WARSAW, Poland (LifeSiteNews) — The Polish Catholic Bishops Conference has expressed solidarity with Polish farmers angered by the Ukrainian grain flooding the market, driving down prices.
Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, president of the conference, stated last Friday that the bishops “cannot be indifferent” to the plight of the Polish farmers “to whom we owe so much.”
“One the one hand, they’re talking about an uncontrolled flow of food supplies from abroad, with which Polish farmers cannot compete in terms of price,” Gądecki stated.
“On the other, it is indicated that the EU policy, the so-called Green Deal, which in the opinion of farmers seeks to reduce agricultural production in the EU, or almost completely do away with it altogether. As a result of this, farmers feel threatened — not least because of the loans they have taken out — by the prospect of bankruptcy and loss of their farms, the product of generations of work. Their dramatic situation deserves our attention and solidarity.”
Since the war in Ukraine intensified two years ago, Poland has opened its hearts and wallets unlike any other nation, with the state, Church, and other infrastructures as well as thousands of individual Polish families supporting the estimated 19.6 million Ukrainian refugees who have crossed their borders. (This reporter was unable to personally attend a summer program in at the University of Wrocław in 2022 as all available resources were reserved for refugees.)
However, that generosity has been tested by the flooding of the European markets with Ukrainian grain, which is grown with chemicals not permitted on farms in the EU but has been granted concessions from Brussels since Russia’s February 2022 attack.
Ten thousand Polish farmers gathered in Warsaw last Friday to protest both the EU regulations and the lack of restrictions on Ukrainian grain. According to news blog Notes from Poland, a Ukrainian official stated that four trains of foodstuff from Ukraine were sabotaged as they rolled through Poland. What is not in any dispute is that Polish farmers have been blocking the border with Ukraine and even the border with Slovakia to prevent Ukrainian foodstuffs from entering Poland from the south.
But it is not the beleaguered Ukrainians who are profiting at Polish farmers’ expense but oligarchs and foreign businesses, especially, as Archbishop Gądecki mentioned, western syndicates.
“Although the grain comes from Ukraine, it is to a great extent not produced by individual Ukrainian farmers but is owned by Western syndicates which use chemicals in production not permitted by the European Union,” he stated.
Gądecki underscored the importance of the Polish countryside, and the ownership of their own land, to Polish identity. He also paid tribute to farmers of past generations, recalling when — armed with nothing by their scythes — they rose up to fight for Polish freedom. He reminded his readers of old farmers’ motto, “We feed and protect.” He acknowledged that farming practices are changing but asserted that “every day we need to eat” and that “we cannot be indifferent to the drama of the farmers to whom we owe so much.”
“I ask everyone for their prayers for the intentions of the farmers and their families, as well as the intentions of our Motherland,” he concluded.