Making agriculture more climate-friendly is difficult. Just ask European politicians.

The farmers' protests in Europe are a harbinger of the next major political challenge in global climate action: how to grow food without further damaging the planet's climate and biodiversity.

On Tuesday, after weeks of intense protests in several cities across the continent, the most explicit sign of that difficulty came. The European Union's top official, Ursula von der Leyen, abandoned an ambitious bill to curb the use of chemical pesticides and softened the European Commission's demands. next set of recommendations on reducing agricultural pollution.

“We want to ensure that farmers remain in the driver's seat in this process,” she said in the European Parliament. “Only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together can farmers continue to earn a living.”

The farmers claim they are being hit from all sides: high fuel costs, green regulations, unfair competition from producers in countries with fewer environmental restrictions.

Nevertheless, agriculture is responsible for 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it is impossible for the European Union to achieve its ambitious climate targets, which are enshrined in law, without making dramatic changes to the agricultural system, including the way on which farmers use chemical pesticides and fertilizers, as well as the huge livestock industry.

It is also politically important. Changing European agricultural practices is proving extremely difficult, especially as June's parliamentary elections approach. Peasants are a powerful political force, and food and agriculture are powerful features of European identity.

Agriculture accounts for just over 1 percent of the European economy and employs 4 percent of the population. But it receives a third of the EU budget, largely in subsidies.

Why are farmers protesting?

For weeks, a series of farmers' groups have taken to the streets across Europe, blocking highways with tractors, throwing fireworks at police and setting up barricades that have caused major transport problems in Berlin, Brussels and Paris.

They are angry about many things. Some frustration is directed at national leaders and proposals to reduce agricultural diesel subsidies in France and Germany. Some of it focuses on EU-wide proposals, such as cuts in the use of nitrogen fertilizers (which are made from fossil fuels).

Farmers are also angry at trade agreements that allow the import of agricultural products from countries that do not have the same environmental protections. And some farmers want more government support as they reel from the effects of extreme weather, exacerbated by climate change.

The protests epitomize the failure to convince farmers towards more sustainable agriculture, said Tim Benton, head of the environment program at Chatham House, a research institution based in London. “This is a broader example of how, if we want to make the transition to sustainability, we need to invest more in 'just transitions' to bring people along and make them feel better off, not punished,” he said .

How have leaders responded?

In Germany, the government has backtracked on a number of key policy measures, including: postponing a reduction in diesel subsidies for agricultural vehicles.

In France, the government has offered livestock farmers a 150 million euro (or $163 million) aid package, temporarily halted a national plan to reduce pesticide use and banned the import of foreign products treated with a pesticide banned in France is.

But on Tuesday, Ms von der Leyen announced the scrapping of an EU-wide bill to reduce pesticide use because, she said, it had become “a symbol of polarisation”.

Later in the day, the Commission published its recommended 2040 climate targets. Although they will not be formally proposed or voted on until a new Parliament is elected this summer, they send a clear signal about the political priorities of the incumbent European People's Party from Mrs von der Leyen. The targets aim to reduce overall emissions by 90 percent by 2040. But they do not recommend anything specific on reducing agricultural methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas that comes mainly from livestock, nor on curtailing nitrogen fertilizers.

Both methane and nitrogen need to be significantly reduced to meet the bloc's climate targets, scientists advising the European Union said.

Following Tuesday's announcements, a European farmers' lobby group known as COPA-COGECA declared victory. “The European Commission finally acknowledges that its approach was not the right one,” the group said said on X.

Why is it politically risky?

The centre-right European People's Party, the largest group in the European Parliament, has long enjoyed the support of rural voters. Lately, some environmental and trade policies have angered that voting bloc. Far-right groups, which are on the rise in several countries on the continent, have seized on that discontent.

“The upcoming elections create opportunities for populist parties, who use them against Europe's green agenda,” said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute that studies European energy and environmental policy. “We all have someone in our family tree who was a farmer, and food is an important part of European identity.”