Europe's farmers are on the streets.

Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.

I'm Gideon Long. Good morning.

That's the sound of farmers from across Europe out in force on the streets of Brussels today,

protesting against a European Union plan to sign a trade deal with

the South American Economic Block Mercosur, which groups together Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and

Uruguay. The deal covers all aspects of trade between the two blocks, but the most controversial

is agriculture. Peter Meadendorp is a Dutch farmer and president of the European Council of Young

Farmers. He's in Brussels for the demonstration. Today we are protesting because for us the future

of farming is at stake. Firstly, it's about the next European budget proposals which we're seeing

are deeply worrying us. And of course, the Mercanture Agreement is also a major concern for us.

The agreement with the South American countries creates unfair competition and unequal standards.

We see that agriculture in the EU bears the costs of these agreements,

sectors like beef, sugar, rice and policyltry phase competition from imports that are produced under

other standards with a competitiveness which we in the EU as family farms cannot compete with.

Let's hear a bit more about what's behind the row from the BBC's Nick Marsh.

This is the difficulty for the EU because you've got the US imposing tariffs left, right and centre,

including on European exports. You need new markets to sell to. You need to be able to sell to

places like South America. But then in return, that means cheap goods are going to be coming

into Europe.

Historically, the EU has always wanted to support its farmers as much as possible,

even though we're really talking about 2, 3% of European GDP, depends on the country, of course,

...