Rural unrest strikes The Netherlands

Ben Coates, a columnist for Algemeen Dagblad, wrote for the New York Times yesterday of recent protests by Dutch farmers, largely represented by the Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB): 

For months, farmers flew the Dutch tricolor upside down to protest government plans to cut nitrogen emissions in half by 2030 by reducing the number of livestock in the country by a third. The government warned that there could be compulsory buyouts; the farmers lit bales of hay on fire, blocked roads with manure and blockaded government buildings in The Hague with tractors.

The public was irritated by some of the protesters’ tactics, but the movement itself generated widespread support. Enough that a couple of weeks ago, the Farmer Citizen Movement, known by its Dutch acronym BBB, unexpectedly triumphed in provincial elections here, sweeping aside established parties to become the largest party in the Senate. The future of the government’s plan is suddenly uncertain.

* * *

Farming occupies a particularly important place in the Dutch psyche. Toward the end of World War II the Dutch suffered through the “Hongerwinter” (Hunger Winter), a famine that killed thousands of people and left many more scrabbling to survive. A national postwar effort to build up the agricultural sector was wildly successful: Despite the country’s being about the size of Maryland, the value of its agricultural exports is second only to the United States.

In a country with more than 100 million cows, pigs and chickens — and around 17 million people — nobody lives more than a short train ride from farmland.

* * *

For many Dutch farmers, the fight is not ideological, and the BBB cast itself as the voice of rural interests against an urban elite that can’t tell a Hereford from a Holstein.

Don't miss the rest of the essay, with its references to similar unrest in other European nations.