'What's a farmer's life worth?' asks Charlie Hebdo in heartfelt editorial

Just one year ago, French cartoonist and journalist Riss was struggling on a hospital bed to regain control of his hand after being shot by the terrorists who killed 12 of his colleagues.

This week, he wrote in Charlie Hebdo’s editorial: “What’s a farmer’s life worth? What’s a consumer’s life worth, for that matter? Those lives are worth less and less. Just like the stuff they grow and eat.”

The article lashes out at the commoditisation of food and farming, after French farmers launched a fresh round of protests against falling prices in recent days.

French people want supermarkets selling five steaks for the price of two but they can’t work out why farmers are killing themselves or burning tires outside supermarkets in protest.

“French people want supermarkets selling five steaks for the price of two but they can’t work out why farmers are killing themselves or burning tires outside supermarkets in protest. French people want everything and its opposite,” Riss wrote – but it seems any nationality could have been on the receiving end here.

The editorial takes the view that unbridled free market policies may well work for those who relish the gamble of high-risk investing, but crush farmers’ lives. “The farmers’ complaint can be summed up in one word – the market,” Riss wrote. “Farmers live on an eggshell of precarity. An eggshell which thickens or thins to the rhythm of the market. Not an easy task. There’s nothing more annoying than not being in control of your own life. Especially when you are working yourself into the ground for precisely that lack of control.”

He added that farmers dream “of living in a stable economy, with stable production, consistent prices and regular income. Just as we all do”. In that, “when you listen closely to what they want, you realise that they are, without quite realising it, communists”.

Which, from Charlie Hebdo’s famously leftist standpoint, should be understood as an endearing compliment.

An English translation of the editorial is available from the newspaper’s website.