Farmers' protest party win shock Dutch vote victory | Hacker News Reader

Farmers' protest party win shock Dutch vote victory

bbc.com

90 pointsversion_five152 comments

My family are Dutch farmers who are in the middle of this discussion for a few years now.

As far as I understand, what happened is that Dutch politicians have been too optimistic in their sales for the reduction in nitrogen emissions. In response, the Dutch government has been aggressively making plans to reduce the number of dairy farms in the Netherlands. However, this conflicts with the ambitions of the farmers for two main reasons. Firstly, farmers are very aware of how farming occurs in other countries. The Dutch have a long history of optimizing the farming process with a long history of ever increasing regulations. It makes no sense then to stop farming in the Netherlands to "save" the environment by sending the work to other countries, who then will increase pollution per kg milk produced. For example, farmers in Poland have generally higher maize fields not because they are better farmers, but because they are allowed to put much more manure on the fields. Secondly, farmers are all hard working people who are proud of their family business and who would like to continue their business. Having the government take the business away for controversial reasons doesn't sit right.

Furthermore, from what I hear around me, people are done with the current prime minister Rutte. There have been some scandals including the "Rutte-doctrine" in which Rutte thinks that internal government documents do not have to be shared with journalists and the Tweede kamer (lower house of the Dutch parliament) and him being found out for lying time and time again. The whole scandal around the farmers is just a manifestation of the general civil dissatisfaction, as the BBC points out too.

Nitrogen pollution causes local problems though, so, spreading this out thinner than in this tiny country of the Netherlands will make an impact.

(I don't think it is a perfect solution, and in the end it is because of mismanagement by the government, and not the fault of the farmers, but I do think that reducing the amount of these farms in the Netherlands would make a positive environmental impact)

The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries on this planet. Poland is empty.

I'm an atheist without kids so if my fellow Dutchman want to continue to rape this country's natural environment it won't affect me much.

If the farmers are driven away their land will be filled with houses, which is hardly an improvement for the natural environment. The problem is that the Netherlands is very densely populated yet some people insist population needs to grow, so the younger people can work and pay for the older generation. They don’t seem to understand that this can’t go on forever.

And of course the nitrogen problem for some people is a handy lever for their problem which is that they are vegans who want to force others to produce and eat less meat as well. They start with the solution of halving the amount of cattle and then go look for problems that require it.

The EU has quotas on just about eveything in agriculture. The vegans need not worry. They remind me of the anti nuclear hippies who got us into this mess of being dependent on Russian gas while getting paid by the oil industry.

> The Dutch have a long history of optimizing the farming process with a long history of ever increasing regulations.

Genuinely curious, was this meant to be a sarcastic comment? Because it does sound like one. Fundamentally, regulations tend to have a limiting/taxing effect. Only in some cases do they inadvertently create a game-able system which encourages optimization to circumvent those limitations/taxes, i.e. automation.

There was also this little thing about the Rutte government bankrupting lower class parents (through government error) and then having child support kidnap the children of those parents with the argument "you're apparently financially too irresponsible to care of your own children".

And then never giving back the children or the money that shouldn't have been taken away until this day.

That's just one of the many ludicrous examples.

I do some research contracting work for the Dutch ministry of Farming, Nature and Food safety. This is a complex problem. The Dutch environment (including agricultural lands) is obviously suffering from a massive amount of intensive farming in the country. Farmer organisations agree on this. Supermarket wars, cheaper import and regulations have put a lot of strain on the margins of farmers, to the point where many are operating at a loss. Uncertainty makes it harder to invest in ‘greening’ farms, which is possible, but expensive. For example, imported animal food lead to nitrogen/fosfor accumulation, while depleting the natural environment in countries of origin (mostly South America). An obvious solution would be to ship manure back, but this is costly + there is little pressure to figure out how to do it economically. Result: ecosystem destruction on both sides, which is detrimental to both Dutch and South-American farmers in the long run. All this while plenty of farmers barely make a living wage.. everything about this sucks. Not sure what to do about it. Here’s some more information, in Dutch.

https://www.ser.nl/nl/Publicaties/toekomstperspectieven-land...

https://agrimatie.nl/

Your arguments do not make any sense. Contrary to CO2 emmissions, nitrogen emmission have a direct effect on local wildlife, biodiversity and health of people and animals. It therefore does make absolute sense to limit emmissions, even if that means emissions are subsequently done in another country, besides 75% of dutch livestock is produced for export so we are actually currently taking the local emmission burden for foreignly consumed meat!

I am Dutch. One of the things the farmers lobby is trying to hide is the fact that 80% of the Dutch farming production is for export. These guys are running large multi-million euro sized companies, with a very significant environmental impact.

They try to make it sound like these are small family companies that need to be protected, but that's not the reality for 90% of the farming business. Let alone the fact that there has been a lot of fraud to cheat the environmental regulations. Not just a handful of cases.

Somehow the lobby has managed to get a lot of non-farming people to vote for this party, due to their unhappiness about other political topics. Well done for them. But don't expect this to be a lasting thing.

A good comparison is the other political party that had a big jump in these same elections 4 years ago. The "Forum for Democracy", attracted similar groups of people that disagree with the government. They lost the most seats this time around, without having had any significant impact the past 4 years. Next time around expect the farmers party to go the same way.

I'd like to see Rutte go but seriously, NL is probably using the most nitrogen ferts and pesticides in the EU. That's why I only buy flowers and plants from NL, not food.

https://twitter.com/roosvonk/status/1536595767724494850 amusing how this has been coming for decades, the sector could have taken responsibility but didn't.

I think the most important point that I don't see discussed is that we shouldn't be compromising our ability to make food until we have viable non-Nitrogen based alternative fertilizers of comparable cost. Food is already too expensive, and now they want to crush poor people even more?

I think the farmer's have a good point here. I don't think the people dismissing this as farmers being anti-climate change realize the implications.

90% of the food produced here is exported. This tiny country is the second biggest food exporter on the planet... The result is that our nature is destroyed, and that we can't build any more houses to solve our massive housing crisis.

Is there no land to build on left as everything is agriculture?

Every cm2 has been allocated and changing it will take something away to be replaced by something else, either water as land, agriculture as houses or any other flow you can imagine (and they all have been done).

If people have nowhere to live some non-farm land could be reallocated - but, yes, sure it'd be a fight.

No it's a legal problem. The Netherlands decided it would be a great idea to have 150+ nature preserves in one of the most densely populated countries in the world. European law requires the Netherlands to protect these areas from nitrogen deposition (NOx, NH3). A Dutch judge declared the Netherlands has to comply with this European law so now no activity that causes any nitrogen deposition can get a permit even if building houses is less than 1% of NO2/NH3 emissions. It's a mess created by a government 20 years ago.

That would sound like a fixable policy problem by changing laws etc.

Unfortunately those laws are European and we do not have much to say about it anymore since the government wanted to milk the Natura2000 subsidies (sidenote they also went to farmers).

if your situation is anything like the USA - those payments went to corporate farms, not family farms.

If you put it like that, less agriculture in such a densely populated country doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

But you're absolutely right; it's a mess that has been left to fester for far too long. A previous law, that was struck down, allowed farms to expand on the assumption that those expansions would at some later time result in less nitrogen. That of course didn't happen, but massive farm expansions have been driven through that loophole. Farmers have also been misled by banks wanted to fund those irresponsible expansions.

Even with all the agricultural lands Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries.

The issue is that our the lack of cheap land actually made our agricultural sector very competitive. They need high yields to be viable, so they made the investments (equipment, r&d) to have extremely high yields.

More than 80℅ ends up being exported.

That would mean they are making other countries food cheaper as well.

They have crippled many countries ability to produce food, see documentary: "Tomatoes and greed – the exodus of Ghana's farmers"

Probably cheaper for some in the short term, but it means less food security, and potential growth

The real problem is how agriculture is being subsidised. I'm not sure how it currently is, but for a long time, it was simply production that was subsidised, leading to excessive overproduction, which was then dumped below market prices on the African market, driving farmers there out of business.

Instead, these subsidies should be tied to sustainable agriculture. Support farmers by rewarding them for a cleaner, more sustainable business. Instead, many of these subsidies have gone to massive industrialised polluting megafarms.

If these were staple foods, that would be a concern - like the effect of Ukraine's wheat exports to Africa. Other countries not getting as much Dutch cheese is not the same kind of issue at all.

That's not accurate. Netherlands is only the sixth biggest food exporter. They are second in the EU.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-american-food-giant-...

I think Netherland is the second largest agricultural exporter by value, but I suspect that includes flowers, and isn't just limited to food.

Yes, that's correct. But the comment I replied to specifically mentioned food. The nitrogen emissions policy at issue here primarily impacts livestock and not flowers.

For a country of slightly less than 18 million people this is still mighty impressive.

Our nature is not destroyed. That's what the left city people say who never leave their cities. There is also plenty of room to build. But those same people want their children to grow up next to their cities. Thats not gonna happen. Enough room in other provinces. Another problem is mass immigration. Millions entered our country in the last 30 years.

Source?

Can you let us know how you do industrial scale dairy without pollution then, because it sure causes pollution everywhere else in the world

Environmental impact is a scientific fact, while both of your claims are lies often coming from the FvD side of things.

Look up the official numbers before you blindly repeat "millions entered the country". Because millions also left the country. The balance was below zero in the first part of this century. Has only been significantly above zero last year, and was small in many other years.

That seems like creative accounting. A lot of food is refined in Holland for export, but the raw material isn't necessarily grown there.

Source?

Chocolate for example.

Yes beef is technically homegrown but the stuff that cows eat is imported from Brasil. Dutch farming is not self sustaining.

Nitrogen emissions are mostly caused by cattle, in particular cows. Beef, milk and cheese might be more expensive due to these measures, but cheaper, more sustainable food (vegetarian food/chicken/egss) would not be affected by the proposed measures.

Good point. And the price of these goods--beef in particular--is completely decoupled from the disproportionate damage it causes. If it was air pollution, we would call it a market failure.

Have you ever tried to milk a chicken though? Let me tell you, it’s frustrating and painful work, for both parties.

It's worse with pigs...

Milking oats is super easy, OTOH

And to add to this: The Netherlands is currently a huge meat producers while being a relatively small country with very high population density. In fact, 75% of dutch meat production is exported. This has therefore nothing to do with compromising Dutch food security and everything to do with Large cattle feed producers in the Netherlands fighting (with a lot of money and donations I might add) to not loose a very lucrative market.

Unfortunately from a public perception perspective they have a very easy and convincing story to tell: the story of the hardworking dutch farmer working day and night to put food on the table of Dutch society!

Exactly. And they hard working poor farmer is in reality a big multi-million euro company that's doing a lot of pollution.

They managed to lobby and gaslight so much that non-farmers believe the stories and vote for them. Which is crazy... People would not be protesting and voting to help Shell, while they're similarly trying to make a lot of money by destroying the environment.

I am also glad to see them win. I don't like to see governments railroad people without any compromise. It was "our way, or the highway". That's not constructive. 'Bout time the "small guy" (compared to the gov) won.

Compared to the government, perhaps, but there are some very big companies behind the protests, and independent farmers don't necessarily agree.

The 'small guy' are a couple of extremely rich cattle feed producers (in fact in the top 10 richest families in the country) which financed a succesfull propaganda campaign to derail this extremely necessarry piece of legislation. It is a damn shame that american type populist and big money financed misinformation campaigns are coming to the Netherlands as well...

Well, for a couple of rich guys, they seem to be the majority party in the senate.

They had literally 50 years to compromise. The first time this problem came up was in the 1970s.

The government should've pushed innovations in precision farming like they push solar (e.g. 50% subsidy). But they chose to do a full ban. Some startups in the sector were affected even though they reduce the amount of fertilizer and pesticides by an order of magnitude. Was the government so blind and stupid, or were they malicious?

Farmers had ~30 years to work on this.

So what's the alternative? Do nothing? Spend trillions to enable the poor countries to go first? How would that even work? Would it do anything other than enable the oligarchs to steal the money?

You don't ban something important without viable alternatives, that's just obvious. If we need alternatives, then you fund research or scaling of the alternatives first. That's what we've done with wind and solar and now they're super cheap.

What are you even talking about?! Nobody is talking about banning livestock production. The netherlands could literally reduce the amount of livestock in the country by 50% and still produce more meat and milk than is consumed by Dutch society, in fact we would have plenty over for export. The only reason people want to hold this legislation up is for their own monetary gains.

We're talking about nitrogen here, not livestock specifically.

Livestock are what emit most of the Nitrogen - specifically cow pee

What I haven't heard much about in the whole hubbub about this is that there's a lot that farmers can already do to reduce various nitrogen emissions. Different (less protein-rich) food and letting cattle graze outside have significant impact.

The discussion seems to have been dominated by people who just want to cut back on farming, and fans of highly industrialised farming. There are alternatives, and they're not getting enough attention.

Not all farmers support this new "farmer's" party. And big agri-adjacent industry have been big players in the protests and unrest.

I'm not denying that the government handled this extraordinarily poorly, I'm just saying the discussion is dominated by extremely polarised opinions.

There is all kind of ways, but farmers will tell you it also lowers yield and thus costs them money.

Its important to note that most of these farm products are exported. This is an argument about market protection, not food supply protection.

Nitrogen fixation is mainly a problem related to livestock, 75% of livestock/meat production is exported in the Netherlands. This has nothing to do with food security...

I understand this is about new laws to do with nitrogen use in farming coming into effect in the EU. Holland is one of the first countries to actually move towards compliance the the farmers are not impressed.

Personaly I am with the farmers, why are we burning our farmers and industry on the fire of environmentalism when the future of the environment will be decided by developing countries, not us. There is a balance to be made here.

This is totally wrong as we in the developed countries are emitting so much CO2 and are eating too much meat so soy is planted everywhere, just to feed animals.

This argument might be made for CO2 emissions, but nitrogen emissions are mostly a local problem.

Most environmental action being taken out seems to be exclusively acts of religious-like penance. I think people's metric for whether or not we're doing something about the environment is "does this make day-to-day life harder than it was before?" Nothing to do with the actual effectiveness, no solutions for the ginormous populations in poor countries that are burning all their trash or throwing it into the ocean, or pumping ludicrous amounts of smog into the atmosphere until the sky is orange. Only useless solutions that let college-educated Westerners pat themselves on the back like paper straws, plastic bag bans, complaining about gas stoves, etc.

There's a much simpler explanation: people are worried about the environment and global warming, so they are willing to try out a lot of different things that they think might help, but lo and behold, it turns out that some of those things actually help and others turn out not to, and because some of the things that don't help maybe still get a lot of attention or the associated behaviors linger on, well-intentioned people look like idiots. But, realistically, how could any large scale movement to change the way we live be any different? What do you think you are contributing by being smug and cynical?

(By the way, those college-educated Westerners are also choosing to live smaller, use more public transport, drive fewer miles, invest in durable goods, insulate their homes, buy heat pumps and vote for parties that want to do something about industrial pollution. It's not all canvas shopping bag virtue signaling.)

The climate change agenda often doesn't really have a great sales pitch: have high costs now, still experience climate change and then in the far future things might be better. This has to change to truly get everyone on board - there have to be benefits in the now.

Then we all go to hell together.

Why? You think we cannot come up with better incentive structures? I doubt that very much.

Because we require major systemic changes. That's not going to happen if we require everyone to choosing to do the right thing right now.

Also, IMO, the changes need to happen at a governmental and corporate level. Individual people - which is where I was imagining you were thinking about when referring to incentives* - make a much smaller difference to AGW.

*was I wrong about that?

What incentive structures do you see working in this context?

You will not get major systemic change if the median voter thinks they will be poorer afterwards. That isn't necessarily because voters don't believe in the science but rather they know that in next 50-100 years a lot can happen (bad or good) to somehow make their efforts rather worthless.

In the end, the cost will wind up with individual people anyway. Industry will get subsidies and business funneled their way for the transition. On top, climate is a huge business - some sectors are salivating at the revenues to be made in the next decade or so - and those revenues will have to come from somewhere.

So, I don't think you can enact any policies on top with noticeable costs to individuals. There is also the question of how subsidies will be paid back - maybe a lot more countries need to create some sort of wealth fund for the investments needed and then distribute back some revenues? Maybe some higher minimum wage for work in climate? Not saying I have the solutions.

>> Most environmental action being taken out seems to be exclusively acts of religious-like penance.

> There's a much simpler explanation: people are worried about the environment and global warming, so they are willing to try out a lot of different things that they think might help, but lo and behold, it turns out that some of those things actually help and others turn out not to...

It's not one or the other, it's both.

There's also the factor that people are more comfortable with changes that inconvenience others, but don't inconvenience them much; so there's often a major lack of consideration and empathy with the proposals. Couple that with religion-like moral urgency, and you get a lot of unnecessary conflict.

> There's also the factor that people are more comfortable with changes that inconvenience others, but don't inconvenience them much

Religious-like penance and "I can't do anything about climate change, but you should" are polar opposites, though, so if you think that's a major factor you're arguing against the OP.

The point of religious penance is that it is very, very inconvenient to me (not others) while solving nothing. Refusing to buy fruit that is out of season because you worry about the CO2 from transportation is perhaps a good example, because it can be a major inconvenience but shipping is so efficient that it's not clear that it would have much of an effect.

The point of token adherence and kicking the can down the road is that it's all someone else's problem, as for example when people argue that gas furnaces (not stoves) or inefficient air conditioning should be illegal, which is fine by them because they have the money to buy a state-of-the-art system anyway and if it's too expensive for other people, that's their problem. Or, as in this story about the Farmers' protest party, stuff that inconveniences farmers but not them, though that's a very complex case.

I increasingly get an overwhelming sense that all extant environmental activism is "canvas shopping bag virtue signaling" in a very profound and important way, but I wasn't convinced by specific printed or spoken rhetoric, nor can I automatically provide an explanation. I have to look within myself to explain why.

But here is one of the possible foundations of my opinion:

  - A graph of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa observatory:

https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/carbon-dioxide-now-more-th...

       - The simple, pure shape of that graph, which appears to still be accelerating, affects me profoundly. It makes me think of all of the slightly different graphs that people use to show some progress on climate change, from estimated emissions to temperature changes, and that their deepest meaning is just that they are ways to deny *this* chart.

Now that doesn't entirely express what makes me convinced. It is biased by what I think might convince you, which is what I was trying to let go of. But it is one of the pillars of my belief and it might stand on its own better than others.

>Most environmental action being taken out seems to be exclusively acts of religious-like penance. I think people's metric for whether or not we're doing something about the environment is "does this make day-to-day life harder than it was before?"

It stands to reason that if it made people’s day to day life easier, people would likely already be doing it.

>Only useless solutions that let college-educated Westerners pat themselves on the back like paper straws, plastic bag bans, complaining about gas stoves, etc.

1. The average westerner pollutes significantly more than the average person in a developing country.

2. All of those “useless” solutions are really just low hanging fruit that doesn’t really cause all that much disruption to day to day life.

If not having plastic bags, straws, and gas stoves really causes that much distress, then you’re really living a life with very few problems.

"If not having plastic bags, straws, and gas stoves really causes that much distress, then you’re really living a life with very few problems."

That sounds incredibly arrogant. So the default is that the banhammer should be swung around at will unless it causes outright critical problems? OK, give up half of the things you enjoy for marginal gains.

And the gas stove campaign is pure hysteria. If gas stoves caused serious disease, we would have seen a massive population-wide correlation of gas stove use and disease much like we do in case of tobacco, lead, asbestos or alcohol consumption. Given that the gas stove is more than 120 years old and no pandemics of early deaths can be attributed to it, the whole thing may be just clickbait.

>That sounds incredibly arrogant. So the default is that the banhammer should be swung around at will unless it causes outright critical problems?

Where did I say that.

100%, don't target core emissions like gas and oil, rather do serving that's extremely visible, so we can say that we are doing something.

Something*

It’s easy to blame on the EU, but nitrogen pollution is not an abstract global issue but a real local issue. It would have to be managed by local governments regardless of the EU.

> when the future of the environment will be decided by developing countries, not us. There is a balance to be made here.

This is not just misleading but straight up wrong.

Sure, western nations don't dominate global population numbers (and are mostly shrinking too), but the United states alone emit TWICE the amount of CO2 compared to India, with 1/4 the population.

Just saying "the future of the environment is on you, India, China, Africa, since there is not much we Americans can do, there are just not enough of us" is sickeningly hypocritical.

Also, how are you going to convince ANY developing nation that struggles to lift their population out of poverty that paying for environmental protection is necessary, while you (as a rich westerner) sit on your ass?!

Sorry for the confrontational tone, but I feel I HAVE to correct this because it is an extremely popular sentiment ("we're already doing more than our part for the environment in the west, now it's on the Chinese/Indians/etc."), and this is completely unsupported by facts.

You assume I’m American, I’m not. Also the article is about Dutch people.

CO2 is only one metric of pollution. And as India is 4x the population of the US what difference will the amount of Nitrogen Dutch farmers use make once the Indians achieve a US style standard of living? Bugger all that’s how much. So they’re correctly asking why on earth they’re being put out of jobs over this at this time.

Your argument does not make sense.

Of course fewer people have less influence on the outcome, but that is not an excuse to do less (per person) in the smaller group. India could just split into 2000 states and turn your argument straight around...

This is just not how collective obligation works, in the very same way that you absolutely CANT argue with your tax officials that "it doesn't really make a difference whether I pay" (or your village/city if they're small).

I just picked America as example because they're arguably the worst of the bunch in Co2/capita (except some rich tiny states like Luxembourg), so good on you for doing better than them (probably).

Also feel free to make an argument using different metrics for pollution, but I have strong doubts that you could change the conclusions-- also consider that climate change is precisely that big a problem because it is not quickly reversible at all.

Co2 is also a metric where you can get easily comparable numbers and those are already unfavorable even WITHOUT taking into account how much pollution is outsourced by wealthy nations (which is hard to quantify).

This is what New Zealand farmers say, also. And we're one of the largest diary exporters in the world. If the largest dairy exporters are all saying "well, we're a small country, we can't make any difference" where does that lead us? Its obviously the wrong way to look at it. If 1 person was responsible for 10% of the world's emissions, you wouldn't say "well, he's only one person so it doesn't matter"

"why are we burning our farmers and industry on the fire of environmentalism when the future of the environment will be decided by developing countries, not us"

I'm flabbergasted. This is so wrong it hurts. Developed countries have BY FAR done the most to create and currently contribute to AGW. We have the moral responsibility to do the bulk of the work to fix it.

Most comments seem to miss the point that The Netherlands is the second largest exporter of food in the world. That the agricultural sector needs to be downsized particularly in NL seems rather obvious. Sadly this goes against populist interests and a handful of very rich private interests in the country.

It’s not obvious to me. If they are so successful at exporting food, I’d have thought they should do more, not less.

According to EU law it's obvious. But then again let's just put our heads in the sand and ignore climate change. Yes more emissions is what is needed. Face palm

How will decreasing NL’s food exports result in a decrease in emissions? Honest question.

Every country will have a duty to decrease their emissions. Starting with this incredibly large sector in Holland is a step in the right direction imo.

Less food miles. Less cheap availability of dairy will encourage movement to less polluting alternatives. Less intensive farming leaches less nitrogen.

So you’d make milk more expensive for poor people? Got it. I wonder why they voted against that.

False dilemma. People don't need dairy milk (a lot of the world is dairy intolerant anyway) and there are alternatives that don't pollute anywhere as much, don't need as much land nor water and which are inexpensive and getting cheaper all the time.

People don’t need a lot of things. However certain foods, like animal products including milk, lead to optimal health. That’s how the Dutch got so tall. So you can drink your diluted nut or grain water. I’ll stick with bioavailable nutrients from animal foods.

"A lot of the world is able to walk, so people don't need wheel chair access in buildings". "A lot of the world is male/female, so people don't need made up genders and surgery". ... sounds great, huh?

Anyway, where does this "people don't need X" stop, though? You also don't need oat milk, tofu, soy, peas, etc. to survive.

Let's just go back to foraging for roots and berries and see what population size we can sustain!

Technically, is about reducing the emissions, not decreasing exports. Cows produce a lot of emissions, meaning, you could swap for something less polluting. Air quality is also not good in NL, because of this.

In this case it's not about greenhouse gasses (those aren't local, so moving something doesn't change the impact). This is about nitrogen which has a very local impact. So moving farming away from over-farmed areas to other places will improve the environment.

"That the agricultural sector needs to be downsized"

What about the people abroad that depend on Dutch-produced food? Export of food isn't a frivolous activity, but a need; we have 8 billion humans on this planet already and many live in arid or otherwise agriculture-unfriendly regions.

And you think Holland is an agricultural friendly region? You have clearly never seen the amount of glass houses from a satellite photo of Holland. They cover a vast area!

Polluting farms will get downsized in Holland over time.

Compared to many other places of the world, yes, it is, absolutely. You have both good soil and water. Yes, Ukraine is probably somewhat better in this regard, but it is also poor and at war.

Plus Dutch know-how in agriculture is outstanding. From what I know from Czech farmers, Dutch piglets etc. are really the best in the world.

I don't deny we know how to raise delicious veal or piglets. But it's stipulated in EU law that we have to downsize this sector eventually. It's not a popular move at all, and it seems pointless with regards to China or India. Still it needs to happen in the long run.

AFAIK it is not just about taste, but about the fact that Dutch animals gain the most weight per fodder consumed - which is actually pretty nature-friendly.

Dairy is a luxury food, not a staple. No-one is going to starve if they can't get Dutch cheese

You make it sound as if the real intent behind the law was to push veganism on an unwilling population, bypassing normal democratic mechanism.

Cheese is an excellent source of proteins and fat, eating less of it and more of processed and conserved rice/wheat won't probably make you healthier.

Uh, no. I love cheese. That's a weird take

Dutch cheese is delicious. What do you propose to replace it with?

In many cases Dutch-produced food out-prices locally produced food. Even with transport costs.

On one hand, you could say cheaper food is nice. On the other hand, employing local people to keep money in local economy to produce slightly more expensive food is better in the long term...

Will the difference in costs stay slight? Possibly not, if the locals are protected by sufficiently high import duties that they aren't forced to innovate.

We might yet see a similar problem in the space industry. European space industry is likely to fall far behind SpaceX when it comes to rocket costs and especially capabilities, but France won't surrender its independent access to space and will likely subsidize the already-obsolete Ariane models far into the future.

No import duties inside EU. Here in north-east our farmers have a hard time competing with Holland farmers. Mostly because our farms still didn’t catch up after Soviet era. Differentiated EU subsidies discriminating East don’t help either.

I’m happy to pay extra to support local farms. Hopefully playing field will level out at some point.

In terms of dollar value, not in terms of volume. Still very impressive though for such a small country.

They did get quite a lot, but you need majority vote in the senate to shoot down new laws. In practical terms they can delay laws but probably can’t shoot down anything. Netherlands is a country of polderen (1).

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model

They’ll be the largest single party bloc, they should have some real sway.

I think some of their opponents will argue “they did well but not well enough, so it’s fine to keep ignoring them” but I don’t think that’s a wise move.

They will also have a strong position in the provinces. The government was setting a framework, but counted on the provinces to do the actual implementation. That approach will almost certainly fail since it seems likely the BBB will be able to block this in many rural provinces

> they should have some real sway.

Only in the senate and some provinces, which aren't that influential; I'm willing to bet that they'll do a lot less well in the parliamentary elections: people who feel strongly have more incentive to vote.

They were never "ignored"; this entire issue has been playing since the 80s. Every time any measures are announced there are protests and measures get watered down or delayed.

Being the largest party is a serious thing in the UK or US. But the Dutch political system is a bit different. Here it has far less impact.

The largest party in this case is only around 20% of the votes. There are several other political directions that have more votes just split in more than one party. For example the green/left combination also has 20% of the votes and the government combination has 31%.

> She had to step back from public campaigning last year because of death threats. She was told the same fate awaited her as Pim Fortuyn, a populist leader assassinated days before the 2002 Dutch general election.

Keep in mind that in this case the threat comes from within the groups that agree with her ideology, but believe she is controlled opposition. The same pot of crazy she (unintentionally?) tried to activate.

> Keep in mind that in this case the threat comes from within the groups that agree with her ideology, but believe she is controlled opposition.

Really? It's not very believable that someone on the right would phrase a threat like that (i.e. "go away or you'll end up dead, like the last right-wing leader killed by an left-wing environmental activist").

I did some digging and all I could find (in English) was some comments attributing the threats to the "the anti-farmer or anti-BBB lobby" (https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/07/pro-farming-mp-cancels...).

It was my understanding that the threats towards Kaag, Rutte and her all came from the same source.

How do you unintentionally try? Was she doing talking points, palling around or carrying water?

She was trying to activate a lot of non crazy, ordinary people as well, but she wasn't experienced enough at the start to tone the rhetoric down.

That some parts of her movement became too militant was likely not her intention.

But it did lead to multiple politicians needing permanent security including herself.

They seem to have mostly stolen votes from another far right party without the convenient cover of being farmers.

It's not clear how much (if at all) the balance has shifted towards or away from their signature policy.

That's not really what voter research shows. Yes, 18% of BBB voters come from the PVV, but also 17% come from the Prime minister's party (VVD), 14% comes from his Christian-democratic coalition partner (CDA). 9% Comes from the left-wing SP, 7% from D66. The amounts coming from other parties are even smaller https://app.nos.nl/nieuws/ps2023/

The seats lost/gained are:

BBB +139

FvD -71

VVD -16

CDA -30

So, the voting system has lots of parties and ranked voting but it seems clear that the main story is FvD lost out to BBB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dutch_provincial_election...

You forgot FvD which was the big winner 4 years ago, now loosing their seats to BBB.

It amazes me how nitrogen is dominating the Dutch political agenda. It barely has anything to do with the climate crisis. Yes it needs its fair share of attention. But there's far bigger problems that need attention. No surprise that the Farmers' protest party had such a landslide win.

Here is their election programme https://boerburgerbeweging.nl/verkiezingsprogramma/

Seems people do not like to cut emissions to help with Climate Change, no surprise there. That to me means no one whats to change their lifestyle. Does not bode well for Climate Change.

There are several ways to achieve climate change. Two big sides currently are energy conservatism or energy progressionism; Either you save energy, drive less, etc. or you embrace energy sources like nuclear.

The hypocrisy comes in when you don't want to nuclear power, don't want to drive less and also want climate change.

Don't forget the hypocrisy of wanting other people to do their bit to combat climate change while you fly in your private jet and use the excuse that one person's contribution is insignificant...

That is in an energy conservatist framework.

If you fly to a conference to advocate nuclear power and synthetic fuels, it would be congruent.

That’s a bit of a false dichotomy, realistically you need both.

Well, if I "realistically need both" it is not a false dichotomy. Then it is just impractical. I also don't present a DI-chotomy, I present two sides of potentially a lot of sides. I also don't present the sides as being mutually exclusive, why it is neither a di-CHOTOMY.

Anyways, I don't think I understand why I practically need both? Currently we seem to take the practical approach of choosing none.

>Either you save energy, drive less, etc. or you embrace energy sources like nuclear.

I took this to be an either or statement, apologies if that was not your intention.

>Anyways, I don't think I understand why I practically need both?

Overhauling the entire energy system is a huge effort, even more so when the demands grow year after year. Hitting that target in the requisite timeframe is much easier if the energy demands are lessened through conservation.

åh, I understand. the latter part of my comment was the simpler "edgy" statement.

and yes, I completely agree with your assessment around the overhauling effort.

These are separate issues. It's about the impact of nitrogen on biodiversity in protected habitats. Unlike carbon dioxide, the effects of nitrogen emissions are very local. Which is why this is mainly a problem in small, densely populated countries like the Netherlands and neighbouring Belgium, where areas with a lot of agriculture, also often contain a lot of small but protected nature reserves in between the farms.

It won't take long if the Dutch government gets its way. The Netherlands is the worlds 2nd food producer. So if the govt forces the farmers to quit, which is what they're doing, that will have a huge effect on the world food market, which will result in famines and food shortages. But, dead people are very green and sustainable, so I suspect this is all fine with them.

I don't understand why farmers get so much hate. People want them out of the southwest united states because they use too much water; they want them out of the Netherlands because nitrogen and land use that contributes to a housing crisis; they want them out of the Amazon because they have displaced rainforests. This NIMBY attitude towards farmers is not sustainable. Where is that farming should be done? I don't care that typically these farmers are massive corporations, they feed me just the same.

I'm sorry, but banning farms because of climate change is dumb as fuck. Especially when we have seen recently how important food security is.

Has nothing to do with banning farms, or food security.

Oh, just knee-kapping them.

So fifteen years later, here we are where almost zero people in harshly-competitive industries will voluntarily change their core inputs; combine that with pure economic self-interest from Oil and Gas, and .. woe to you, gentle reader.

I am Dutch. I don't follow the news that as a I currently am very depressed. Not by the current affairs but also issues in my household. Recently there was a television show called Lubach (Dutch rip off of John Oliver) and he addressed all the uproar of the Dutch farmers. He investigated the source. The top 10 family owned agricultural companies are behind all this. Technically most Dutch are duped. We are not talking about issues in farming but really specifically about mass production of meat. This is a really small group but the specific pr campaign set up by large hired pr company emphasized the need to call it the farmers protest not the meat industry. The companies that paid the farmers so that they could protest while not loosing income, not because they where pro farmers but against losing money. These companies are going to loose millions (maybe even billions) when the co2 reduction rules are actually in affect.

The rules at issue are primarily about nitrogen pollution from livestock, not CO2.

Arjen Lubach and John Oliver are comedians, not journalists. It's important to realize this, because they have no obligation at all to be truthful.

They have the exact same obligations as anyone else to be truthful.

Does somebody know why the manure is not concentrated and shipped to places that need fertilizers, like guano?

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