Polish farmers protested in Warsaw yesterday under the slogan “Decent pay for hard work”, bringing around 200 tractors and over a thousand demonstrators with them. They are calling on the government to do more to protect them from soaring inflation.
The rally was the latest in a series led by Agrounia, a farmers’ association. As the protesters arrived in the morning, they came across a police blockade preventing the tractors from reaching the city centre.
This led them to abandon their vehicles on a central avenue and walk towards the prime minister’s office to present their demands, which focused around improving their earnings amid rising costs for fuel and fertiliser.
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“Everything is more expensive,” Agrounia’s leader, Michał Kołodziejczak, told reporters. He accused the Law and Justice (PiS) government of overseeing steep price rises but dodging talks with farmers who were affected by them. Poland is currently experiencing the highest levels of inflation in the European Union.
“Fruit growers from Grójec [Poland’s largest apple-growing area near Warsaw] sell their apples below the cost of production – 60 groszy each – while in shops their price is 3 zloty 60 groszy,” said Kołodziejczak, quoted by the Polish Press Agency (PAP)..
Some of the slogans visible at Wednesday’s rally included “High fertiliser prices = expensive bread” and “PiS kills the Polish farmer and supports the Chinese”. Organisers claimed that thousands attended the event, though the Gazeta Wyborcza daily put the figure at “over a thousand”.
The event is a culmination of dozens of protests and meetings in recent weeks under the slogan “We will not die quietly”. Farmers have argued that supermarkets do not offer fair prices for their produce, especially given the rising costs of fuel and fertilisers.
The government has sought to address some of these concerns by cutting VAT on fertilisers to zero and reducing excise tax on fuel for the first half of the year.
Some of the protesters also carried slogans criticising the government’s mega airport project which is being built in central Poland. Agrounia has coordinated protests against plans to bulldoze a number of villages to make way for the investment.
Other grievances raised by farmers include the government’s implementation of the European Union’s climate policies as well as its handling of African swine fever, which has repeatedly resurfaced in Poland in recent years.
In an effort to placate farmers, who constitute an important electorate for PiS, the government made a raft of promises to them last year. These include lowering taxes, creating free marketplaces for farmers, and extending subsidies.
Main image credit: Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
