Farmers in Belgium and across the European Union face a growing threat. It comes not from the likes of Vladimir Putin and his fellow travelers, but from within. The threat is not military in nature but regulatory.

The leaders of the EU have undertaken a campaign to take over farming. Through a barrage of regulations, they endeavor to tell farmers how to raise food. Regulations cover nitrogen emissions, water and land use, pesticide bans and carbon taxes.

It is misguided at best, and at worst will lead the EU to complete dependence on imported food.

Last week we published an interview with Luk Uytterhoeven, a farmer in Belgium who, with thousands of other farmers, is fighting for his livelihood. Freelance writer Craig Reed traveled to Belgium and interviewed him.

For farmers, the enemy isn’t from outside the EU’s borders. Rather, the enemy is the garrison of politicians and bureaucrats encamped in the EU’s capital, Brussels. They are telling farmers where and how to farm. 

That is a profoundly bad idea. 

Farmers are told to take 4% of their land out of production. They are told when and how to plant and to harvest. They are told to stop raising livestock.

And it’s all in the name of stopping or slowing climate change.

In the U.S., we have some politicians who think the same way. They talk a good game when it comes to agriculture, but they know precious little about growing food. Like their counterparts in the EU, they want to tell farmers what to grow and how to grow it, without the slightest glimmer of a clue about what they are doing.

They want to follow the EU down the same road to agricultural ruin.

If it were up to these politicians, many farmers would be put out of business.

In Belgium, Uytterhoeven — the name actually means “from the farm” — and his fellow farmers have taken to the streets trying to protect their farms and the EU’s food supply.

The politicians have not been listening. Sure, they will delay a rule or regulation for a year to appease the farmers, but it will remain on the books.

It got so bad last winter that farmers blocked the Zeebrugge Harbor to prevent the importation of food. Only when the grocery store shelves were empty did the politicians understand that the domestic production of food is not a nicety — it’s a necessity upon which rests the nation’s security.

Unless politicians in the EU — and their friends in the U.S. — figure out that farming always has been and always will be the most important industry, there will soon be another very real problem for them to address: starvation. 

Playing politics with food is a dangerous undertaking. Politicians in the EU and the U.S. should understand that.