplomats “the vibes were quite tough,” said the second person briefed on the proposed negotiations cited earlier. “They just doubled down on ‘you guys really need to lean into the worker-centric trade policy’ and ‘put yourself in the shoes of somebody in Pennsylvania.’”
The message, the person added, was “does this improve the lot of the farmers in Iowa? Does this help the U.S. economy? And if it doesn’t, they’re not going to do it.”
The U.S. approach “seems to be very focused on labor standards, on environmental issues on these very worthy things,” said the first person briefed on the proposed negotiations quoted at the top of this story.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet also pushed back on a chapter dealing with agriculture regulations in the draft after the British leader told a food summit earlier this year that he would not allow chemical washes or hormone-injected beef imports like those from the U.S. into Britain.
Scottish ministers meanwhile complained they hadn’t been consulted. Agriculture regulations are a devolved issue in Scotland.
In the meantime, the focus of the U.K.-U.S. trade relationship is predominantly on securing a critical minerals agreement that would allow British automotive firms to tap into electric vehicle rebates offered in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
“The U.K. and U.S. are rapidly expanding co-operation on a range of vital economic and trade issues building on the Atlantic Declaration announced earlier this year,” said a U.K. government spokesperson.
Some in the U.K. are taking a philosophical view on whether a wider ranging trade deal with the U.S. is really needed. Michael Mainelli, who, as lord mayor of the City of London, opened a new outpost for the U.K.’s powerhouse financial district in New York City on Monday said: “The trade has been going on fine without it. It might go a bit better with it.”
The latest numbers show total two-way trade between the nations grew 23.8 percent in the year to the end of Q2 2023.
But in the U.S. a trade deal with the U.K. is just “not that high on the list,” Mainelli said.
L&T Finance, one of the leading non-banking financial companies in the country, has signed a financing pact with ADB for $125 million to support financing in rural and peri-urban areas of India, particularly for women borrowers.
The funding comprises a loan of up to USD 125 million from ADB and an agreement to syndicate an additional $125 million in co-financing from other development partners. At least 40 percent of the proceeds are allocated to women borrowers, while the rest will support farmers, micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), as well as loans to purchase new two-wheeled vehicles.
Commenting at the signing ceremony, Sachinn Joshi, Group Chief Financial Officer, L&T Finance, said, “This collaboration with ADB aligns with our core values of social responsibility. We believe this partnership with ADB is a significant step and will boost our ongoing efforts to bridge the financial gap and promote inclusive economic growth across the country. For our company, this long-term loan forms part of our continuous strategy of diversifying our funding sources. At L&T Finance, we recognise the deep impact that financial inclusion has on the communities we serve. And, through our on-lending activities in the underserved and lagging states in India, we pursue to be a catalyst for empowering individuals, especially women, farmers, and MSMEs, thus fostering economic resilience.”
Extension, Louisiana — Van Hensarling grows peanuts and cotton. But this Mississippi farmer’s harvesting a disaster.
“It probably took two-thirds of the cotton crop, and probably half of the peanut crop,” Hensarling told CBS News. “I’ve been farming for over 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
His losses alone amount to about $1.2 million. A combination of too much heat and too little rain.
This summer’s same one-two punch knocked down Jack Dailey’s soybean harvest in neighboring Louisiana. He calls soybeans, “poverty peas.”
“Everything hurts on a farm if you’re not getting everything, all the potential out of your crop,” Dailey said.
Over the summer here in Franklin Parish, 27 days of triple-digit heat baked crops. Making matters worse, between mid-July and the end of August there was no rain for nearly six weeks, not a drop.
Another issue for the soybean fields is it never really cooled down at night during this scorcher of a summer, further stressing these beans, which further stressed the farmers.
In Colorado, we examine the growing movement of farmers fighting for the right to repair their own equipment. Then in New York, acclaimed choreographer Ayodele Casel shares her work preserving tap dance’s uniquely American history. Watch these stories and more on “Eye on America” with host Michelle Miller.
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Warsaw has stopped supplying weapons to Kyiv and is focusing on arming itself instead, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Wednesday, amid a dispute over Ukraine’s agricultural exports.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said in an appearance on Polish television channel Polsat, according to European Pravda. “If you don’t want to be on the defensive, you have to have something to defend yourself with,” he added, insisting, though, that the move wouldn’t endanger Ukraine’s security.
Morawiecki’s terse comments came as tensions escalated between Kyiv and the EU over the past week, after the European Commission moved to allow Ukrainian grain sales across the bloc, ending restrictions on grain imports which five eastern EU countries originally sought to protect their farmers from competition.
Poland, Hungary and Slovakia responded to the Commission’s move by imposing unilateral bans on Ukrainian grain imports, in apparent violation of the EU’s internal market rules. Kyiv struck back by filing lawsuits against the three countries at the World Trade Organization.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday took a thinly veiled swipe at those imposing grain bans, telling the U.N. General Assembly: “It is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater — making a thriller from the grain. They may seem to play their own role but in fact they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.”
While Zelenskyy didn’t specifically name-check Poland, Warsaw summoned Kyiv’s ambassador to the foreign ministry in response.
Morawiecki also delivered a “warning” to “Ukraine’s authorities,” earlier telling Polsat, “if they are to escalate the conflict like that, we will add additional products to the ban on imports into Poland. Ukrainian authorities do not understand the degree to which Poland’s farming industry has been destabilized.”
Poland is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign ahead of an election next month, with the right-wing Law and Justice government battling for reelection. While Warsaw initially threw its weight behind the campaign to help Kyiv fend off Russia’s attempted invasion, that full-throated support has waned as the consequences of supporting Ukraine for its own farmers have become more evident.
Ukraine has filed lawsuits against Poland, Hungary and Slovakia at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over their decision to ban grain imports, in a row that has split the EU and could hurt Kyiv’s prospects of joining the bloc.
“It is fundamentally important for us to prove that individual member states cannot ban the import of Ukrainian goods. That is why we are filing lawsuits against them in the WTO,” First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yuliya Svyridenko said in a statement.
Svyridenko added that the lawsuits, together with pressure from the European Commission and other member countries, “will help restore normal trade between Ukraine and neighboring countries, as well as show solidarity between us.”
The decision comes after the three countries rebelled against a European Commission decision last Friday to end temporary import restrictions — implemented in the spring in an attempt to mitigate a supply glut — and once again allow Ukrainian grain sales across the EU.
The bans by the three central European countries are intended to protect their farmers from a surge in exports from grain superpower Ukraine, following Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea.
“We hope that these states will lift their restrictions and we will not have to clarify the relationship in the courts for a long time,” Svyridenko said.
Indigo dye’s beautiful color comes shrouded by an ugly history of slavery in South Carolina. But some are trying to help the largely forgotten crop make a comeback, and heal century-old wounds in the process. Mark Strassmann reports.
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Ukraine is threatening to take Brussels and EU member countries to the World Trade Organization if they fail to lift restrictions on its agricultural exports to the bloc this month.
The country’s grain exports — its main trade commodity — are currently banned from the markets of Poland, Hungary and three other EU countries under a deal struck with the European Commission earlier this year to protect farmers from an influx of cheaper produce from their war-torn neighbor.
The glut, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its blockade of the country’s traditional Black Sea export routes, has driven a wedge between Ukraine and the EU’s eastern frontline states which have been among the strongest backers of Kyiv’s military fightback.
The restrictions, already extended once, are due to expire on September 15. Amid speculation that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will let them lapse, Poland and Hungary have threatened to impose their own unilateral import bans, in violation of the bloc’s common trade rules.
“With full respect and gratitude to Poland, in case of introduction of any bans after [September 15], Ukraine will bring the case against Poland and the EU to the World Trade Organization,” Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s deputy economy minister, told POLITICO.
Kyiv has argued that the restrictions violate the EU-Ukraine free-trade agreement from 2014.
Kachka’s comments backed up a warning this week from Igor Zhovka, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. If Brussels fails to act against the countries that violate the trade agreement, Kyiv “reserves the choice of legal mechanisms on how to respond,” Zhovka told Interfax-Ukraine.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said Kyiv reserved the right to initiate arbitration proceedings under its association agreement with the EU, or to apply to the WTO.
“We do not intend to retaliate immediately given the spirit of friendship and solidarity between Ukraine and the EU,” explained Kachka. But, he added, the systemic threat to Ukrainian interests “forces us to bring this case to the WTO.”
Crisis warning
Russia’s war of aggression and partial occupation has cut Ukraine’s grain production in half, compared to before the war, while Moscow’s withdrawal in July from a U.N.-brokered deal allowing safe passage for some seaborne exports has raised concerns that EU-backed export corridors won’t be able to cope.
The bloc’s agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, struggled to explain to European lawmakers at a hearing on Thursday how Brussels would handle the situation after September 15.
Wojciechowski, who is Polish, also appeared to sympathize with the right-wing government in Warsaw, which has latched on to the fight over Ukrainian grain as a campaign issue ahead of mid-October general elections in which it is seeking an unprecedented third term.
The bloc’s agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, struggled to explain to European lawmakers how Brussels would handle the situation after September 15 | Olivier Hoslet/EFE via EPA
The curbs should be extended at least until the end of the year; otherwise “we will have a huge crisis again in the five frontline member states,” Wojciechowski said, adding that this was his personal position and not that of the EU executive.
The Commission’s decision in April to restrict imports to the five countries, which came with a €100 million aid package, met widespread disapproval from other EU governments and European lawmakers for undermining the integrity of the bloc’s single market.
Kachka, in written comments sent in response to questions from POLITICO, said there was no evidence of price deviations or a significant increase in grain supplies that would justify extending the import restrictions. Kyiv had engaged in “constructive cooperation” with the Commission, the five member states, as well as Moldova, a key transit hub for Ukrainian exports to the EU.
“We got a lot of support for ensuring better transit of the goods through the territory of neighboring member states, including Poland and Hungary,” Kachka said. “During [the] last two months we significantly advanced cooperation with Romania on transportation of goods from Ukraine.”
In some cases, American farmers aren’t able to or allowed to repair the equipment they own. Right to repair laws are aiming to change that — and may have other implications. Barry Peterson has more.
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RADAWIEC DUŻY, Poland — Forget mass campaign rallies: Poland’s ruling conservatives are betting that prayer, straw-weaving contests and homegrown disco hits can win them this fall’s general election.
At an airstrip in Radawiec Duży, in the country’s eastern rural heartland, planes have been cleared to make way for the central stage. Some 200 people are ushered to their seats to the sound of folk music sung by a local choir.
Despite the sweltering summer heat, the men wear dark suits and the women traditional floral dresses and skirts as they gather around the stage. On this otherwise barren stretch of land, everything — and everyone — is adorned with stems of straw.
Dożynki, as the festival is called, is a celebration of rural life and the summer harvest. At its heart lie the elaborate sculptures woven by local peasant women. Later in the day, a competition will be held to choose the best one, from among those crafted into a Polish eagle, storks and even a crucified Jesus Christ.
The festival is held annually, and countless others like it take place throughout rural Poland between August and September. This year, however, it takes on a double meaning, as it melds neatly into a string of what are being cast as “picnics” in which the ruling party is hoping to shore up its support in traditional countryside bastions.
On October 15, Poland will hold a national election in which Jarosław Kaczyński’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) wants to win an unprecedented third term in office. To do so, they need the support of rural voters. But amid mass protests by farmers, furious over farm produce pouring across the border from Ukraine, their traditional constituency is wavering.
Preaching to the choir
One by one, local dignitaries take the stage to thank the farmers for their hard work and dedication. Jarosław Stawiarski, the 58-year-old marshall of the Lublin voivodeship, or region, decides to take it up a notch, highlighting that the PiS-led government has done more to help the countryside than any other before it.
“The Polish countryside is the essence of our nation,” he tells the crowd. “The people in power now are doing everything they can to ensure that the farmer’s toil is fairly rewarded. God bless.”
Bishop Mieczysław Cisło leads a traditional Catholic mass with a cautionary message: The secular West is a threat to Poland’s traditional way of life.
“Today a fundamental conflict is taking place over the shape of a united Europe and the attitude of those who are responsible for their homeland, for the nation,” Cisło says.
“People don’t appreciate the great sacrifice, every drop of blood shed for the nation, every drop of sweat from the farmer’s forehead that soaked into the native soil.”
Poland’s education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, breaks bread with participants of the harvest festival in Radawiec Duży | Bartosz Brzeziński/POLITICO
In the VIP tent, Poland’s education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, nods in agreement, as do the local lawmakers, businessmen, military officials and clergymen seated around him.
Soon, everyone will break bread blessed by Cisło.
Target voters
Most of the people gathered at the airstrip, however, are farther afield, mingling among the stands selling curly fries, sausages, beer and tractor-shaped balloons. There’s an amusement park with a 30-meter drop ride and bumper cars. Older children can experience what it feels like to be part of Poland’s burgeoning military by holding a sniper rifle under the watchful eye of a uniformed army officer.
A PiS volunteer collects voters’ signatures. She gets one from a frail 80-year-old man called Marek, who’s biked here from the regional capital of Lublin, about 12 kilometers away.
“Donald Tusk is an anti-Polish German,” he says, referring to the leader of the main opposition group, the Civic Coalition, which is seeking to dethrone the government. “PiS doesn’t lie — at least not usually.”
Older children can experience what it feels like to be part of Poland’s burgeoning military by holding a sniper rifle under the watchful eye of a uniformed army officer | Bartosz Brzeziński/POLITICO
Marek declines to give his full name because he doesn’t trust the Western media.
Back by the stage, the last of the speeches are finished, the straw sculptures are taken down, and the VIP guests disperse.
The organizers are lucky — similar PiS-linked celebrations elsewhere in the country this summer have not gone as smoothly, with one resulting in the near crash of a Black Hawk helicopter worth tens of millions of dollars.
‘Not my vibe’
Soon the stage is being prepared for evening concerts of disco polo, a Polish variant of dance pop that is hugely popular in the countryside.
The crowd has swelled to thousands — but it’s also undergone a generational change.
Patryk Bielak, 30, came with his girlfriend, but they skipped the earlier part of the program.
“We came for Zenek,” he says, referring to one of the disco polo performers. “We’re young, we’re not interested in political pandering.”
Bielak plans to vote for the Civic Coalition.
Disco polo band Bayera on the stage of the harvest festival in Radawiec Duży | Bartosz Brzeziński/POLITICO
Another late arrival, Gabriela Frąk, 20, has opted for the far-right Konfederacja.
“PiS has nothing to offer young people,” she says. “Everything is packaged for seniors who won’t have much influence on what will happen in Poland in 10, 15 or 20 years.”
With just over a month to go before the October election, PiS is still in the lead with 37 percent of the vote, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. The Civic Coalition is in second place with 31 percent, followed by Konfederacja with 10 percent.
CORRECTION: This story has been amended to correct the first name of Poland’s education minister.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stepped in to call for restraint late Tuesday in an effort to end an escalating diplomatic spat with Ukrainian ally Poland.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kyiv had summoned Warsaw’s envoy after a senior Polish official suggested Ukraine should be more grateful for the support it has been receiving from Poland since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.
“We greatly appreciate the historical support of Poland, which together with us has become a real shield of Europe from sea to sea. And there cannot be a single crack in this shield,” Zelenskyy said.
“We will not allow any political instants to spoil the relations between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples, and emotions should definitely cool down,” the president added.
Poland has been one of Kyiv’s most vocal supporters since Moscow’s aggression ramped up in 2022. But in recent months, its relations with Kyiv have been hurt by Warsaw’s decision to extend a ban on some Ukrainian agricultural exports, which the Polish government considers a threat to the interests of domestic farmers.
Initially focused on grain, the dispute is now shifting to soft fruit such as raspberries and currants, with Poland’s farmers — who are set to be a key constituency in the upcoming Polish general elections in October — complaining that lower-priced imports from Ukraine are undercutting them.
The brewing contretemps escalated Tuesday after Ukraine summoned the Polish ambassador to Kyiv over “unacceptable” comments made by a senior Polish official.
In an interview with Polish media, Marcin Przydacz, head of Poland’s international policy office, said Kyiv should “start appreciating the role Poland has played for Ukraine in recent months and years” — sparking ire from Ukrainian officials who hauled in Warsaw’s ambassador and prompting Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki then to slap Kyiv down.
“The summoning of the Polish ambassador — a representative of the country that was the only one left in Kyiv on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — to the Ukrainian foreign ministry should never have happened,” Morawiecki said.
“Given the enormity of the support Poland has given Ukraine, such mistakes should not happen,” the prime minister added.
African leaders have long been reluctant to criticize Russia and now that President Vladimir Putin has killed off a deal to allow Ukraine to export grain, they know they are more dependent than ever on Moscow’s largesse to feed millions of people at risk of going hungry.
Having canceled the pact on Monday, Moscow unleashed four nights of attacks on the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk — two vital export facilities — damaging the infrastructure of global and Ukrainian traders and destroying 60,000 tons of grain. In the latest assault, on Thursday night, a barrage of Kalibr missiles hit the granaries of an agricultural enterprise in Odesa.
“The decision by Russia to exit the Black Sea Grain Initiative is a stab [in] the back,” tweeted Abraham Korir Sing’Oei, a senior foreign ministry official from Kenya, one of the African countries that has received donations of Russian fertilizer in recent months.
The resulting rise in global food prices “disproportionately impacts countries in the Horn of Africa already impacted by drought,” he added.
Sing’Oei’s was a solitary voice, however. Rather than reproaching Moscow, African leaders have remained largely silent as they prepare to attend a summit hosted by Putin in St Petersburg next week. This follows an African mission led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last month to Kyiv and St Petersburg in a bid to broker peace.
The diplomatic stakes could hardly be higher.
Putin had been due to make a return visit to Africa next month to attend a summit of the BRICS emerging economies in Johannesburg. That trip has been called off, however, “by mutual agreement” to avoid exposing the Kremlin chief to the risk of arrest under an indictment for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Without the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered a year ago by the United Nations and Turkey that enabled Ukraine to export 33 million metric tons of grains and oilseeds, many African governments now have nowhere else to turn to but Russia.
“It’s going to be based on political alignments,” said Samuel Ramani, an Oxford-based academic and author of a book on Russia’s resurgent influence in Africa.
Comparing Russia’s tactics to blackmail, Ramani added: “They’re going to be offering free grain to some, they’re going to be selling to others. It’s full-fledged grain diplomacy.”
No deal
Russia said on Monday it would no longer guarantee the safety of ships passing through a transit corridor as it announced its official withdrawal from the deal, declaring the northwestern Black Sea to be once again “temporarily dangerous.” It followed up by threatening to fire on all ships going across the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports, sparking a tit-for-tat warning from Kyiv that it would do the same to all vessels sailing to Russian-controlled Black Sea ports.
Over the 12 months it functioned, the grain deal helped bring down global food prices by as much as 20 percent from the peak set in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It also provided aid agencies with vital supplies.
Russia repeatedly claimed it has not seen the benefits of the three-times extended agreement, however.
Although Western sanctions carve out exemptions for food and fertilizer the Kremlin argues that sanctions targeting Russian individuals and its state agriculture bank are hindering its own exports, thus contravening a second deal agreed last July under which the U.N. committed to facilitating these exports for a three-year period.
The Kremlin said Wednesday that it would resume talks on the Black Sea grain deal only if the U.N. implements this part of the deal within the next three months.
Propaganda war
Another of Moscow’s criticisms is that cargoes of Ukrainian grain have headed mostly to rich countries; not to those in Africa and Asia bearing the brunt of the global food crisis.
Over the last year, a quarter of all the grain and oilseeds shipped under the initiative have headed to China, the largest recipient, while some 18 percent went to Spain and 10 percent to Turkey, according to U.N. data.
This is not the whole story, however. Trade data from the World Bank shows that much of the wheat exported to Turkey is processed and re-exported, as flour, pasta and other products, to Africa and the Middle East.
Most importantly, all grain that flows onto global markets reduces prices, wherever it ends up, counter the U.N. and others.
Russia has canceled the Black Sea deal and unleashed attacks on the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
“It is not a question of where the Black Sea food actually goes; it is a question of it [bringing] international prices down, so whether you are a rich country or poor country, you can benefit,” said Arif Husain, the U.N. World Food Programme’s chief economist, speaking at an event on the Black Sea Grain Initiative in Rome recently.
These arguments have been at the center of a months-long propaganda battle between Moscow and Kyiv over who can rightly claim to be feeding the world and who is responsible for soaring food prices.
In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Kremlin’s narrative — that western sanctions are to blame — was quick to take hold in many parts of Africa.
Ukraine sought to counter this with a humanitarian food program, Grain from Ukraine, launched in November 2022, but shiploads of fertilizer donated to countries, including Malawi and Kenya, served to sweeten the Kremlin’s message.
“A true friend knows no weather. A true friend comes to the rescue when you need them the most. And you just demonstrated that to us,” Malawi’s Agriculture Minister Sam Dalitso Kawale said upon receiving a fertilizer gift from Russian firm Uralchem in March.
Feeling the pinch
Now, countries like Malawi need friends in Moscow more than ever. Not only does the end of the grain deal cut them off from flows of Ukrainian grain, leaving them dependent on Russian supplies, but it also pushes up prices.
Moscow’s withdrawal from the agreement is unlikely to have the same impact on prices as its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Over the last year, Ukraine has opened up alternative export routes and a slowdown in shipments moving under the initiative also meant commodity markets had been expecting Moscow to quit the deal.
While Ukraine can continue to export grain through alternative routes, these come with extra logistical and transport costs, squeezing prices for Ukrainian farmers, at one end, and pushing up costs for buyers, at the other.
For food-insecure countries in the Horn of Africa even a small increase in prices could spell disaster, said Shashwat Saraf, emergency director in East Africa for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
Domestic production has dropped amid conflict and severe drought, leaving the region increasingly reliant on food imports and food aid. As such, higher food prices will hit hard, he said, adding that traders already report “feeling the pinch.”
With the cost of food rising, the IRC and other humanitarian organizations will be forced to either reduce the number of people they provide cash transfers or reduce the value of these themselves — and this at a time when the number of food insecure people is rising, said Saraf. “When we should be expanding our coverage, we will be actually reducing [it].”
Slap in the face
African leaders attending Putin’s summit next week will be silent on such issues, predicted Christopher Fomunyoh, African regional director at the U.S. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and one of the Grain from Ukraine ambassadors appointed by Kyiv.
But they must not return empty-handed again, he said. Russia’s discontinuation of the grain deal, following the South African-led visit to St Petersburg, is a “slap in the face,” Fomunyoh told POLITICO. “Their own credibility is now at stake. And my hope is that they will have to speak out in order to not further lose credibility with their own populations.”
In 2022, Russia’s narrative was dominant in Africa, but that has slowly changed through the course of this year, he explained, adding that Africans were starting to see through Moscow’s propaganda.
“There is always a time delay,” said Fomunyoh. “But my sense is that in the days and weeks to come, people are going to see very clearly [that] the destruction of infrastructure in Odessa, the destruction of stock, wheat, and grain in Chornomorsk is contributing to scarcity and the inflation in prices.”
The Kremlin said on Monday that a U.N.-brokered deal to allow the safe passage of Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea is terminated, claiming that Russia’s conditions had not been met.
“The Black Sea agreements ceased to be valid today,” Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, was quoted by state news agency TASS as saying.
“As the president of the Russian Federation said earlier, the deadline is July 17. Unfortunately, the part relating to Russia in this Black Sea agreement has not been implemented so far. Therefore, its effect is terminated,” Peskov said.
“As soon as the Russian conditions are met, the Russian Federation will return to the implementation of the deal,” he said.
Russia notified the other parties of its withdrawal from the initiative in a letter sent to the Istanbul-based Joint Coordination Center, set up to monitor the deal’s implementation, a U.N. official confirmed to POLITICO.
The Black Sea grain initiative, which was first brokered by the United Nations and Turkey a year ago in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was last renewed on May 17 for two months. Some 33 million metric tons of grain and oilseeds have so far been exported under the deal, which has been extended three times, offering a lifeline to Ukraine’s farmers and to food-insecure countries in the Global South.
Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra blasted Moscow’s move, saying it threatens food prices and market stability. “It is utterly immoral that Russia continues to weaponise food,” Hoekstra said in a tweet.
‘Enough is enough’
Moscow has repeatedly said it would not agree to a further extension, claiming that it is not seeing the benefit of the pact. “Hidden” Western sanctions, the Kremlin says, are hindering Russia’s own food and fertilizer exports and thus contravening a second deal agreed last July under which the U.N. committed to facilitate these exports for a three-year period.
Last Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres sent a letter to Putin putting forward a compromise proposal to meet a Kremlin demand that Russia’s state agricultural bank be readmitted to the SWIFT payments system.
Two days later, however, Putin reiterated that conditions required for Russia to extend the pact had not been met. “We voluntarily extended this so-called deal many times. Many times. But listen, in the end, enough is enough,” the Russian president said in a TV interview on Thursday night.
“Russia is exporting record amounts of grain,” Ambassador Jim O’Brien, head of the State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, told POLITICO ahead in an interview ahead of Monday’s announcement in Moscow.
“There’s no evidence that Russia is impeded in its exports,” he said, adding that the EU, the U.S., the U.K and U.N. have worked very closely with specific companies said to be facing difficulties to address their concerns.
Last ship
The last ship to travel under the pact left Ukraine’s Odesa port on Sunday morning, according to Reuters. In the run-up to the July 17 deadline, the number of shipments had fallen — dropping to 1.3 million metric tons in May from 4.2 million last October — while no new vessels have been registered under the initiative since the end of June.
Kyiv, which accuses Moscow of sabotaging the deal, is readying alternative routes to export its grain and oilseed crops.
Aid agencies, meanwhile, are bracing for the impact of the deal’s end on global food prices, which they say will hit the world’s most vulnerable in food-insecure countries the hardest.
Wheat prices rose 3 percent on Monday, bringing cumulative gains since the middle of last week to 12 percent, said Carlos Mera, head of agricultural commodities markets at Rabobank. Without the deal, Ukraine will have to export most of its grain and oilseeds via the Danube river, driving up transport and logistics cost and pushing down prices for farmers, who may subsequently plant less, he said.
“This situation means poor countries in Africa and the Middle East will be more dependent on Russian wheat,” said Mera.
Russia’s withdrawal from the initiative “would make it solely responsible for a devastating blow to global grain security,” said O’Brien. “President Putin is well aware that if he chooses to impede or end this arrangement, that he’ll be causing a great deal of trouble for the Global South.”
STRASBOURG — Gather round, gather round, it’s the last big match of the season.
This week, just before lawmakers head into the summer recess, the European Parliament will fight it out over nature restoration.
The EU’s proposal to rehabilitate its damaged ecosystems by 2050 has one last chance at survival in Wednesday’s plenary session. The bill, a key pillar of the bloc’s Green Deal, has limped to Strasbourg to face the full Parliament after failing to pass three committee votes.
If the Nature Restoration Law is rejected on Wednesday, “it’s game over,” said Pascal Canfin, a liberal MEP and chair of Parliament’s environment committee. “Nobody will come back with something else before the next election.”
The vote will be tight. And if the text doesn’t pass, it would be the first major Green Deal legislation to fail in Parliament — adding weight to a conservative campaign to pause environmental lawmaking ahead of the 2024 EU election.
For months, supporters and opponents of the law have been exchanging (metaphorical) punches on social media, in committee sessions and press conferences.
Ahead of the vote, POLITICO looks at the main players in the fight to kill — or save — the Nature Restoration Law.
In the blue corner: The bill’s opponents
1 — Manfred Weber
The European People’s Party has spearheaded a tireless effort to kill off the legislation, arguing that it will have detrimental consequences for the bloc’s farmers by allegedly taking land out of production and jeopardizing food security.
Its leader, Manfred Weber, has been among the most vocal opponents of the bill, seizing on the debate as a way to portray his group as defending farmers’ interests in Brussels.
Political rivals have accused him of using underhand tactics to ensure his MEPs voted against the legislation in the agriculture, fisheries and environment committees, including by substituting regular members with others ready to fall in line — allegations Weber denied. The push has also featured an often bizarre social media campaign to highlight the supposed dangers of the bill, culminating in the group claiming it would destroy Santa’s home in northern Finland.
“This is not the right moment to do this piece of legislation,” Manfred Weber said last month | Philippe Buissin/EP
The EPP leader maintains the group is ready to engage on the legislation — if the Commission comes up with a new version. “This is not the right moment to do this piece of legislation,” Weber said last month.
“Give me arguments, give me a better piece of legislation, then my party is ready to give,” Weber added, calling on the Commission to go back to the drawing board and insisting that achieving the EU’s climate and biodiversity goals can’t come at the expense of rural areas.
2 — Right-wing groups — and a handful of liberals
Weber’s conservative group has found allies further to the right — among MEPs belonging to the European Conservatives and Reformists and the far-right Identity and Democracy.
The ECR’s co-chair, Nicola Procaccini, a close ally of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, called the nature proposal “one of the most significant regulation proposals of the entire legislature,” and said he was “quite convinced” the right-wing alliance could defeat it. He added that it shows alliances are shifting in Parliament: “On the Green Geal it is moving more to the right.”
The EPP’s push has also found support among lawmakers in Renew Europe. About a third of the liberal group — mostly Dutch, Nordic and German MEPs — are set to vote against the bill on Wednesday, mostly out of national concerns.
Swedish liberal MEP Emma Wiesner, for example, has argued that the bill will be bad for Swedish farmers and foresters, while stressing that she still supports “an ambitious climate and environmental agenda.”
3 — Industry lobbies
A host of lobby groups have also come out against the legislation, including those representing European fishermen, foresters and farmers.
The powerful agri lobby Copa-Cogeca — which has been accused of representing the interests of large corporate outfits over smaller farms — has pushed the narrative that burdening farmers with new green obligations while they face the impacts of the war in Ukraine and higher energy prices will threaten their livelihoods.
The draft legislation “is poorly constructed, [and] has no coherent, clear or dedicated budget” to help land managers implement it, the lobby said.
Similarly, some business associations, like the Netherlands’ VNO-NCW, have been critical of the proposal, arguing that it will create a “lockdown for new business and the energy transition.”
A host of lobby groups have also come out against the legislation, including those representing European farmers | Jeffrey Groeneweg/AFP via Getty Images
4 — Skeptical EU countries
Several EU countries have waded into the debate, warning that the new measures would be bad for their farming and forestry sectors, as well as for people’s proprietary rights and permitting procedures for renewable energy projects.
The Netherlands has been particularly vocal against the bill, calling for EU countries to be granted more flexibility in how to achieve the regulation’s targets as it could otherwise clash with renewables or housing projects, for example. “We do have concerns about implementation because of our high population density,” said Dutch Environment Minister Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink.
Other skeptical countries include Poland, Italy, Sweden, Finland and Belgium.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo called for hitting “pause” on new nature restoration rules amid a fierce national debate on the legislation.
In the red corner: Its defenders
1 — Frans Timmermans
The EU’s Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans has been on the front lines of the effort to save the nature rules, going toe-to-toe with EPP lawmakers during Parliament committee discussions and calling out misleading statements spread by opponents to the bill.
“Everybody is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts,” he told lawmakers in May, stressing that the reason harvests are failing “is linked to climate change and biodiversity loss.”
He’s repeatedly insisted the legislation is intended to help farmers in the long run, as it aims to improve soil and water quality, as well as build resilience against natural disasters like floods, droughts and wildfires. He’s also been adamant that the Commission won’t submit a new version of the bill, as demanded by the EPP.
“There is no time for that,” he explained.
2 — Left-wing groups in Parliament — and (most of) the liberals
The EU’s Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans has been on the front lines of the effort to save the nature rules | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images
The Parliament’s center-left Socialists & Democrats, the Greens, The Left and part of Renew Europe have been vocal advocates of the Commission’s proposal.
Biodiversity loss and climate change are two sides of the same coin, Mohammed Chahim, vice president of the S&D, told reporters. “Not connecting them is either you being naive, at best, and at worst, you really trying to undermine the Green Deal, and that’s what’s happening.”
The Renew group has been divided on the issue, but a majority backed a compromise deal ahead of Wednesday’s vote to try and convince some EPP lawmakers to switch sides and rally enough support in favor of the legislation.
3 —Teresa Ribera
Spain’s environment minister has come out in favor of the proposal, defending its importance both at home and at the EU level as a means to increase resilience to natural disasters and climate impacts like drought.
“It is very important not only to conserve but also to restore nature … There will be time to improve what we have on the table but for the time being, the best thing we can do is to achieve an agreement,” Ribera said at an informal environment ministers’ meeting Monday.
Alongside Spain, 19 EU countries supported the adoption of a common stance on the text in June.
Ribera also signaled that the file will be among the Spanish presidency of the Council’s priorities if the Parliament adopts a position allowing MEPs to start negotiations with EU countries.
4 — Big business and banks
A number of multinationals — including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Unilever — have urged MEPs to back the legislation, arguing that restoring nature is good for business.
The new rules, they say, will boost the EU’s food production in the long term as it will help tackle pollinator decline and increase absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere, lessening climate impacts.
Owen Bethell, senior global public affairs manager for environmental impact at Nestlé, stressed that farmers’ concerns need to be addressed and argued they should receive support to adapt to the new rules. “But in the short term, I think it’s important to maintain momentum on this law because it sends the right signal, that change needs to happen,” he said.
Green activists have led a forceful push to convince lawmakers to back the proposal | Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images
The argument that nature is good for business also received backing from Frank Elderson, an executive board member of the European Central Bank, who warned: “Destroy nature and you destroy the economy.”
5 — Scientists and NGOs
More than 6,000 scientists have shown support for the Commission’s nature restoration plan, arguing that healthy ecosystems will store greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to the EU’s objective to become climate neutral by 2050.
“Protecting and restoring nature, and reducing the use of agrochemicals and pollutants, are essential for maintaining long-term production and enhancing food security,” they wrote.
Green activists have also led a forceful push to convince lawmakers to back the proposal, staging protests and making arguments to counter the EPP’s narrative on social media.
“The European Parliament must stay strong against the falsified pushbacks of the conservatives and take firm action to protect citizens from the devastating impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss,” the WWF said in a statement ahead of the vote.
Watching from the sidelines
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a member of the EPP, has stayed conspicuously quiet on the issue, despite mounting calls for her to get involved and help save the bill.
The situation is a Catch-22 for the German official: The nature bill is part of the Green Deal on which she staked her reputation and reelection as Commission president, but speaking in support of it would involve going against her party’s official position.
“I still expect a public reaction from her,” said the S&D’s César Luena, the lead MEP on the file. “Or if it’s not public, then a reaction inside the EPP,” he added, suggesting that her silence could be held against her in a bid for reelection next year if the legislation doesn’t pass this week.
Brussels is finalizing a law to legalize new gene-editing technologies for crops across the European Union.
The EU’s ultra-restrictive GMO regulation, which predates newer technologies, sets extremely high hurdles for growing genetically engineered crops and allows EU countries to ban them even after they have been proven to be safe.
The new law aims to cut red tape and allow easier market access for plants grown with “new genomic techniques” (NGTs), such as CRISPR-Cas9, which target specific genes without necessarily introducing genetic material from outside the breeders’ gene pool.
The rules are being pushed by multinationals such as Bayer, Syngenta and Corteva, which together control the lion’s share of the plant breeding sector, as well as a host of smaller companies, scientists and farmers’ groups such as Copa-Cogeca.
They argue that the EU risks falling behind the rest of the world in using new crops with special traits that can make them more nutritious, efficient and better adapted to a changing climate.
Pitted against them are green lawmakers, environmental advocacy groups, organic and small farmers, and more than 400,000 EU citizens who have signed a petition against deregulating what they call “new GMOs.”
These groups say the rules will further tighten the grip of the handful of multinationals, allowing them to claim patents on crops that could have been obtained through conventional breeding methods, while threatening non-GM and organic production. They also argue that because NGTs have only been around for just over a decade, questions remain about their safety.
According to a leaked draft, EU countries will no longer be able to ban the cultivation of NGT crops.
The law simplifies rules even more for a sub-group of NGT crops that are deemed equivalent to crops obtained by traditional breeding techniques. The obligation to label foods as “GMO” will no longer apply to these “conventional-like” plants, and they won’t be subject to risk assessment by food safety regulators.
An earlier draft of the law had a carve-out for crops engineered to tolerate herbicides — which would still have been subject to the stricter GMO rules. However, a newer draft no longer makes such a distinction.
The European Commission is due to unveil the proposed law on gene-edited crops on Wednesday, as part of the latest package of measures under its Green Deal environment and sustainability agenda. This will include a new law on soil health, revisions of the food waste and textiles aspects in the EUWaste Framework Directive, and legislation on seeds and other plant and forest reproductive material.
Imagine a court hearing where the plaintiff is not a person, but a damaged river, lake or mountain.
That’s the vision of a movement of conservationists — gaining traction across the Continent — that believes granting basic legal rights to nature can help protect it from threats like deforestation, biodiversity loss, chemicals pollution and climate change.
“We usually think about nature as an object” that “serves us,” such as a swimming pool or a natural park, said Eduardo Salazar, a lawyer involved in the successful push to grant legal rights to Mar Menor, a large saltwater lagoon in Murcia in southeastern Spain polluted by the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers by nearby farmers.
Granting an ecosystem legal status on “the same level” as individuals can help alter social attitudes to nature, he said, and give it important new protections.
The lagoon last year became the first ecosystem on the Continent to be granted a status comparable to that of a person following a campaign backed by more than 600,000 people.
Activists are now trying to replicate the model elsewhere.
In Poland, a group of activists this week will complete the last leg of a 43-day-long march along the Oder River aimed at drawing attention to their campaign to grant the polluted ecosystem — which runs along the German-Polish border — the legal status of a person.
After a massive die-off last summer killed thousands of fish in the Oder, campaigners fear the ecosystem may be headed for another ecological disaster, pointing to Poland’s failure to rein in industrial emissions that are thought to have contributed to the incident.
“There is a lot of suffering going on in this river,” said Przemek Siewior, a climate activist who joined the march. Giving the fragile ecosystem legal rights is “a really good tool for people to try to save it,” he argued.
A ‘voice’ for nature
The so-called rights of nature movement, which originated in the United States some 50 years ago, has gained traction in recent years thanks to growing attention to the importance of protecting nature as part of combating climate change and biodiversity loss.
A growing number of countries — including Uganda, Ecuador and New Zealand — have laws granting ecosystems legal rights, and court rulings in India and Colombia have recognized such rights and stressed the government’s duty to protect it. Just last month, Panama gave rights to sea turtles in a bid to protect them against pollution and poaching.
In Europe, campaigners are hoping to ride the coattails of the Mar Menor movement, with citizens’ initiatives pushing for similar recognition for the North Sea in the Netherlands and the Loire River in France, for example.
The Loire River bed at Loireauxence was completely dried out because of extreme heat in September 2022 | Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images
At the movement’s core is a call for a fundamental rethink of the way people relate to and understand ecosystems. But more tangibly, campaigners also stress the importance of ensuring ecosystems can be represented in court.
In New Zealand, granting legal personhood to the Whanganui River was seen as a key step to ensure the Indigenous Māori community living in its vicinity gets more say on the health of the ecosystem.
The Spanish law giving Mar Menor a right “to exist as an ecosystem and to evolve naturally” ensures it will be represented by a group of caretakers, made up of scientists, local politicians and citizens.
Inspired by the Spanish example, the Oder River movement last month published a draft law to protect the ecosystem that would include establishing a 15-person committee to represent the river. Three would be appointed by the state, four by municipalities and eight by NGOs; a group of 10 scientists would advise the committee.
That structure would “give the Oder River a democratic representation” and a “voice that it currently just doesn’t have,” said Gaweł Andrzejewski, the coordinator of the Oder River march.
The process is still in its early stages: Drafted by a lawyer in collaboration with civil society, the draft bill is mostly meant to “stir and start the conversation” with politicians and NGOs, said Andrzejewski.
Practical impact
Critics argue that such representation is largely symbolic and doubt it can do much to help protect and restore ecosystems.
Setting up committees to represent an ecosystem gives “power to particular people” to make decisions about what is or isn’t in its interest, said Michael Livermore, a professor of law at the University of Virginia who specializes in environmental law, among other topics.
But there’s no guarantee that they’ll make the right call, or that it’ll be heeded. “I think part of the issue with a legal right is that you still run into problems, like what’s best for an ecosystem? And who’s going to make that decision?” he said.
In Ecuador, for example, environmental activists challenged a large-scale mining project located in one of the most biodiversity-rich areas of the planet, saying it violated nature’s rights — but the court ruled against them, arguing that the government’s interests to exploit the resource were important enough to override the nature rights argument.
Giving ecosystems legal status also does not guarantee protection — granting the Indian Ganges River legal personhood in 2017 has not prevented it from deteriorating, for example.
Livermore argues there are more efficient alternatives to protecting nature, such as preserving people’s rights to organize, providing protections for environmental organizations or improving decision-making processes to give more power to Indigenous communities.
Companies have so far remained relatively quiet on the movement — to Livermore, that’s a sign that giving rights to nature doesn’t pose much of a challenge.
“If it’s such a powerful tool to protect the environment, why don’t the special interests that worry about that, who would be opposed to very strong environmental protections, why aren’t they fighting it?” he said.
Corcoran, California — California’s Central Valley produces a quarter of the nation’s food, but a parade of atmospheric rivers this winter caused severe storms that destroyed thousands of acres of crops.
The storms, which have been linked to climate change, swamped 150,000 acres in the region, according to numbers from Kings County officials.
About 99% of the nation’s pistachio supply is grown in Central California, per data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Pistachio farmer Nader Malakan estimates that about 1,200 acres of pistachio crops were destroyed, to the tune of $15 million.
“It’s going to hurt,” he told CBS News. “It’s a lot of money.”
A view of rows of flooded pistachio trees from the reemerging Tulare Lake, in California’s Central Valley on April 27, 2023, near Corcoran, California.
Getty Images
The flood damage in Kings County this winter is estimated to have caused $1 billion in losses, county officials said.
Perched outside Corcoran, Tulare Lake, which was drained a century ago — and still didn’t even exist a few months ago — has returned with a vengeance and looks like an ocean. In the mountains above, one of California’s largest snowpacks on record is starting to melt. According to forecasters, high temperatures in the coming weeks could prove catastrophic.
“You kind of get an overwhelming sense of doom in a way,” said Lakeshore Dairy farmer Brandon Goedhardt. “How do you stop this?”
In March, flooding forced thousands of people to evacuate the Northern California agricultural community of Pajaro, after the Pajaro River’s levee was breached.
Goedhardt and other farmers are using massive piles of dirt to reinforce and add onto a nearly 15-mile-long levee designed to hold back the rising tide. While the farmers said they are receiving some assistance from FEMA agents on the ground, they are the ones footing the bill.
Goedhardt said there is nowhere safe enough, or large enough, to move his barn of cows.
Kings County Supervisor Doug Verbund said crews will finish the levee before the next major melt, but there is no guarantee it will hold.
“Mother Nature is in control,” Verbund said. “We’re just, you know, tying to put our finger in the dike as we go.”
Goedhardt said it is all hands on deck this week, but their hearts are sinking.
“We’re a family farm,” Goedhardt said. “You know the families have been doing this for generations, and I’d hate to be the one at the wheel, and we lose it all.”
