A large blue billboard stands outside a park in the town of Conegliano in northern Italy. On the left, a man pops a vast cricket into his mouth. On the right, are the words, “Let’s Change Europe before it changes us” – and the dates of the upcoming elections.  

The poster – an advert for the country’s radical right party Lega per Salvini Premier – refers to a conspiracy theory that has swept across Italy in the last 18 months. Elites in Brussels are planning to replace meat with bugs and are using environmental regulations to do so, or so the theory goes.

As millions of voters across the EU prepare to head to the polls from 6-9 June, conspiracy theories and misinformation on food and farming could pull voters towards the far right and parties opposing climate-friendly laws.

In the face of this onslaught of misinformation, DeSmog is launching a new series that investigates misleading claims and their impact on climate policy in the farming sector. 

Over the next two months DeSmog will monitor the spread of misinformation across the continent, working in seven different languages. We will look to identify false claims and uncover who is spreading these narratives online.

Agriculture accounts for 11 percent of carbon emissions in the EU, and has contributed to plummeting bird and bee numbers. But tackling the sector’s harms has become one of the most divisive issues on the continent, with tractors blocking highways across Europe during demonstrations this year. 

The protests – attended by thousands of farmers in several countries – reflected a wide range of concerns, from unfair food prices to calls for protection from increasingly extreme weather. Yet this complexity was barely represented in the media where demonstrations were cast as opposition to environmental measures. 

Far-right groups also weaponised the protests. In January, Jordan Bardella, lead EU candidate for France’s National Rally (formerly National Front), accused the country’s President Emmanuel Macron of pursuing “the death of agriculture” while Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right party Vox, wrote to Macron demanding an end to “aggressions” against Spanish producers, who he described as “victims” of EU policy.

In the eyes of its critics, green reforms agreed in the last EU term would destroy farming. Plans to cut chemical use and make farmers protect natural habitats would lead to monumental job losses, they claim. The same arguments are used by agricultural corporations that stand to lose out if green reforms are enacted.

The most extreme opponents, including radical right think tanks and hardline farming groups, see green reforms as part of a plan by Brussels bureaucrats to control the industry and “grab land”. 

These claims, however, contradict the facts: last year, more than 6,000 scientists said that such nature-friendly measures were “the cornerstone of food security and human health”. 

The policies that are currently being attacked aim to tackle climate breakdown – the biggest threat to producers across the EU, who are already feeling the effects of global heating. A “staggering portion” of the continent has been exposed to high drought risk in recent years, according to the European Drought Observatory, leading to widespread crop losses.

Right-wing and far-right groups stand to make massive gains from stoking these tensions. A recent study by the EU’s Committee of the Regions showed that discontented rural areas could be a major source of votes.  

This series will shine a light on those candidates that are weaponising false claims for electoral gain.

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