Dutch farmers have been protesting agriculture reforms — aimed at reducing harmful emissions — that they fear threaten their livelihoods. Now they are at the center of a global right-wing culture war.
Conspiracy theories tend to begin reacting to a specific, complex problem, but then begin to encompass all of society’s problems, especially if there is no other explanation being offered.
Erik Luiten, 52, is a dairy farmer and farmers' rights activist in the village of Aalten, in the east of the Netherlands.He is reluctant to criticize extremist groups for supporting the farmers, but is clear there is a limit to the movement’s tolerance. “Nature is under pressure, and we need to act swiftly to restore it,” de Roos said, adding that there was a significant assistance package on the table to help farmers change their methods or leave their farms.
And there’s the “external” far-right actors, such as the Forum For Democracy party, “which tried to use the farmers for their broader political struggle,” and whose leadership is largely upper middle-class and urban and has no ideological or personal ties to the farming community, he said. He is in no doubt that the end result of this will be the removal of farms to make way for housing for immigrants.
The Netherlands is second only to the United States in global agricultural exports, a staggering achievement for a country with a surface area about 16,000 square miles, much of it reclaimed from the sea. At just 0.42% the size of the U.S, the outline of the Netherlands wouldIn the northern province of Friesland, Trienke Elshoff-Witteveen runs what the industry’s critics would call a “megafarm,” her 75 meter-long barn home to some 250 Frisian-Holstein cows.
Also a regional official for LTO, the national farmers union, Elshoff-Witteveen has been working on the farm since 1998; her parents before her since 1982. She is convinced the government plans are wrong and disproportionate. “It’s too fast, too costly, they can’t do it,” she said.
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