The farmers complain that their businesses are collapsing under the pressures of rising fuel and fertiliser costs, combined with what they consider to be unfair prices offered by supermarkets for their output.

Fertilisers in particular are a point of contention, with farmers saying prices have increased four-fold in the last few years, despite production being controlled by state companies. Given the state influence, they argue, this is an area where the government could easily intervene with price controls and caps on profits made by intermediaries.

“One of our main concerns is the indebtedness of Polish farmers: many of them are caught in a debt spiral they simply won’t be able to get out of,” Michal Kolodziejczak, the leader of Agrounia, the farmers’ movement organising the protests, tells BIRN.

But Kolodziejczak is quick to point out that the problems are systemic: the government does little to protect domestic food production, he argues, so farmers are left at the mercy of foreign corporations controlling food commerce and of intermediaries engaging in “speculation” on the markets for farming inputs such as fertilisers.

Kolodziejczak says farmers are also calling for a “less restrictive” implementation of the EU Green Deal, a series of European Commission initiatives to make Europe carbon-neutral by 2050, and more efficiency in the management of the African swine fever pandemic, which has been plaguing the Polish countryside for years.

Ponad 200 traktorów dojechało do Warszawy.@AGROunia_ pic.twitter.com/gkVkg03qlF

— Michał Kołodziejczak (@EKOlodziejczak_) February 23, 2022

Unhappy farmers

Rural voters have been key to the Law and Justice party’s (PiS) electoral victories over the past two decades as social transfers and their talk of social equality hit home.

However, support for PiS amongst farmers has slumped in recent years, which could impact on attitudes towards the party in rural communities as a whole. Successive opinion polls by research firm CBOS indicate that, currently, less than 30 per cent of farmers would vote for PiS, compared to 70-80 per cent just a few years back.

And PiS has clearly been close paying attention to the farmers’ protests. In early February, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki took the unprecedented step of taking part personally in a meeting of the agriculture commission of the Polish Sejm, where he made a series of promises: subsidies for fertiliser, aid for farmers at levels comparable to Western Europe, the “re-Polonisation” of parts of food production, and measures to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and drought.

Kolodziejczak remains unimpressed. “These are just empty words; no action is coming after them. The prime minister says things, but they have no connection to what happens on the ground in our farms and no realisation in practice,” he says.

Ruta Spiewak, a researcher from the Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development at the Polish Academy of Science, complains that the government has been very inefficient in supporting farmers. “Morawiecki has promised many things that were left unfulfilled over these seven years of governing,” she tells BIRN.

Spiewak points to an animal welfare bill that PiS abandoned at the last minute in 2020 as the moment when farmers’ support for the governing party became more grudging.

In addition to the pressures caused by rising inflation, the expert also notes that Polish farmers blame the government for securing less money from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the current budget as well as for being forced to “green” their farms. “Even if we all know the Polish government is far from being green, the farmers still believe it is not doing enough to protect them from ‘green ideology’,” Spiewak says, highlighting the irony.

A clear sign that the PiS leadership has been losing sleep over Agrounia came in late January, when it was revealed that Kolodziejczak had been spied on using the notorious Pegasus software, designed by Israeli cyber company NSO Group and licensed by governments around the world to illegally spy on its citizens.

Speaking in early February to a Senate commission investigating the use of Pegasus in Poland, the Agrounia leader said he was informed by two sources – Amnesty International and University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab – that his phone had been hacked in May 2019, in the run-up to that year’s parliamentary elections.

That was around the time that Agrounia leaders had announced their intention to form a political party, Kolodziejczak told the Senate commission, adding that, in his opinion, the ensuing elections were “unfair”.

“They prey on us, feast and now even spy on us”, reads an Agrounia banner displayed at the February 23 protest. Photo: Claudia Ciobanu

A political future?

Almost three years later, Agrounia leaders are still struggling to register the political party. The most recent failed attempt was made earlier this month, when Kolodziejczak and his colleagues were informed that a court had rejected their application on technicalities.

“Sooner or later, we will get the party registered,” Kolodziejczak tells BIRN. “We do have the necessary support among farmers. There is also a lot of government propaganda meant to push farmers in another direction, but we can handle it. We know our goal is right.”

Observers note that Kolodziejczak seems ambitious enough to want power and some parallels to Andrzej Lepper, the leader of an agrarian party which ended up governing together with PiS in the 2000s, have been drawn. But Agrounia is far from proving it can develop into a significant political force. Opinion polls have consistently put potential support for the party at below 3 per cent.

For Ruta Spiewak, Agrounia resembles more an interest group of large farmers, which is so far doing too little to attract support among other social groups. “They are mostly concerned with defending the interests of big farmers. They do not really speak to consumers, or even to the issues of rural inhabitants in general, for example the lack of proper transport infrastructure,” Spiewak said.

“At some point, they started mentioning the problems faced by other workers, for example in the health sector, but they didn’t follow up properly on that,” she added.

The political alignment of Agrounia is also unclear: two years ago, the media covered meetings of its leaders with representatives of the far-right; at a congress last year, they highlighted affinities with the radical left; earlier this month, Kolodziejczak organised a press conference on the topic of fertiliser with Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, leader of the agrarian Polish People’s Party. In an ominous sign, polls indicate that this party too is in danger of failing to reach the threshold at the next election in 2023 needed to enter parliament.

“Poland has many farming organisations, which are all weak and inefficient,” Spiewak explains. “It would be worth having a stronger, more efficient, knowledge-based organisation of big farmers in this country. Maybe wiser than creating another political party that might disappear in a few months.”

If Agrounia disappoints as a political party, some of the farmers disenchanted with PiS might turn to the far-right Confederation party, Spiewak warns. But she also points out that only one in 15 million rural inhabitants are farmers, and, of those, just 200,000 are making a living primarily out of farming.

Whatever happens to Agrounia, PiS needs to find new ways to engage those voters before the 2023 parliamentary election if it wants to ensure another victory.