Hard work and too many statistics: An EU farmer's frustration grows with every click of the mouse
On a farm in northern Belgium, not far from the hundreds of tractors blocking Europe's second-biggest port to demand more respect for farmers, Bart Dochy was switching on his computer, waiting for a government program to load with maps of his land next to empty digital boxes demanding to be filled with statistics on fertilizer, pesticides, production and harvesting. “They also supervise us with satellite images and even with drones,” Dochy said. From Greece to Ireland, from the Baltics to Spain, tens of thousands of farmers and their supporters joined protests across Europ...