My brother keeps updating me with pictures of the massive tractor cavalcades currently headed to Berlin for a rally to protest lack of farmer consultation in changing environmental protection legislation in Germany.
It is literally making me cry.

Changes in regulation of fertilizer use, labeling of domestically produced foods and price dumping in supermarkets due to new trade agreements with South American countries are putting increasing pressure on German farmers, pushing many businesses to the edge of profitability.

According to internal comms, the protest will consist of 10,000+ tractors.
All of this is being coordinated by the farmers themselves (mainly via WhatsApp groups), people that in a highly industrialised country such as Germany are still commonly thought to be "simple folk".

Most people, German or not, know that German farmers get paid subsidies.
Few people not in the agricultural sector know what farmers (and farms) provide in terms of environmental and social services, especially in rural areas with little infrastructure OR what they actually do.

Today's farmers are entrepreneurs who also happen to do hard, often dirty physical work. They are their own accountants, legal advisors, mechanics, electricians, animal health consultants, and often also function as social workers of some sort.

They train apprentices, organize social events, support rural communities + public institutions such as road services and snow road crews with machinery/manpower, often for no or little remuneration.
They do this because they understand life cycles and are a part of this one.