Posted on 04/01/2024 5:13:06 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Europe’s farmers are rising up – and the elites are terrified. In France, farmers recently staged a four-day ‘siege of Paris’, blocking major roads around the French capital. In January, thousands of tractors descended on Berlin in Germany, lining the streets leading up to the Brandenburg Gate. In Brussels, farmers have gathered from all over Europe to demonstrate against the EU and pelt the European Parliament with eggs. In the Netherlands, tractors have caused the longest traffic jam in the nation’s history, as part of a years-long battle between farmers and the government. This farmers’ revolt is now truly Europe-wide. From Portugal to Poland, from Ireland to Italy, almost every EU country has been rocked by protests. So what is driving this populist uprising? What do the farmers want?
Farmers in each country have their own specific grievances, of course. But there is a common root to their anger. What connects them is the European Union’s green agenda, which has been imposed on agriculture from on-high. It has made farmers’ lives a misery, sacrificing their livelihoods at the altar of climate alarmism. Bureaucrats who have no idea how farmers work and live, have essentially been condemning farms – many of them run by families for generations – to oblivion, all at the stroke of the regulator’s pen. And farmers are simply not putting up with it anymore.
The first stirrings of revolt began in 2019, in the Netherlands, with the so-called nitrogen crisis. The Dutch Supreme Court ruled that the government was failing to cut nitrogen pollution to EU-approved levels. In response, the Dutch government promised ‘drastic measures’ to cut nitrogen emissions. In all but name, it declared war on its nation’s farmers. Suddenly, the government had turned against one of its most important and impressive sectors. You see, the Netherlands, despite its small size, is the second-largest exporter of food in the entire world, thanks to the world-beating efficiency of its farms. And nitrogen is intrinsic to this efficiency. Fertilisers are rich in nitrogen, and farmers need fertilisers to maximise their crop yields. Nitrogen is also an inevitable byproduct of animal farming. Livestock release ammonia, a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, through their excrement. The Netherlands has over four million cows, 13million pigs and 104million chickens. Which is a lot of manure and a lot of nitrogen. Any crackdown on nitrogen emissions was always going to hit farmers hard. Even so, the Dutch government’s proposals went even further than anyone could have imagined. It said it would buy out thousands of the most polluting farms and simply shut them down. Other farms would have to cull a proportion of their animals. This would mean slaughtering around half of all the livestock in the Netherlands. In all, this represented an unthinkable act of national economic self-harm.
Thus, the farmers’ revolt was born. Huge protests erupted in 2019. After a brief hiatus during the Covid pandemic, they came roaring back in 2021 and 2022. Dutch farmers blocked roads, railways and canal bridges with tractors and hay bales. They defied government bans to bring tractors into the Hague. Tens of thousands took part in the demonstrations. But the Dutch government did not back down. It kept proposing new targets, new measures and new restrictions on nitrogen....
My 700 square foot garden needs about a half hour a day, year round
And their biggest mistake is they forget the fact that even heavily guarded castles can be infiltrated.
The infiltrators will not be there to negotiate, they will be there to kill you.
Agreed. And another situation is their paid guards will be caring for their families. Their families best get food, medical and security or the guards will turn on their elite employers and just take the place over.
The guards will eventually do that anyway, people on the lower economic scale do NOT like being told what to do by some spoiled rich person.
When the SHTF it’s self and family first.
Plus the fact that the “rich mans castle” still has to import it’s food, water, and long term electricity; generators are great but only last as long as their fuel, solar is just not dependable enough.
All those things that the rich folks in the “castle” need for long term survival are pretty much controlled and produced by all those “peons” outside the castle gates.
Dutch farmers blocked roads, railways and canal bridges with tractors and hay bales. They defied government bans to bring tractors into the Hague. Tens of thousands took part in the demonstrations. But the Dutch government did not back down. It kept proposing new targets, new measures and new restrictions on nitrogen....
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