The Wine Blokes

I read with amazement, and some humour the other day, of the rioting behaviour of vignerons in Montpellier late last month. It’s not the first time it’s happened. Indeed, disgruntled vignerons have descended to the streets with rocks and sticks quite a few times over the last century or so.

However, it’s certainly not humourous for the many Languedoc vignerons who were protesting as a warning to the French government that despite reform plans by both the European Union and the French government, millions of small vignerons face economic ruin as French consumption of low-cost table wines shrinks. Over 200 growers wearing ski masks and weilding bats damaged a number of banks and supermarkets, including overturning a car with the local gendarmes still inside.

 It has got me thinking though. Could this happen in Australia?  The odd disgruntled farmer has driven down the main street and sprayed manur over the local council offices, or released his cows into the mayors garden, but would vignerons, or farmers for that matter, organise a mass protest that would turn violent?

Here in Australia, luckily these type of things don’t happen much, and if they do, it’s generally non-violent. However, if climate change, lack of water, increasing fuel and labour costs continue to increase, without the proportionate increase in commodity prices, there may come a tipping point when agriculturists have had enough.

Unfortunately, it might take this type of action for much of the population, and politicians, to realize that if agriculture dies in Australia, so does the population. History shows us from around the world that when a country ceases to be able to provide enough food to feed itself, all hell breaks loose. The resources boom is not infinite, and people will always need to eat.