In August 2014, Spanish peach growers dumped their produce in the street and offered free fruit handouts. That was the first in a series of demonstrations staged by farmers all over the EU. The cause of their anger: falling food prices threatening their livelihoods. One of the reasons for the crisis is Russia’s embargo on certain food imports from the European Union, a response to Western sanctions over the reintegration of Crimea into the Russian Federation. Before the counter-sanctions, Russia had been a lucrative market for EU farmers; in 2013, the country imported $6 billion of agricultural produce from the EU. By 2018, that figure had fallen by 97% to just $200 million.
