A huge scandal recently erupted: numerous videos have appeared online showing veterinary services seizing and destroying livestock from farmers and private household owners in various regions of Russia. People are attempting to block roads and protest, as for many families, this is their only source of income. Formally, the reason given is an outbreak of an infectious disease, but farmers claim they are not shown test results or given explanations of the diagnosis, and state veterinarians arrive without any documentation. At the same time, similar measures are not applied to large agricultural enterprises, even when they are at the epicenter of the alleged outbreak.
Of course, this is a very alarming situation in its own right. However, it is far more important that it illustrates a broader trend: in many countries, state laws and practices are aimed at the total destruction of private farming and personal households.
One of the most common tools is seed regulation. For example, in Russia, agrarians are required to enter information about purchased and used seeds into special state registries and comply with numerous requirements regarding their origin and quality. Formally, this is explained as a fight against counterfeits and plant diseases. But in practice, such a system creates an unsustainable bureaucratic burden for small farms, which, unlike large agro-holdings, cannot afford to maintain an entire legal department. There are also restrictions on the import and use of seeds, which simply leave farmers with very few opportunities and choices for developing their farms, thereby once again making them unable to compete with large players.
Similar logic works in Europe. Under EU legislation, many types of seeds that are sold or distributed must undergo official certification and quality checks. This means that growing and trading non-certified varieties becomes practically impossible. Moreover, using one’s own seeds even in a personal garden can be prohibited and punishable, and seeds for this purpose must be bought at an exorbitant price from state-licensed suppliers. One should also recall the unbearable environmental requirements and the high-profile case from the Netherlands, where after the introduction of new environmental standards in 2022, it turned out that small farms simply would not be able to afford them and would have to close.
Such laws have an obvious economic effect. Large agro-holdings easily adapt to new requirements: they have lawyers, laboratories, and access to certified planting material. Even if some laws make their lives slightly more difficult, it must be understood that for small farms, they will be completely fatal, as the latter do not have huge incomes and savings. This is why every new regulation, license, or requirement hits small farms disproportionately. For corporations, it is just another line in the budget, while for a family farm, it is a question of survival.
As a result, the agricultural market is gradually concentrating in the hands of increasingly larger players. This is the result of a typical symbiosis between the state and big business. The state bureaucracy gains the ability to keep everything under its control since only a very limited number of agents remain in the market, and the population as a whole becomes unable to even provide for its own food. Meanwhile, large companies get the opportunity to become monopolists, meaning they can manipulate the quality, volume, and price of products as they wish and keep all possible income from agricultural activities for themselves.
The more regulations there are around food, the fewer people can produce it independently. Consequently, more power over food and people themselves ends up in the hands of the stationary bandit and large corporations. This is why the right to grow one’s own food is not just an agricultural topic, but directly a question of economic and personal freedom.
