Free Republic

Farmers have taken to the streets en masse in several places in Europe. To ensure MPs hadn’t lost touch with the people and public sentiment, Caroline van der Plas told the Dutch House of Representatives why the massive protests were happening. Caroline van der Plas is the founder and party leader of the Farmer Citizen Movement (Boer Burger Beweging or “BBB”) and a Member of the Dutch Parliament (“MP”). Yesterday, she posted a video of a speech she made during an agriculture budget debate. “At its core, this is why farmers are protesting – they are being destroyed,” she tweeted....

Dutch farmers make for an unlikely cause célèbre. For starters, most are conservative, not liberal. And they are fighting against stricter environmental regulations, not for them. Yet they are winning over liberal-minded people like me who sympathize with the family farmers who provide us with our daily bread and yet receive so little respect from society’s ruling elites. And they’re inspiring protests by other farmers across Europe, including in Germany, Poland and Italy. ... But the government’s poor treatment of its farmers has shocked me. The prime minister recently called the protesting farmers “a – – holes,” and sniffed: “It...

We are not slaves!.. Farmers in Italy, Spain and Poland have joined Dutch farmers in protest of 'green' government regulations that will decimate the industry by forcing them to reduce their use of nitrogen fertilizer compounds. "We are not slaves, we are farmers," said Italian farmers, who drove tractors through the streets of Milan and blocked city traffic.

Those familiar with the most recent farmer protests in the Netherlands are saying that the Dutch government’s climate nitrogen-reduction policies targeting farmers, actually have a nefarious goal. Dutch farmers see it as an effort to seize their land and experts say these climate policies are a part of a global agenda to control the means of food production, that if allowed to play out will end in a global food crisis. Michael Yon, a journalist who has covered numerous major events and who is currently in the Netherlands covering the farmer protests, told The Epoch Times that the Dutch government...

Hay bales in flames, manure dumped on highways, blockades at supermarket distribution centres and demonstrations on politicians' doorsteps. Dutch farmers have been generating global headlines with protests described by Prime Minister Mark Rutte as "wilfully endangering others, damaging our infrastructure and threatening people who help with the clean-up". This proud farming nation is under immense pressure to make radical changes to cut harmful emissions, and some farmers fear their livelihoods will be obliterated. "It's in our blood, I want to do this, and if we have to adapt to new situations, I want to, but we have to be fair,...