The season of the tractor

It was early on the morning of February 7, 1997, when a force of riot police and soldiers started deflating the tires of the tractors of protesting farmers on the national highway at Mikrothives in Central Greece. Most of the farmers in the days-long blockade had gone home to bed, leaving a small group to man the protest line. They were arrested. A few days after this incident, the blockade was called off and the highway reopened.

That blockade had been one of the most emphatic by farmers in decades. At around this time of year, it has become a custom for farmers to rev up their tractor engines and head for the country's national highways. Their demands do not differ all that much from year to year: the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the size of subsidies and compensation, the various crises in the economy, inflation etc. We are now in the grips of another protest cycle...