There is no "civil unrest". farmers are indeed protesting and they are supported by some rightwing parties and media. Media makes it much bigger than it actuall

There is no "civil unrest". farmers are indeed protesting and they are supported by some rightwing parties and media. Media makes it much bigger than it actually is in terms of unrest. Yes, farmers have it rough, and it's largely due to the unwillingness of the Dutch government to tackle the problem of having too much livestock on a small piece of land combined with banks who kept on pushing farmers to borrow more money to buy bigger stables. (Guess what: the farmers are not spraying manure onto the front doors of the banks.. Well played guys!) This has been going on since the 1980's and every iteration of the Dutch government since then has been unwilling to make some tough decisions. The role of the banks (actually the Rabobank who supplies credit to 90% of all farmers) have been very dubious. There are farmers who want to change into a less environmental unfriendly way of business but banks won't finance them due to the fact it's not "optimizing" the business in terms of output per square feet of stable (read: livestock). As we say here, the banks have also butter on their head, but they are being kept out of the main discussion. This seems to change with some media reporting on their role, but it's still highly dubious. To summarize, it's a Gordian knot were farmers, government and banks have each other strangled in a weird menage-a-trois. Rightwing media and parties jump into this for their own gains.