According to the World Health Organization, 31 million Europeans have no access to public sanitation, and 48 million do not have piped water at home. At least 300,000 Europeans follow San Francisco’s practice of defecating openly – but in the countryside rather than on public streets. But just as in the United States, water quality has taken a back seat to “climate change.”

On another front, the European Commission has adopted a “Sustainable EU Food System,” an initiative that intends to set agricultural policies for European farmers from the top down – by bureaucrats, most of whom have never plowed a field. The Czech-based Society for Animals commented that a mandatory sustainable food system framework must cover areas related to the environment, climate, water, air, soil, the impact on farmed animals for food – as well as trade, transport, economic instruments, and strict food import rules. No farmers need apply.

Meanwhile, in once-prosperous Europe, the European Environmental Bureau reported in 2021 that over a fifth of all Europeans were at risk of falling into poverty or social exclusion because food is seen as a commodity and not a human right. Only bureaucrats can save Europe, they add. No farmers need to be consulted.

The EEB declared that “it is absurd to expect that simply giving people information about the nutrition or sustainability credentials of food and relying on them (the people) to make the ‘right’ choice” is no match for the evils in the “food environment” manufactured by market forces. Only if policymakers “step up to their role as defenders of the public good,” using “all policy instruments at their disposal,” is there hope that European eating habits will be conformed to the bureaucrats’ demands.

Chief among the bureaucratic “solutions” is the claim that “Europe has a moral responsibility to reduce the land and resources needed for our own food consumption.” The reason? We, they tell us, are living “in a world where fertile land is dwindling due to climate change and environmental degradation and global population is increasing.”

Curiously, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported in 2021 that the global value generated by agriculture, forestry, and fishing grew by 73 percent in real terms between 2000 and 2019, and the total production of primary crops grew by 53 percent during the same period. Agriculture, they noted, employs 27 percent of the global workforce. [Real world fact: Increased levels of carbon dioxide over the past three decades have caused an 11 percent increase in green foliage over the globe’s arid regions.]

Part of this grand scheme has already been playing out in the Netherlands, where the government in 2022 announced a plan to buy up and close down up to 3,000 farms “near environmentally sensitive areas” to comply with European Union nature preservation rules. Specifically, agriculture is responsible for about half of the nitrogen emissions that are alleged to be causing the disappearance of native species.

The European People’s Party stood up for the farmers, calling agriculture a “strategic sector” that delivers food security in Europe and beyond and plays a crucial role in the vitality and economies of rural communities.

The EPP set its sights against the proposed Nature Restoration law, noting that implementing existing nature legislation has led to bureaucratic nightmares and planning deadlocks that have endangered rural economic viability, food security, renewable energy production, and crucial infrastructure. Such laws, said the EPP, are a direct assault on property rights, and taking 10 percent of farmland out of production would be extremely irresponsible.

In March, to the chagrin of the planners, the farmer-citizen movement (BBB), created in 2019 in the wake of widespread farmer protests (tractors blocking highways, for example), won 15 seats in the Dutch Senate with almost 20 percent of the vote. The BBB’s aim is to fight the government’s plan to force farmers off their lands, and reduce livestock and crop production – that is, to protect their livelihoods from the foibles of urban disrespect for those who feed them.

The battle is on in Europe for the future of farming – and in a world dominated by urban politics, farmers and other rural residents whose livelihoods for centuries have been intertwined with those of farmers are viewed as just “not with it.” After all, urbanites today eat heavily processed foods and are being introduced to such delicacies as artificial meat and crickets.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Biden Administration is continuing his former boss’ war on agriculture. According to a “study” funded by a $10 million grant back in the Obama years, fine particulates (dust and soot emissions) from farm operations are killing 17,000 Americans annually. Poppycock, says the Union of Concerned Scientists, citing other studies claiming fine particulates kill between 100,000 and 200,000 people a year. Back in 2011 EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claimed fine particulates were responsible for a fifth of all U.S. deaths.

In both Europe and the U.S., the eagerness of urban “intellectuals” (bureaucrats) to attack farmers and rural residents has increased as globalist institutions have grown in wealth and power. Concentrated power is easier for the very wealthy to influence, and the rules government creates always seem to benefit the rich at the expense of the common people.

The wealthy make little profit in replacing aging water and wastewater and sewer lines, cleaning rivers and streams of accumulated pollution, or even providing running water to those in isolated communities. To the bureaucrat, there is nothing sexy about enabling the hoi polloi to enjoy water recreation in cleaned-up lakes and streams. The regulations they impose on farmers and rural areas do not affect their lives.

In Europe and America – and in developing nations as well – people who live on and from the land are fighting to protect their homes and families from the “wisdom” of urban elites. This is, ultimately, the great battle of our day. [Note: AIs require neither food nor water for sustenance.]

Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

This piece was adapted from one that originally appeared at cfact.org and has been republished here with permission.