In the next phase of its climate-crazed war against farmers, the Netherlands is reportedly planning on closing up to 3,000 Dutch farms in an effort to comply with regulations from the European Union.
According to The Telegraph, a British news outlet, the Dutch government aims to close anywhere between 2,000-3,000 farms near “environmentally sensitive areas” over the next year as a means of curbing nitrogen emissions throughout the country. While state officials have claimed that closings will be initially voluntary, they have simultaneously threatened farmers with compulsory land buyouts if not enough comply with the program by next fall.
“There is no better offer coming,” Nitrogen Minister Christianne van der Wal told parliament members on Nov. 25.
The ruling government is also considering plans to tax nitrogen emissions, according to Dutch News.
“I am incredibly concerned about the prospects for permanent farmers,” said Sjaak van der Tak, who serves as chairman of LTO Nederland (a farmers’ lobbying group). “Of course, it is positive that a good voluntary stopper scheme is being promised. But the stayers who are central to us are subject to many additional restrictions.”
The authoritarian-esque policy announcement comes as part of the Dutch government’s bid to halve the country’s nitrogen emissions by 2030, a target set earlier this year that sparked nationwide protests by farmers and everyday citizens. As The Federalist previously reported, an estimated 40,000 farmers in tractors and trucks participated in demonstrations over the summer, clogging up major highways and blockading supermarket distribution centers in protest of the regulations.
In some reported cases, the government responded to protestors with brutal force, deploying tear gas and dogs to break up demonstrations in cities such as Heerenveen. The response closely mirrored that of the Canadian government, which used similar tactics in abusing state authority to quash truckers protesting the country’s Covid jab mandates earlier this year.
While government officials continue to masquerade their climate alarmist policies as an attempt to “go green,” the crackdown on private agriculture is just another facet of big-government globalists’ ongoing war against everyday citizens. As reported by Federalist Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is an “environmental ideologue” who wishes “to transform global food production and eliminate private land ownership” by adopting United Nations-backed initiatives that “squeeze farmers and ranchers around the world” to centralize control of the food supply in the hands of a few elitists.
Last year, Rutte was featured as a guest speaker at a World Economic Forum (WEF) panel titled “Transforming Food Systems and Land Use,” wherein he discussed a WEF initiative regarding “food innovation hubs” to “scale [agricultural] innovations” that can “address food systems.” A big proponent of reducing nitrogen emissions, WEF, along with the Clean Air Fund, launched a global initiative in September 2021 called the Alliance for Clean Air, which calls for participating members to establish “air pollution footprints” on gases such as nitrogen oxide within a year of joining.