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Dutch farmers organise mass protests in face of farm closures

160 points by darod 4y ago

amelius 4y ago
I don't know why this is on HN, but this is the degree of protesting I'd like to see happening against patent law.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  I expect that tech news are the primary focus of this site, but that the 'spirit' of the site, as promulgated by the likes of @dang, is intellectual curiosity and debate with a tech focus.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  This is the degree of protesting I'd like to see in the US about anything.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    There has been quite a lot of vigorous protesting in the US over the past several years. That energy has just been sadly captured by authoritarian charlatans promising simplistic answers to complex problems. Eventually the protestors will tire, apathy will set in, and the corprocracy will continue rolling forward. This is how the US system works.
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      It's notably different though. There was no general strike until conditions were met. As you say, it just fades away and nothing changes.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        Spreading an infectious disease to overwhelm hospitals, attempting to disrupt the presidential election, and other deeply spiteful behavior seems akin to a strike, given the lack of labor organization in the US.
        micromacrofoot 4y ago
        I suppose there's that... I guess if that's what progress looks like in the US right now then we may be doomed without a serious course correction.
        swader999 4y ago
        I don't think its been proven that the Democrats did this. There were a lot of court cases that were dismissed without any discovery though so maybe its not entirely settled.
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    We keep having these horrible mass shootings, and somehow there have been zero billionaire victims...
- WJW 4y ago
  Are you aware of the "degree of protesting" that has been going on? Threatening children is not OK in my book, even if their parents are government ministers in charge of the policy you disagree with.
elevenoh 4y ago
love seeing the resistance to this period of peak centralized control of lives months ago many ppl i know praised central mandates on things like ESG scores & vaccines. Near all have completely reversed their position just 6 months later (even deleting previous tweets). the unprecedented political-decisions as of late have been something of an IQ test.
- Zerverus 4y ago
  Any proof at all for this claim?
  - ejb999 4y ago
    what exactly are you looking for? certified letters from the people he knows proving that he is accurately reflecting what he has seen?
    - zthrowaway 4y ago
      It's as if we are no longer able to perform inductive reasoning.
  - mastazi 4y ago
    parent edited their comment which originally was just the first paragraph about centralised control, I suppose that's what you are replying to. Obviously it is hard to quantify control so I don't have hard numbers to present, but I ask you: can you name a more efficient surveillance device than a smartphone? Note that smartphones became ubiquitous very recently, I would say during the last 10 to 15 years (before that, they did exist but were used by a tiny minority of people).
    - fabbari 4y ago
      I can: people. If you think that mass surveillance requires technology you haven't seen what, for example, eastern European regimes we're able to accomplish. Stasi [0] would be the first such example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
causi 4y ago
Considering the imminent food shortages due to the double whammy of blocked Ukrainian exports and global fertilizer shortage, closing farms for greenhouse emissions seems like a spectacularly bad idea.
- yessirwhatever 4y ago
  Same applies to closing down nuclear reactors and coal mines over the last decade in some countries in Europe.
  - loopdoend 4y ago
    Perhaps nuclear can still save us
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- niek_pas 4y ago
  It’s important to note that much of the food produced by these farms is exported, so national food prices may not be affected as much as you would think.
  - vimy 4y ago
    People are gonna starve because of these closures.
    - niek_pas 4y ago
      Maybe. People are going to drown if we do not act to reduce nitrogen emissions (And eating less meat would significantly reduce emissions, but that seems unlikely to happen on a large scale)
      - myshpa 4y ago
jsiepkes 4y ago
This article gets so much wrong. For starters "to slash greenhouse gas emissions" is wrong; it's about nitrogen oxides.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Nitrogen oxides are very potent greenhouse gases.
  - tinco 4y ago
    But that's besides the point. That they're greenhouse gases doesn't really figure into the reason why it's EU policy to reduce the density of their emissions near natura 2000 areas.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      The greenhouse effects are not the only side effect of overfertilization.
  - donkeyd 4y ago
    Correct, but in the Netherlands the problem is that they're killing our existing flora and fauna. Especially in areas where nature reserves and farming are close together, this causes issues. The Netherlands is the 2nd biggest food exporter in the world, after the US. But we're only the 134th largest by land mass and 69th largest by population. The amount of farming we do in our tiny country is pushing the limit of what you can do to nature and it's causing issues on a local scale. The unfortunate thing is that we're about the most efficient producer in the world too, so on a global scale, cutting down production here would probably be a bad thing.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    That have a short life at the atmosphere. They are relevant for local warming (normally named "heat islands"), but not much for global warming. Anyway, they have much more important local effects, so mostly nobody cares about the warming.
chrisseaton 4y ago
What’s the plan of the closures? To import the food instead? But that’ll be more emissions not less won’t it? Just keep the emissions in a poorer country?
- niek_pas 4y ago
  As I said in another comment, most of the food produced by these farmers is destined for export.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    But again, so it’ll just be grown elsewhere with the same or more emissions?
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      The problem is currently with localised pollution, either near nature preserves or near places where construction is planned. Other European countries using much less intensive food production methods over much larger areas of land can take the increase in emissions quite well. This isn't a about global warming, though these compounds are definitely not helping the situation; this is about nitrogen rich compounds ending up in the ground where it shouldn't be.
    - cute_boi 4y ago
      Yes and no. Not all land are equal & not all surrounding ecosystem are same. For example growing palm trees has more bad effects in Indonesia compared to growing in country like India.
  - zthrowaway 4y ago
    So the lack of food being imported from this export needs to be balanced somewhere else, no? This would mean no reduction in emission. Only emission within this locale. I guess that's a win to make local numbers look good. This is so pointless. Not to mention we are taking away livelihoods from people.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 4y ago
Yet another consequence of politicians afraid to do what is evidently necessary for enviromental protection for decades and now, after a 2019 court order [1], only harsh measures (a strict speed limit on highways and a limit on farm animals) remain. Politicians, of course from a center-right government, could have gone and implemented a soft, multi-year transition period towards animal farming that could have softened the impact, but they did not do so and rather chose to stick their heads into the sand. Now they have to deal with angry farmers. The worst thing is, this sort of behavior towards environmental protection was common over the last decades, and with climate change becoming more and more severe and the judicial systems imposing stricter mandates as a result, we are looking towards serious social unrest. Everywhere. The French Yellow Vest protests were just the starter. [1] https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/niederlande-stickstoffemissionen-zu-hoch-tempolimit-als-loesung-ld.1521684 https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/niederlande-stickstoffemission...
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  This is the worst part, in my opinion. The farmers are mad that they need to cut emissions but it was the lax government policy that allowed them to grow to the size they are today to even emit this much. I sympathise with the farmers that will need to adjust as a result of this mess, as the government ignoring the problem (in no small part because of industry lobbying, though) is the root cause of this upheaval. On the other hand, the lawsuit that forced the government to come up with a plan finished five years ago, at this point it's no longer something that couldn't be foreseen. The violent protests as a response to mild, insufficient government action are quickly ruining the good reputation and compassion many people have for these farmers, despite the fact that the majority of them are choosing simple inaction over violence.
jeroenhd 4y ago
These protests are against attempts to slash greenhouse gas emissions in general; CO2 and many other greenhouse gasses are entirely irrelevant here. I don't trust this source if they can't even get that detail right. The problem is with nitrogen containing compounds specifically near nature preserves. This is part of an ongoing conflict between farmers and the government that's been going on for years now. It started five years ago when the government got told that part of their nature preservation law was illegal and the government was the forced to act. Everything from construction to industry is hit by the restrictions the government ignored for years. Pollution within the country mostly comes from farmers (up to two thirds of the total, even higher specifically in nature reserves) and therefore most measures are aimed at reducing farm pollution. This new wave of protests is particularly bad as politicians are now threatened in their homes.
- masklinn 4y ago
  From previous comments on the subject I gathered that farmers had apparently been exempted from or allowed to skirt many of the previous rules and regulations as well, despite a major if not the main source of pollution in the country. But not this time, this time they're asked to put in the work same as everyone else, and that makes them very unhappy.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    "Put in the work same as everyone else" seems, potentially, a bit off to me. Farming, by its nature, may involve more pollution than other professions. For example, a programmer working remotely emits very little nitrogen relative to a farmer, but it would be odd to say that the programmer is putting in the work on nitrogen emissions.
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      The general tenor of a lot of agricultural objections to these kinds of scenarios tends to be along the lines of "everyone else must fully eliminate all of their emission scenarios before we are forced to reduce a single thing." You can see a similar effect in the US's Western megadrought crisis, where farmers are adamant that all possible water use reduction in urban and suburban areas are done before you start discussing reducing the water use that goes to agriculture. And I've also seen some similar stories about Chesapeake Bay nitrogen runoff--fix all urban uses before you ask farmers to make changes to their fields.
niels_bom 4y ago
It's such a shame that quite a few farmers in the Netherlands have been weaponized by Big Ag. Especially the BoerenBurgerBeweging (farmer party) is straight up lobby money (1). Watching the media around farmer protest in the Netherlands I also see a lot of right wing populist talking points. 1) https://www-doorbraak-eu.translate.goog/boerburgerbeweging-geen-boer-burgers-maar-marketing-experts/?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-doorbraak-eu.translate.goog/boerburgerbeweging-g...
algoatecorn 4y ago
We really need to see more folks getting interested in food system innovation. This is just one of many outcomes we are seeing as a result of our current system which is highly unsustainable. There are so many entry points for our brightest minds to reinvent the value chain of food. Inputs, plant breeding, machinery, precision ag, logistics, processing, and marketing. Agriculture is also one of the least digitized industries. We also need to consider an entire paradigm shift when it comes to food. Does a sustainable food system provide the same variety of food we currently see? Does a sustainable system cost the same as our current one? I don't know, but we should be ready those potential changes. I'm personally excited to see the intersection of personalized health and food systems. Technologies which reduce food waste, non-communicable disease, and improved bodily and societal health.
- finiteseries 4y ago
  Basically any land grant university has thousands of our brightest minds doing exactly that, every single day. The fields and labs of Ames, Iowa are less visible and sexy than an SV startup or NYC / London / Dubai NGO, but I can assure you what you want exists en masse.
WJW 4y ago
The farmers seem to be fighting a very losing battle on this one. A few weeks ago, about 40% of the population was supportive of their plight. In just the last few days we've seen: - Farmers blocking highways, not even letting ambulances through (!). - Farmers threatening the family of cabinet ministers. - Blockades of food distribution centers. - Rioters attacking police vans with sledgehammers. This kind of thing has been degrading popular support pretty fast. Politicians calling it a "civil war" are just playing to the audience though. Actual farmers make up a less than a single percent of the population (~53k according to the central statistics agency) and the general desire of the population to get on with other things like building houses is likely to prevail IMO.
- sybercecurity 4y ago
  I've noticed this gets said of every protest movement in the last few decades: BLM protests in the US, Trucker convoy in Canada, Yellow Vest in France. Even years ago, the average urban dweller started to hate the Critical Mass protests in cities when their commute got worse. I wonder if there is a limit on disobedience that is tolerated? Or simply people get defensive when they are made to suffer for a protest they aren't directly involved with? This isn't about the actual movements/protests, but about the tactics. "Raising awareness" only gets you so far, negatively impacting people seems to backfire. Is there a middle ground?
  - donkeyd 4y ago
    > Is there a middle ground? Yes. Raise awareness with targeted, limited, protests and try to keep the awareness by remaining visible. You can remain visible with banners, brochures, interviews and in lots of ways. Increasing violence is not a good way to get people interested in your cause. The increase in violence also often doesn't seem to be caused by the people who feel strongly about a cause, but by other who hijack it for their enjoyment. Also, the farmers aren't raising awareness for some coherent goal like ending racism. They are protesting drastic measures that are necessary to protect nature in the country and are supported by a majority of the people. These drastic measures include billions in payments to the affected farmers, it's not like the cost will be on them. So it will be really hard for the farmers to convince the public that their demands are reasonable. (We don't even really know their demands except "not this".)
misja111 4y ago
I'm not sure why this is on HN, but since it's here now, let me add a bit of the details of what's behind the situation in the Netherlands, because the description in the original article is incorrect. A long time ago, NL signed a couple of European agreements that forced them to designate a number of area's for which the natural diversity should be preserved. NL did this very diligently: no less than 162 of such area's were assigned. About 10 years after signing the contract, an environment organization started a lawsuit against a farm next to such an area that wanted to expand. It won the lawsuit and the farm's expansion was forbidden. The ground for the verdict was that the expansion would increase the farm's emission of nitrogen; a gas that when it ends up in the soil, favors a limited number of plants such as nettles and grass, most other species will die out. Once this precedent was created, many more lawsuits followed. Eventually the Dutch government decided to make a plan to regulate nitrogen emissions nationally. A map was published that showed estimated levels of nitrogen emission in the country. In many area's the emissions were too high, and the most obvious way to bring it down was to close nearby farms. This is the reason for the farmer's protests. Interestingly, very little is known about how much emitted nitrogen eventually ends up in the soil. The RIVM, the Dutch institution that made the map, only started doing some measurements of deposits in 2020. There's also a lot of criticism on the way the emissions are measured and on other aspects of the model that was used to create the nitrogen map.
- oneepic 4y ago
  This is on HN because someone posted it on HN.
  - stingraycharles 4y ago
    I think the parent mostly meant that it’s unexpected to be the #1 post on HN right now, which I agree with; didn’t expect this community to care this much about it.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      Fringe bureaucratic rules, arguable ecologic preservation actions, agricultural impacts in a time of uncertainty of the agricultural output... It has almost everything that HK loves, it's just missing being written in a cool language.
Hayvok 4y ago
> The protests coincided with a parliamentary vote on a proposed £22bn programme to halve agricultural emissions of nitrous oxide and ammonia by 2030.…close to nature reserves, the policy is tougher still, with 70-95% reductions targeted… Netherlands House of Representatives released a statement which said: “The honest message is that not all farmers will continue in business. Those who do will have to farm differently.” What does “farm differently” actually look like? Are there viable replacements for the chemicals being targeted? (Guessing not, given the farmers’ reaction.)
- masklinn 4y ago
  > Guessing not, given the farmers’ reaction. Why would you guess that? Farmers don't generally like changing their habits, and are usually very happy to put the burden on the commons. In this case, the farmers are unhappy because the netherlands are a massive nox producer (https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_dioxide_over_Europe https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_d...), this comes from a huge livestock sector, and the government has decided to implement severe restriction on nox emissions, especially around nature reserves where it's creating wastelands.
- donkeyd 4y ago
  The farmers' reaction is mostly due to the first part: > not all farmers will continue in business The farming differently mostly has to do with scale. We're already really good at producing efficiently, but we're building massive (relatively, nothing compared to the US) farms for meat and dairy and we're doing this right next to nature preserves. Our country is so tiny, that pretty much everything is right next to each other. Over the past decades, through farming and related lobbies, we've seen a huge increase in the size of the farms over here. The economies of scale have benefited the share holders of food companies and banks, but not the farmers, because every penny they save gets cut from their income by these food companies. This causes farmers to aim for even larger farms with more automation, which requires investment, which benefits the banks. Now, the government is telling the farmers we need to reduce the number of farms and the size of the remaining ones. After being fucked over mostly by large companies for decades, they feel like the government is now targeting them unfairly. They see all their investments might be useless in the future and they're angry because of it. All of this is exacerbated by leftover Covid anger and conspiracy groups adding to the fire and joining the protests, which are becoming more violent and their demands are becoming less coherent.
tomp 4y ago
I'm really happy that it's other countries that are experimenting with these disastrous "pro-climate" policies (but really anti-progressive and anti-civilisation). Such as Netherlands experimenting with "low-food" (anti-meat) regimes and Germany experimenting with "low-energy" (anti-nuclear, pro-solar) policies. We can then learn from their mistakes.
- niek_pas 4y ago
  What do you mean by “‘low-food’ (anti-meat) regimes”?
  - tomp 4y ago
    Various approaches to "reducing emissions" by producing less food, by either urging people to eat less meat (quite popular in a lot of places) or by shutting down farms (e.g. what Netherlands is doing)
jurmous 4y ago
To understand the nitrogen crisis (Nitrogen Oxides and Ammonia) in the Netherlands you have to see the nitrogen dioxide map: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_dioxide_over_Europe https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_d... And most of it is from agriculture (landbouw) 46% and abroad (buitenland) https://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-09/grafiek_herkomst_stikstofdepositie_taart_0.png https://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-09/grafiek_herk... Because the Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world after the USA: https://medium.com/the-global-millennial/how-the-netherlands-is-the-worlds-second-largest-food-exporter-c411b8fb14dd https://medium.com/the-global-millennial/how-the-netherlands... So something has to be done to lessen output of Ammonia and Nitrogen Oxides as they are destroying the local nature ecosystems.
- Zenst 4y ago
  That is one heck of a blob over London and that area does lack farms. Indeed looking at somewhere like Spain and you would think all that fruit and vegtable production didn't exist. So is farming more a scapegoat for these emmisions?
  - adrianN 4y ago
    No, farming (fertilizer, manure) produces nitrogen oxide. Cars also produce nitrogen oxide, which is why metropolitan areas also show up.
    - Scarblac 4y ago
      It's mostly about the ammonia produced by animals (manure).
      - mywittyname 4y ago
        Animal waste in general. Anyone with a dog and a yard learns how devastating their waste can be to plants. Now multiple that by 10,000.
    - 4y ago
ArnoVW 4y ago
a bit of background (Dutch national, living currently in France) - the Dutch are the second largest agricultural exporter (in absolute terms! it's a tiny place, look it up) - this intense agricultural activity generates a lot of "nitrogen", which causes ecological issues - the Dutch have known of this issue for decades (I remember talking about it in the 90's) - the Dutch are bound to nitrogen limits by international treaties (like for CO2) Recent governments have decided that they could exceed agreed limits, because "future technologies would fix everything". A recent judgement by the supreme court has ruled that, no that is not credible, and no it doesn't work like that. So now they are in a bad spot. If they would have managed this 30 years ago, maybe it would have been possible to find a solution. Now they only have bad options. They have already reduced the maximum speed from 130 km/h to 100 km/h. They have already reduced house building activity, etc. The problem is, the biggest emitter of nitrogen is the agricultural sector. There is no way that they can make up for lost time without forcing some farmers to stop. The farmers, like the rest of the Netherlands, knew about this issue for decades. But every time something about farmers is under discussion, they protested heavily(we're not talking quiet marches here) So nobody dares touch the subject. So the whole thing continued for decades. And given the current zeitgeist, these protests are worse than before. We're talking criminal activities, threatening MPs, etc. I sympathize with the farmers, and do believe that they deserve some compensation. But I'm not convinced that it's a good thing that the political arena is swayed by violence. Europe's had it's dose of that, and it finished poorly for Europe, and the rest of the world.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  > the Dutch are the second largest agricultural exporter (in absolute terms!) This number is quoted often, usually in defence of strict measures, but it includes flower exports (which you can't eat unless you've got a real expensive taste) and imported food being exported again. I agree with everything else you say, but I very much dislike this factoid.
- swader999 4y ago
  Could say the same thing about China and manufacturing but it really doesn't ever get any traction.
seper8 4y ago
The Netherlands has barely any nature left, almost everything here is artificial. Rivers have been relayed, dykes have been raised. Nearly all our forests have been planted. In other places all trees were cut, and a desert-esque ecosystem was the result: the Loonse/Drunense dunes. Even the "typical" Dutch heather fields are a product of our destruction. Because when we drained the swamp (haha) and removed its top layer to use as fuel, we left a very mineral deficient soil, which is very suitable for growing heather. Now some biologists have decided that some areas (nature2000) should remain exactly as artificial as they are now, forever. And that some plants, insects and birds were more valuable than others. Thats why the farms surrounding these areas suddenly need to go. Even builders are having a hard time getting permits, because this also produces nitrogen oxide. The political parties who support these farm closures funnily enough are the same parties who don't want immigration to the Netherlands to be restricted... Like we can just keep on growing in population forever and our "nature" won't suffer from it. Ok. Personally I think we shouldn't sacrifice our economy / home building capabilities for protecting our "nature", which in my opinion is nothing more than a poorly maintained park. I feel like we are becoming victim to some biologists pet project. Maybe the proponents of this policy should raise money and purchase the farmlands themselves. Costs about 6 euro per m2 here.
- jurmous 4y ago
  If you see the map of ESA, something is going totally out of control in the Netherlands: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_dioxide_over_Europe https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_d... Any local species of plants, insects, birds will be wiped out and we will get back a totally different ecosystem. We would also create worse effects on our own health: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide#Health_effects_of_NO2_exposure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide#Health_effect... What the Netherlands is doing is not sustainable, and we should use our innovations to just lower output of those gases. Some farms already have shown that with some use of different food for the cows they can radically lower output of those gases.
  - seper8 4y ago
    If you are Dutch, https://nos.nl/collectie/13799/artikel/2304403-stikstof-vier-vragen-en-antwoorden-over-de-uitstoot-van-boeren https://nos.nl/collectie/13799/artikel/2304403-stikstof-vier... As you can see their output of NO2 has mostly DECREASED in the past decades...
clmul 4y ago
The Netherlands simply has too many farm animals and overfertilization has been a problem for decades. This is especially visible on this map from 2011 [1]. The overfertilization will lead to biodiversity loss, as plants that prefer nutrient poor soils will be outcompeted by plants that can harness the excess nitrogen and/or that prefer acidic soils [2]. Due to EU regulation and court orders only recently did this become a real mess, where building projects couldn't even continue because of the limits on nitrogen emissions. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_Global_Fertilizer_and_Manure,_Version_1_Nitrogen_in_Manure_Production_(6172666199).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_Global_Fertil... [2] https://www.wur.nl/en/Dossiers/file/Nitrogen.htm https://www.wur.nl/en/Dossiers/file/Nitrogen.htm
- sfvisser 4y ago
  Why is that “simply”? Why should we care more about biodiversity than construction and farming? I think really nothing is simple about this trade off.
  - clmul 4y ago
    Even with the proposed reduction in the amount of farm animals the Netherlands will still produce more than enough meat and milk to meet domestic demand, and the reason that construction can't continue is precisely the excess nitrogen emissions produced and the physical space consumed by by the farms. The country simply isn't large enough to not make this tradeoff. And if you don't care about the biodiversity, sooner or later you'll find out that you can't continue with agriculture at all because there are no pollinators left.
z9znz 4y ago
Most of the public face of Dutch farming is a show intended to mislead the public into having sympathy, as if the farmers were struggling and at risk of losing their livelihoods. This is what every industry does in the face of regulations. The farmers represented by these organizations are not poor. They are profiting handsomely while creating significant pollution - a cost borne by the local public and the global public. The Netherlands is a small country by land size, and it has a vast number of intensive farms. The same intensive farming practices which are passable in other places are create high concentrations of pollution here. And as the NL as part of the EU and has agreed to abide by various pollution limits, it must make changes to curb its pollution. Simply saying, "But this is my way of life!" is not valid if that way of life comes at an increasing cost to everyone around you. Just because something has been going on for some time does not mean it should be allowed to continue. As for the protests, they are not protests - they are extortion or terrorism. As such, they should be met with severe criminal penalties. Allowing a group of wealthy bullies to take over a country is not acceptable in modern times. We are hopefully not just a bunch of apes with clubs forming clans and dominating those who "threaten our way of life".
- ratsmack 4y ago
  I'm sure your views on this subject would be completely different if you were a farmer.
  - consp 4y ago
    The point probably is that you can replace <farmer> with any well of group trying to get sympathy.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    No, probably not. I would just know that I was making a profit at the expense of everyone else. To go out in public and cry crocodile tears about my livelihood would be disingenuous.
    - ratsmack 4y ago
      >To go out in public and cry crocodile tears about my livelihood would be disingenuous Should we feel the same way about people in IT, programming and other computer related industries then they are laid off for economic reasons? I find it odd that there are many industries that produce far more damaging pollution, including the tech industries, which don't even produce the necessities for life like farming does, but nobody blinks any eye.
lutarezj 4y ago
Farming is not rocket science. It has been done fot hundreds of thousands of years. Countries The Netherlands exports to should build their own farming areas. The duch farmers will be offloaded from the burden of having to feed the world from "een kleine stukje aarde".

160 points by darod 4y ago

amelius 4y ago

I don't know why this is on HN, but this is the degree of protesting I'd like to see happening against patent law.

formerkrogemp 4y ago
I expect that tech news are the primary focus of this site, but that the 'spirit' of the site, as promulgated by the likes of @dang, is intellectual curiosity and debate with a tech focus.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
This is the degree of protesting I'd like to see in the US about anything.
- mindslight 4y ago
  There has been quite a lot of vigorous protesting in the US over the past several years. That energy has just been sadly captured by authoritarian charlatans promising simplistic answers to complex problems. Eventually the protestors will tire, apathy will set in, and the corprocracy will continue rolling forward. This is how the US system works.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    It's notably different though. There was no general strike until conditions were met. As you say, it just fades away and nothing changes.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      Spreading an infectious disease to overwhelm hospitals, attempting to disrupt the presidential election, and other deeply spiteful behavior seems akin to a strike, given the lack of labor organization in the US.
      - micromacrofoot 4y ago
        I suppose there's that... I guess if that's what progress looks like in the US right now then we may be doomed without a serious course correction.
      - swader999 4y ago
        I don't think its been proven that the Democrats did this. There were a lot of court cases that were dismissed without any discovery though so maybe its not entirely settled.
- jessaustin 4y ago
  We keep having these horrible mass shootings, and somehow there have been zero billionaire victims...
WJW 4y ago
Are you aware of the "degree of protesting" that has been going on? Threatening children is not OK in my book, even if their parents are government ministers in charge of the policy you disagree with.

elevenoh 4y ago

love seeing the resistance to this period of peak centralized control of lives months ago many ppl i know praised central mandates on things like ESG scores & vaccines. Near all have completely reversed their position just 6 months later (even deleting previous tweets). the unprecedented political-decisions as of late have been something of an IQ test.

Zerverus 4y ago
Any proof at all for this claim?
- ejb999 4y ago
  what exactly are you looking for? certified letters from the people he knows proving that he is accurately reflecting what he has seen?
  - zthrowaway 4y ago
    It's as if we are no longer able to perform inductive reasoning.
- mastazi 4y ago
  parent edited their comment which originally was just the first paragraph about centralised control, I suppose that's what you are replying to. Obviously it is hard to quantify control so I don't have hard numbers to present, but I ask you: can you name a more efficient surveillance device than a smartphone? Note that smartphones became ubiquitous very recently, I would say during the last 10 to 15 years (before that, they did exist but were used by a tiny minority of people).
  - fabbari 4y ago
    I can: people. If you think that mass surveillance requires technology you haven't seen what, for example, eastern European regimes we're able to accomplish. Stasi [0] would be the first such example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

causi 4y ago

Considering the imminent food shortages due to the double whammy of blocked Ukrainian exports and global fertilizer shortage, closing farms for greenhouse emissions seems like a spectacularly bad idea.

yessirwhatever 4y ago
Same applies to closing down nuclear reactors and coal mines over the last decade in some countries in Europe.
- loopdoend 4y ago
  Perhaps nuclear can still save us
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
niek_pas 4y ago
It’s important to note that much of the food produced by these farms is exported, so national food prices may not be affected as much as you would think.
- vimy 4y ago
  People are gonna starve because of these closures.
  - niek_pas 4y ago
    Maybe. People are going to drown if we do not act to reduce nitrogen emissions (And eating less meat would significantly reduce emissions, but that seems unlikely to happen on a large scale)
    - myshpa 4y ago

jsiepkes 4y ago

This article gets so much wrong. For starters "to slash greenhouse gas emissions" is wrong; it's about nitrogen oxides.

adrianN 4y ago
Nitrogen oxides are very potent greenhouse gases.
- tinco 4y ago
  But that's besides the point. That they're greenhouse gases doesn't really figure into the reason why it's EU policy to reduce the density of their emissions near natura 2000 areas.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    The greenhouse effects are not the only side effect of overfertilization.
- donkeyd 4y ago
  Correct, but in the Netherlands the problem is that they're killing our existing flora and fauna. Especially in areas where nature reserves and farming are close together, this causes issues. The Netherlands is the 2nd biggest food exporter in the world, after the US. But we're only the 134th largest by land mass and 69th largest by population. The amount of farming we do in our tiny country is pushing the limit of what you can do to nature and it's causing issues on a local scale. The unfortunate thing is that we're about the most efficient producer in the world too, so on a global scale, cutting down production here would probably be a bad thing.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  That have a short life at the atmosphere. They are relevant for local warming (normally named "heat islands"), but not much for global warming. Anyway, they have much more important local effects, so mostly nobody cares about the warming.

chrisseaton 4y ago

What’s the plan of the closures? To import the food instead? But that’ll be more emissions not less won’t it? Just keep the emissions in a poorer country?

niek_pas 4y ago
As I said in another comment, most of the food produced by these farmers is destined for export.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  But again, so it’ll just be grown elsewhere with the same or more emissions?
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    The problem is currently with localised pollution, either near nature preserves or near places where construction is planned. Other European countries using much less intensive food production methods over much larger areas of land can take the increase in emissions quite well. This isn't a about global warming, though these compounds are definitely not helping the situation; this is about nitrogen rich compounds ending up in the ground where it shouldn't be.
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    Yes and no. Not all land are equal & not all surrounding ecosystem are same. For example growing palm trees has more bad effects in Indonesia compared to growing in country like India.
- zthrowaway 4y ago
  So the lack of food being imported from this export needs to be balanced somewhere else, no? This would mean no reduction in emission. Only emission within this locale. I guess that's a win to make local numbers look good. This is so pointless. Not to mention we are taking away livelihoods from people.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mschuster91 4y ago

Yet another consequence of politicians afraid to do what is evidently necessary for enviromental protection for decades and now, after a 2019 court order [1], only harsh measures (a strict speed limit on highways and a limit on farm animals) remain. Politicians, of course from a center-right government, could have gone and implemented a soft, multi-year transition period towards animal farming that could have softened the impact, but they did not do so and rather chose to stick their heads into the sand. Now they have to deal with angry farmers. The worst thing is, this sort of behavior towards environmental protection was common over the last decades, and with climate change becoming more and more severe and the judicial systems imposing stricter mandates as a result, we are looking towards serious social unrest. Everywhere. The French Yellow Vest protests were just the starter. [1] https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/niederlande-stickstoffemissionen-zu-hoch-tempolimit-als-loesung-ld.1521684 https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/niederlande-stickstoffemission...

jeroenhd 4y ago
This is the worst part, in my opinion. The farmers are mad that they need to cut emissions but it was the lax government policy that allowed them to grow to the size they are today to even emit this much. I sympathise with the farmers that will need to adjust as a result of this mess, as the government ignoring the problem (in no small part because of industry lobbying, though) is the root cause of this upheaval. On the other hand, the lawsuit that forced the government to come up with a plan finished five years ago, at this point it's no longer something that couldn't be foreseen. The violent protests as a response to mild, insufficient government action are quickly ruining the good reputation and compassion many people have for these farmers, despite the fact that the majority of them are choosing simple inaction over violence.

jeroenhd 4y ago

These protests are against attempts to slash greenhouse gas emissions in general; CO2 and many other greenhouse gasses are entirely irrelevant here. I don't trust this source if they can't even get that detail right. The problem is with nitrogen containing compounds specifically near nature preserves. This is part of an ongoing conflict between farmers and the government that's been going on for years now. It started five years ago when the government got told that part of their nature preservation law was illegal and the government was the forced to act. Everything from construction to industry is hit by the restrictions the government ignored for years. Pollution within the country mostly comes from farmers (up to two thirds of the total, even higher specifically in nature reserves) and therefore most measures are aimed at reducing farm pollution. This new wave of protests is particularly bad as politicians are now threatened in their homes.

masklinn 4y ago
From previous comments on the subject I gathered that farmers had apparently been exempted from or allowed to skirt many of the previous rules and regulations as well, despite a major if not the main source of pollution in the country. But not this time, this time they're asked to put in the work same as everyone else, and that makes them very unhappy.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  "Put in the work same as everyone else" seems, potentially, a bit off to me. Farming, by its nature, may involve more pollution than other professions. For example, a programmer working remotely emits very little nitrogen relative to a farmer, but it would be odd to say that the programmer is putting in the work on nitrogen emissions.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    The general tenor of a lot of agricultural objections to these kinds of scenarios tends to be along the lines of "everyone else must fully eliminate all of their emission scenarios before we are forced to reduce a single thing." You can see a similar effect in the US's Western megadrought crisis, where farmers are adamant that all possible water use reduction in urban and suburban areas are done before you start discussing reducing the water use that goes to agriculture. And I've also seen some similar stories about Chesapeake Bay nitrogen runoff--fix all urban uses before you ask farmers to make changes to their fields.

niels_bom 4y ago

It's such a shame that quite a few farmers in the Netherlands have been weaponized by Big Ag. Especially the BoerenBurgerBeweging (farmer party) is straight up lobby money (1). Watching the media around farmer protest in the Netherlands I also see a lot of right wing populist talking points. 1) https://www-doorbraak-eu.translate.goog/boerburgerbeweging-geen-boer-burgers-maar-marketing-experts/?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-doorbraak-eu.translate.goog/boerburgerbeweging-g...

algoatecorn 4y ago

We really need to see more folks getting interested in food system innovation. This is just one of many outcomes we are seeing as a result of our current system which is highly unsustainable. There are so many entry points for our brightest minds to reinvent the value chain of food. Inputs, plant breeding, machinery, precision ag, logistics, processing, and marketing. Agriculture is also one of the least digitized industries. We also need to consider an entire paradigm shift when it comes to food. Does a sustainable food system provide the same variety of food we currently see? Does a sustainable system cost the same as our current one? I don't know, but we should be ready those potential changes. I'm personally excited to see the intersection of personalized health and food systems. Technologies which reduce food waste, non-communicable disease, and improved bodily and societal health.

finiteseries 4y ago
Basically any land grant university has thousands of our brightest minds doing exactly that, every single day. The fields and labs of Ames, Iowa are less visible and sexy than an SV startup or NYC / London / Dubai NGO, but I can assure you what you want exists en masse.

WJW 4y ago

The farmers seem to be fighting a very losing battle on this one. A few weeks ago, about 40% of the population was supportive of their plight. In just the last few days we've seen: - Farmers blocking highways, not even letting ambulances through (!). - Farmers threatening the family of cabinet ministers. - Blockades of food distribution centers. - Rioters attacking police vans with sledgehammers. This kind of thing has been degrading popular support pretty fast. Politicians calling it a "civil war" are just playing to the audience though. Actual farmers make up a less than a single percent of the population (~53k according to the central statistics agency) and the general desire of the population to get on with other things like building houses is likely to prevail IMO.

sybercecurity 4y ago
I've noticed this gets said of every protest movement in the last few decades: BLM protests in the US, Trucker convoy in Canada, Yellow Vest in France. Even years ago, the average urban dweller started to hate the Critical Mass protests in cities when their commute got worse. I wonder if there is a limit on disobedience that is tolerated? Or simply people get defensive when they are made to suffer for a protest they aren't directly involved with? This isn't about the actual movements/protests, but about the tactics. "Raising awareness" only gets you so far, negatively impacting people seems to backfire. Is there a middle ground?
- donkeyd 4y ago
  > Is there a middle ground? Yes. Raise awareness with targeted, limited, protests and try to keep the awareness by remaining visible. You can remain visible with banners, brochures, interviews and in lots of ways. Increasing violence is not a good way to get people interested in your cause. The increase in violence also often doesn't seem to be caused by the people who feel strongly about a cause, but by other who hijack it for their enjoyment. Also, the farmers aren't raising awareness for some coherent goal like ending racism. They are protesting drastic measures that are necessary to protect nature in the country and are supported by a majority of the people. These drastic measures include billions in payments to the affected farmers, it's not like the cost will be on them. So it will be really hard for the farmers to convince the public that their demands are reasonable. (We don't even really know their demands except "not this".)

misja111 4y ago

I'm not sure why this is on HN, but since it's here now, let me add a bit of the details of what's behind the situation in the Netherlands, because the description in the original article is incorrect. A long time ago, NL signed a couple of European agreements that forced them to designate a number of area's for which the natural diversity should be preserved. NL did this very diligently: no less than 162 of such area's were assigned. About 10 years after signing the contract, an environment organization started a lawsuit against a farm next to such an area that wanted to expand. It won the lawsuit and the farm's expansion was forbidden. The ground for the verdict was that the expansion would increase the farm's emission of nitrogen; a gas that when it ends up in the soil, favors a limited number of plants such as nettles and grass, most other species will die out. Once this precedent was created, many more lawsuits followed. Eventually the Dutch government decided to make a plan to regulate nitrogen emissions nationally. A map was published that showed estimated levels of nitrogen emission in the country. In many area's the emissions were too high, and the most obvious way to bring it down was to close nearby farms. This is the reason for the farmer's protests. Interestingly, very little is known about how much emitted nitrogen eventually ends up in the soil. The RIVM, the Dutch institution that made the map, only started doing some measurements of deposits in 2020. There's also a lot of criticism on the way the emissions are measured and on other aspects of the model that was used to create the nitrogen map.

oneepic 4y ago
This is on HN because someone posted it on HN.
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  I think the parent mostly meant that it’s unexpected to be the #1 post on HN right now, which I agree with; didn’t expect this community to care this much about it.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Fringe bureaucratic rules, arguable ecologic preservation actions, agricultural impacts in a time of uncertainty of the agricultural output... It has almost everything that HK loves, it's just missing being written in a cool language.

Hayvok 4y ago

> The protests coincided with a parliamentary vote on a proposed £22bn programme to halve agricultural emissions of nitrous oxide and ammonia by 2030.…close to nature reserves, the policy is tougher still, with 70-95% reductions targeted… Netherlands House of Representatives released a statement which said: “The honest message is that not all farmers will continue in business. Those who do will have to farm differently.” What does “farm differently” actually look like? Are there viable replacements for the chemicals being targeted? (Guessing not, given the farmers’ reaction.)

masklinn 4y ago
> Guessing not, given the farmers’ reaction. Why would you guess that? Farmers don't generally like changing their habits, and are usually very happy to put the burden on the commons. In this case, the farmers are unhappy because the netherlands are a massive nox producer (https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_dioxide_over_Europe https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_d...), this comes from a huge livestock sector, and the government has decided to implement severe restriction on nox emissions, especially around nature reserves where it's creating wastelands.
donkeyd 4y ago
The farmers' reaction is mostly due to the first part: > not all farmers will continue in business The farming differently mostly has to do with scale. We're already really good at producing efficiently, but we're building massive (relatively, nothing compared to the US) farms for meat and dairy and we're doing this right next to nature preserves. Our country is so tiny, that pretty much everything is right next to each other. Over the past decades, through farming and related lobbies, we've seen a huge increase in the size of the farms over here. The economies of scale have benefited the share holders of food companies and banks, but not the farmers, because every penny they save gets cut from their income by these food companies. This causes farmers to aim for even larger farms with more automation, which requires investment, which benefits the banks. Now, the government is telling the farmers we need to reduce the number of farms and the size of the remaining ones. After being fucked over mostly by large companies for decades, they feel like the government is now targeting them unfairly. They see all their investments might be useless in the future and they're angry because of it. All of this is exacerbated by leftover Covid anger and conspiracy groups adding to the fire and joining the protests, which are becoming more violent and their demands are becoming less coherent.

tomp 4y ago

I'm really happy that it's other countries that are experimenting with these disastrous "pro-climate" policies (but really anti-progressive and anti-civilisation). Such as Netherlands experimenting with "low-food" (anti-meat) regimes and Germany experimenting with "low-energy" (anti-nuclear, pro-solar) policies. We can then learn from their mistakes.

niek_pas 4y ago
What do you mean by “‘low-food’ (anti-meat) regimes”?
- tomp 4y ago
  Various approaches to "reducing emissions" by producing less food, by either urging people to eat less meat (quite popular in a lot of places) or by shutting down farms (e.g. what Netherlands is doing)

jurmous 4y ago

To understand the nitrogen crisis (Nitrogen Oxides and Ammonia) in the Netherlands you have to see the nitrogen dioxide map: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_dioxide_over_Europe https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_d... And most of it is from agriculture (landbouw) 46% and abroad (buitenland) https://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-09/grafiek_herkomst_stikstofdepositie_taart_0.png https://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-09/grafiek_herk... Because the Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world after the USA: https://medium.com/the-global-millennial/how-the-netherlands-is-the-worlds-second-largest-food-exporter-c411b8fb14dd https://medium.com/the-global-millennial/how-the-netherlands... So something has to be done to lessen output of Ammonia and Nitrogen Oxides as they are destroying the local nature ecosystems.

Zenst 4y ago
That is one heck of a blob over London and that area does lack farms. Indeed looking at somewhere like Spain and you would think all that fruit and vegtable production didn't exist. So is farming more a scapegoat for these emmisions?
- adrianN 4y ago
  No, farming (fertilizer, manure) produces nitrogen oxide. Cars also produce nitrogen oxide, which is why metropolitan areas also show up.
  - Scarblac 4y ago
    It's mostly about the ammonia produced by animals (manure).
    - mywittyname 4y ago
      Animal waste in general. Anyone with a dog and a yard learns how devastating their waste can be to plants. Now multiple that by 10,000.
  - 4y ago

ArnoVW 4y ago

a bit of background (Dutch national, living currently in France) - the Dutch are the second largest agricultural exporter (in absolute terms! it's a tiny place, look it up) - this intense agricultural activity generates a lot of "nitrogen", which causes ecological issues - the Dutch have known of this issue for decades (I remember talking about it in the 90's) - the Dutch are bound to nitrogen limits by international treaties (like for CO2) Recent governments have decided that they could exceed agreed limits, because "future technologies would fix everything". A recent judgement by the supreme court has ruled that, no that is not credible, and no it doesn't work like that. So now they are in a bad spot. If they would have managed this 30 years ago, maybe it would have been possible to find a solution. Now they only have bad options. They have already reduced the maximum speed from 130 km/h to 100 km/h. They have already reduced house building activity, etc. The problem is, the biggest emitter of nitrogen is the agricultural sector. There is no way that they can make up for lost time without forcing some farmers to stop. The farmers, like the rest of the Netherlands, knew about this issue for decades. But every time something about farmers is under discussion, they protested heavily(we're not talking quiet marches here) So nobody dares touch the subject. So the whole thing continued for decades. And given the current zeitgeist, these protests are worse than before. We're talking criminal activities, threatening MPs, etc. I sympathize with the farmers, and do believe that they deserve some compensation. But I'm not convinced that it's a good thing that the political arena is swayed by violence. Europe's had it's dose of that, and it finished poorly for Europe, and the rest of the world.

jeroenhd 4y ago
> the Dutch are the second largest agricultural exporter (in absolute terms!) This number is quoted often, usually in defence of strict measures, but it includes flower exports (which you can't eat unless you've got a real expensive taste) and imported food being exported again. I agree with everything else you say, but I very much dislike this factoid.
swader999 4y ago
Could say the same thing about China and manufacturing but it really doesn't ever get any traction.

seper8 4y ago

The Netherlands has barely any nature left, almost everything here is artificial. Rivers have been relayed, dykes have been raised. Nearly all our forests have been planted. In other places all trees were cut, and a desert-esque ecosystem was the result: the Loonse/Drunense dunes. Even the "typical" Dutch heather fields are a product of our destruction. Because when we drained the swamp (haha) and removed its top layer to use as fuel, we left a very mineral deficient soil, which is very suitable for growing heather. Now some biologists have decided that some areas (nature2000) should remain exactly as artificial as they are now, forever. And that some plants, insects and birds were more valuable than others. Thats why the farms surrounding these areas suddenly need to go. Even builders are having a hard time getting permits, because this also produces nitrogen oxide. The political parties who support these farm closures funnily enough are the same parties who don't want immigration to the Netherlands to be restricted... Like we can just keep on growing in population forever and our "nature" won't suffer from it. Ok. Personally I think we shouldn't sacrifice our economy / home building capabilities for protecting our "nature", which in my opinion is nothing more than a poorly maintained park. I feel like we are becoming victim to some biologists pet project. Maybe the proponents of this policy should raise money and purchase the farmlands themselves. Costs about 6 euro per m2 here.

jurmous 4y ago
If you see the map of ESA, something is going totally out of control in the Netherlands: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_dioxide_over_Europe https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/03/Nitrogen_d... Any local species of plants, insects, birds will be wiped out and we will get back a totally different ecosystem. We would also create worse effects on our own health: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide#Health_effects_of_NO2_exposure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide#Health_effect... What the Netherlands is doing is not sustainable, and we should use our innovations to just lower output of those gases. Some farms already have shown that with some use of different food for the cows they can radically lower output of those gases.
- seper8 4y ago
  If you are Dutch, https://nos.nl/collectie/13799/artikel/2304403-stikstof-vier-vragen-en-antwoorden-over-de-uitstoot-van-boeren https://nos.nl/collectie/13799/artikel/2304403-stikstof-vier... As you can see their output of NO2 has mostly DECREASED in the past decades...

clmul 4y ago

The Netherlands simply has too many farm animals and overfertilization has been a problem for decades. This is especially visible on this map from 2011 [1]. The overfertilization will lead to biodiversity loss, as plants that prefer nutrient poor soils will be outcompeted by plants that can harness the excess nitrogen and/or that prefer acidic soils [2]. Due to EU regulation and court orders only recently did this become a real mess, where building projects couldn't even continue because of the limits on nitrogen emissions. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_Global_Fertilizer_and_Manure,_Version_1_Nitrogen_in_Manure_Production_(6172666199).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_Global_Fertil... [2] https://www.wur.nl/en/Dossiers/file/Nitrogen.htm https://www.wur.nl/en/Dossiers/file/Nitrogen.htm

sfvisser 4y ago
Why is that “simply”? Why should we care more about biodiversity than construction and farming? I think really nothing is simple about this trade off.
- clmul 4y ago
  Even with the proposed reduction in the amount of farm animals the Netherlands will still produce more than enough meat and milk to meet domestic demand, and the reason that construction can't continue is precisely the excess nitrogen emissions produced and the physical space consumed by by the farms. The country simply isn't large enough to not make this tradeoff. And if you don't care about the biodiversity, sooner or later you'll find out that you can't continue with agriculture at all because there are no pollinators left.

z9znz 4y ago

Most of the public face of Dutch farming is a show intended to mislead the public into having sympathy, as if the farmers were struggling and at risk of losing their livelihoods. This is what every industry does in the face of regulations. The farmers represented by these organizations are not poor. They are profiting handsomely while creating significant pollution - a cost borne by the local public and the global public. The Netherlands is a small country by land size, and it has a vast number of intensive farms. The same intensive farming practices which are passable in other places are create high concentrations of pollution here. And as the NL as part of the EU and has agreed to abide by various pollution limits, it must make changes to curb its pollution. Simply saying, "But this is my way of life!" is not valid if that way of life comes at an increasing cost to everyone around you. Just because something has been going on for some time does not mean it should be allowed to continue. As for the protests, they are not protests - they are extortion or terrorism. As such, they should be met with severe criminal penalties. Allowing a group of wealthy bullies to take over a country is not acceptable in modern times. We are hopefully not just a bunch of apes with clubs forming clans and dominating those who "threaten our way of life".

ratsmack 4y ago
I'm sure your views on this subject would be completely different if you were a farmer.
- consp 4y ago
  The point probably is that you can replace <farmer> with any well of group trying to get sympathy.
- z9znz 4y ago
  No, probably not. I would just know that I was making a profit at the expense of everyone else. To go out in public and cry crocodile tears about my livelihood would be disingenuous.
  - ratsmack 4y ago
    >To go out in public and cry crocodile tears about my livelihood would be disingenuous Should we feel the same way about people in IT, programming and other computer related industries then they are laid off for economic reasons? I find it odd that there are many industries that produce far more damaging pollution, including the tech industries, which don't even produce the necessities for life like farming does, but nobody blinks any eye.

lutarezj 4y ago

Farming is not rocket science. It has been done fot hundreds of thousands of years. Countries The Netherlands exports to should build their own farming areas. The duch farmers will be offloaded from the burden of having to feed the world from "een kleine stukje aarde".