The Highwire with Del Bigtree - DUTCH FARMERS PROTEST GOVT CUTS

Episode Date: July 24, 2022

In the Netherlands, Dutch farmers are ground zero for resistance to heavy-handed EU environmental edicts. Agenda 2030 climate cuts are targeting livestock and small farmers in a bid to drastically cut food production at a critical time, as the food chain already suffers from lockdown restrictions and soaring gas prices.#DutchFarmersProtest #SriLankaEconomicCrisis #FuelPrices #CLIMATECUTSBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

One of the biggest stories right now in the world, and for our U.S. audience that may not know this, there is a, it's been called a rebellion in the Netherlands of Dutch farmers. So to bring people up to speed, let's take a look at some of the news montage we have put together for this. Take a look. Massive farmer protests have broken out around the Netherlands. The government in the Netherlands is shutting down farms in the name of climate change. Why is the Dutch Prime Minister pushing this anti-agriculture plan? He wants to reduce nitrogen emissions by so much.

It's going to throw tens of thousands of farmers here in the Netherlands out of job. The government there ordered farmers to slash emissions from their cows by 50%. A 50% reduction in 10% 30, that's in seven years. It's simply unfeasible. The Netherlands has been ramping up regulations despite farmers saying they need a time to adapt and to go slow or they'll go out of business. This natural gene policy is... Let me say a disaster.

Farmers say they are being unfairly targeted as opposed to big businesses and industries. Many are vowing to resist any plans to scale down or close farms. Farmers across the country held mass demonstrations and blocked highways with their tractors. Maneur has been sprayed in front of some of the government buildings. Media buildings have been blocked with tractors, trucks and surrounded with poo. A few of them had a scaffold which put up. police officials. Police have been using tear gas on the farmers and military tanks have been called in to deal with the blockades. Police open fire at protesters in a tractor as farmers stormed the streets.

A 16-year-old boy in a tractor was shot at by police and arrested and held in jail for driving a tractor at one of these protests. After weeks of blocking highways and some confrontations with police, now they're targeting the very core of society, food. this new order in the Netherlands would have the effect of destroying agriculture in the Netherlands. We're seeing potential food shortages here, and that's really a fear as well, correct? I mean, that's absurd right now, right? From the world where there's not enough food, and then we're saying, no, let's produce less food. I think we're going to see a lot more protest because nobody has told anyone how incredibly costly these promises are,

and people are going to revolt when they start seeing the bills. It's so, I mean, I've spent some time, you know, years ago, traveling in the Netherlands, and these images are shocking. There's a very peaceful place. It's a beautiful. People's a great country. Always seems to not engage in sort of battles around the world. Right. You know, it's sort of a live and let live country, so to see these images, you know, tractors and people being shot at.

It's really, it's like what's next? I mean, we've seen it here in America, the riots here. You know, it's just, Netherlands, seriously? What's really going on? And these protests have been simmering underneath the social fabric for some time now, at least three years. Take a look at this headline from 2021. This was, Netherlands announced his 25 billion euro plan to radically reduce livestock numbers. They're trying to reduce the nitrogen pollution from animal manure, but also fertilizer use.

And what that led to, the farmers were already really mad about this. They've been going back and forth with their government. So with both ranchers and, you know, agricultural farmers, you can't get fertilized because it's nitrogen to grow vegetables. Right. And you've got to get rid of your cows because I'm assuming, you know, take the crap, it's releasing nitrogen. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so what happened in the government there, this is the headline that started off this. I really call it a hot rebellion at this point because it is in full swing.

They're blockading towns, airports, government buildings. This is the headline here in June, so just last month, it says, Dutch government angers farmers with tough emission goals. And it goes on to say, calling it an unavoidable transition, the government mandated reductions in emissions of up to 70% in many places close to protected nature areas and as high as 95% in other places. The ruling coalition earmarked an extra $24.3 billion to finance changes that will likely make many farmers drastically reduce their numbers of livestock

or get rid of them altogether. So we're talking about out of the farming business. We're talking about generations of farming, small and medium-sized farmers that put food on the table. They're done. Deadline at 2030. And so this is a big-time issue. There's really no lead-up to this transition plan. It was just a hammer that was dropped.

And so here we have Fox News comparing it to something we've reported on here, the Canadian protest. Here's the headline here. Dutch farmers form freedom convoys. That's what they're calling that, like you know, is the Canadian. protest to protest government's strict environmental rules. But, Del, this is not contained. So one like Canada, which was with the COVID restrictions, that was obviously contained in Canada. This is spilling out into the European Union. So here's the headline here. This is starting to roll. Dutch farmers protest against emission cuts spreads across EU. So we look at information from the World Bank about percentage use of agricultural land to really understand why this is spreading across the European Union. So if you're If you look at this graph, we have four different European Union countries, member states. We have the Netherlands at the top, and you can see here, 54% of the Netherlands is farmland.

Of all of their land is farmland. We have Germany and Poland, just under 50% of their entire country is farmland, and then in Italy, down at the bottom, just over 40%. So it makes sense that we're going to see, this is where we're seeing this action spill out into Germany, into Poland, into Italy. It's spreading across, and there's solidarity with the farmers in the Netherlands. So this is a big, big deal and a big problem for the leaders that are really pushing this hard. But where did this come from? Yeah. So everyone's seeing it now for the first time, really.

But in 2017, the European Union pushed something called the EU Action Plan for Nature People and the Economy. And this is where it really started. So we have here in the Netherlands media reporting, they talked about the protected areas. This is the other aspect of this. So we're getting rid of the nitrogen. We're getting rid of the farming because of the cows. but we have these protected areas, and here's the headline here about these 131 protected areas. Nitrogen emissions must be reduced by 70% in 131 areas.

In many parts of the Netherlands, nitrogen emissions must be reduced by 70%. This concerns 131 areas close to vulnerable nature. This means that not all farmers can continue with their business, according to the nitrogen plans that the cabinet released today. So where did these things come from? We have 131 protected areas that just popped out of nowhere in 2017. So if we look at a map here, it's called Natura 2000. That is the term if anybody wants to look that up.

And you look at the map of the Netherlands here. Everything in green is a protected nature area. So you can see 54% of the country is farmland, and the rest of it is these nature areas. Now, if you have a farm and you're next to one of these nature areas, sorry, but you're going to have to reduce your nitrogen emissions. You're going to have to cut your livestock because we have to protect the birds, the insects, the wildlife,

the biodiversity, make these things sustainable. sustainable development. So that's where that's really coming from. And why agriculture? This is really the key that's going to bring most people into this fold. And we're reporting on this for a long time, I believe. So we look at the International Food Policy Research Institute, and they published a paper called the Central Position of Agriculture

within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Remember those words. And it says in there, as both a direct and indirect pathway to social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. agriculture, more than any other sector, is the common thread which holds the 17 SDGs together. These are sustainable development goals of what's called the Agenda 2030. And we're going to flash up here all of these goals. This is an agenda by the United Nations that is being kind of downloaded into our elected officials.

The United Nations are unelected bureaucrats that are telling prime ministers, our president, how to run the country. and we're seeing the business end of this agenda 2030 with these emissions cuts. So we look at this chart here. We have 17 sustainable development goals, and this is what's going on here. This is what they're trying to achieve. But if we look at them, they're not really achieving this. Number one's no poverty. Number two, zero hunger.

Well, just right there alone, you start cutting the food to people's... How to get zero hunger if you're shutting down food supply? Exactly. Stopping people from getting fertilizer to grow the crops, you beat the people with. Exactly. Exactly. And insane. You know, here in the United States, we have a lot of...

We have a lot of people onto this agenda. It's literally an agenda, 2030, and they're pushing back. But other countries are in various phases of this push, this really radical push, climate push. And we're going to take a look here at Sri Lanka. This country has been in the news for over two weeks now. We have some footage here. We're going to look at, some B-roll we're going to show. And if you see here, this is the country.

Thousands upon thousands of citizens are storming the presidential residents. They get inside, they breach it, and eventually, I believe it was burned. This is because we're going to cover why this was happening, but they also went to the bank, the central bank of Sri Lanka. Same treatment by the citizenry there. They breached it. They're unhappy. They're protesting.

Total chaos in the country right now. A lot of factors that really led to this bad monetary policy. They were doing hyperinflation of their currency. COVID lockdowns killed their tourism industry because there was no travel, and they rely on that. There was nothing, but in the middle of that, let's look at this headline from 2021. It says here, Economist, October 2021, a rush to farm organically as plunged Sri Lanka's economy into crisis. And then we go to Al Jazeera present day, January 2022. Here's the headlines, Sri Lanka to pay $200 million to compensation for failed organic farming drive. So they're giving these farmers that they botched

this scheme. They're giving them all of this money to try to make it work, but the money's not really worth anything at this point. And what's really interesting, when we talk about these climate goals, Sri Lanka, according to the World Economic Research Organization, they have a ranking of zero to 100, 100 being the most, I guess, climately conscious country as far as emissions and all of those things and low impacts of the environment. Sri Lanka was at 98.1%. So they had an A-plus on this card during their collapse and leading up to their collapse. So you've got to kind of scratch your But really, to connect this together, we have a Fox News contributor and author. He really knocked this out of the park.

Take a listen to this. There's an element of the green movement globally that is simply trying to make the world move too far, too fast on the green agenda. And we've just seen some of the consequences in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government fell for a bunch of basically left-wing Western activist ideas about ESG, about environmental issues, including use of fertilizer and much more. And they went so fast, so fast on it. that basically much of Sri Lanka's agriculture is not there anymore. It's agricultural industry that used to be so much of the country's export

is just not there because they went into the ESG agenda. They got higher markings in all of the international bodies even than Sweden, even than the US in this. And the result is shortages, riots and eventually the overturning of the government and the prime minister having to flee and work from a ship off the coast. Well, it's the same thing with the green activists in Europe and some of the ones we have here in the United States. They all demand the same thing. They say, you've got to get off fossil fuels or you've got to get off fertilis and all these sort of things.

But none of their supposed solutions are yet in place. They want us to get off fossil fuels. They want us to get off all of the other things that they deprecate, nuclear and much more. But they don't yet have the green answers that, yeah, you know, maybe we'll have down the road, but we don't now. So, you know, sorry to make the pun about the tour de France. trying to make us run before we can walk on green and the results are the sort of things we've just seen in Sri Lanka. That is so well stated exactly what I wanted to say and when I think about when we were talking to Valerie about this event and bringing all sides together I want to be perfectly

honest I still consider myself environmentalist I want clean air I want clean water want a clean food supply I don't like industries poisoning anything around me we have to deal with it we have to figure out ways I am aware and I have been aware that nitrogen runoff is a problem in rivers. It's a problem for wildlife. I get all of that. But here is my issue, and here's where I've really jumped ship and thought, you know, the party, the Democrats and how I grew up, whether this is political or not, I don't mean to make it that. But here's my beef. It's exactly what they just did. They just say, okay, go organic tomorrow. But they don't send in anyone to help. They don't send in any way to deal with it. I think about, you know, I argue with my family

and friends, you know, when it came to like coal mining and saying, well, we've just got to stop coal. And those miners can, they can build solar panels. I was like, you know, that's a great thought. anyone in our government going and building a solar plant, you know, panel plant in the middle of West Virginia or whatever it is. It's just, these are statements and the slogans, but they don't fit the reality. There are real human beings here, and we're all a part of this. This is going to be our food supply. And I want to say this. You know, there are people out there that could make this transition.

Why aren't they calling Zach Bush? You know, to me, I mean, of all the interviews I've done, and the people that I've discussed this issue with, I mean, I think he transcends all the parties, all the chaos, into which. that we can start moving people into better ways of farming. They're using less nitrogen, things like all of that's possible. Right. You know, and so that's what has to happen. But these people aren't being called.

He's not getting a call for anyone out there that even has a question about, you know, Zach Bush, you've never heard of him. Go back and watch some of the episodes of the Highwire, but you have an opportunity coming up this week, just ironically because this topic was coming up. Zach Bush is doing an event. This is on July 19th, 5 p.m. Eastern Time. You can register at Farmers. footprint.us.

Zach Bush is brilliant in the way that he has got ways that we can start moving people into better farming practices. But that's where our billions of dollars should be going. When we're spending billions of dollars, it shouldn't be to figure out how to advertise the people that don't want to get a vaccine. How about let's get people to start learning how to farm better? How about we start giving resources? Why don't we bring in the Zach Bush's of the world and people like that to train other people

to go out and really let's make the world a better place? I'm down with that. But this is not how we do it. Right, right, right. And, you know, if you're sitting there, viewers, if you're sitting there and watching this in America and saying, well, that's someplace, I don't know where, Sri Lanka, Netherlands, never going to go there, it doesn't matter. Not so fast, because in the United States, the Biden administration is using the EPA as its action arm to implement rapid changes, just like in the Netherlands, just like in Sri Lanka, right here in the United States.

And the Supreme Court took up that matter, and they just recently had a decision on this and take a look. And that's what you're doing, and I want to make another point, because what we think, about, you know, one of the points before, because I know we're going to move in a whole different section about where this is going with the EPA. But we talk about this. You know what proves the line? You know what it proves the line whether it's in the Netherlands

or Tremont or anywhere else? They want to reduce nitrogen. Oh, we've got a protect the environment. Where the hell's Monsanto on this? Not delightlessly. How about this crap you're pouring on all of our crops all over the world that is poisoning us? It's losing in course paying out billions of dollars for giving us non-Hodgkins lymphoma. No one of the news is talking about that.

Oh, let's just stop all of your farming, let's just shut down your farm, destroy our food supply, but we'll keep spraying this crap. By the way, you're worried about your environment? You're worried about your birds? How about birds that are eating bugs and they're dying and fees that are dying and all the issues that are happening because of glyphosate? Nobody's moving on that. So I say bull crap to all of this.

You're all a bunch of liars. This is not what this is about. This is about world control and domination, not about making us healthier. I mean, look at the headline. This is the headline that we just saw this week. Disturbing weed killer ingredient. We're talking about glyphosate, tied to cancer, are found in 80% of U.S. urine samples.

Right, right. We're all toxic with this crap. Let's make a difference. We want to have a, you know, this is where I'm environmentalist. Get this out of my food. Right. Yes, sir.

And we've watched the media provide cover for Monsanto for bear during this and not talk about the issues with glyphosate during this whole time. So similar situation here with the EPA. This is NPR. This is the headline here with the EPA. Supreme Court restricts the EPA's authority to mandate carbon emissions

reductions. It says here, this is Chief Justice John Roberts. He's writing for the court's majority. Chief Justice John Roberts said that under what the court has recently called the major questions doctrine, neither the EPA nor any other agency may adopt rules that are transformational to the economy unless Congress has specifically authorized such a transformative rule to address a specific problem like climate change. So basically get back in your lane, EPA. You do not have authority here. So unfortunately, you should have heard my friends and family bellowing about this. And we saw the headlines, right? The CNN's of the world all saying, oh, the Supreme Court is an activist court is going to destroy our environment, which is not what this is about, right?

This is about saying, no, no, no, no, we need the EPA, do your job, but once you come up with some grand plan and a great idea, you're going to have to convince our Congress of it and use legislators to actually make a decision on this. Let's get back to using the three branches of government instead of just dictating from a president into a regulatory agency. And that's what we just saw with COVID, right? Yes. This cannot happen anymore. I'm so happy about the Supreme Court getting involved because Tony Fauci's not God and you don't get to lock me in my house and take away my job and tell me it's illegal to breathe a freaking air. That's right.