- Re: Grayzone: Dutch farmers battle technocratic forces driving them into oblivion Archived Message
Posted by Ian M
on December 10, 2022, 6:26 pm, in reply to "Re: Grayzone: Dutch farmers battle technocratic forces driving them into oblivion"
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Weird article, quite one-sided as John notes. You can tell the author knows nothing about farming, and the issue seems to have been adopted by GZ as it fits their anti-WEF stance. Uncritical praise of the Haber-Bosch process, the green revolution and the massive expansion in global population it generated leaves out a big chunk of the story. Fair enough if they want to criticise Dutch/EU/WEF policies seeking to drive farmers off their land, using nitrate pollution and methane emissions from livestock as an excuse, but this shouldn't preclude looking critically at the current farming model in NL. This too is a product of EU policy and corporatism with its emphasis on gigantism, monocropping, export-orientation and total dependence on artificial, fossil-fuel based inputs. Saner methods of mixed farming and village economies will have been erased to make way for this model, now ironically facing a similar threat. That said, I don't think the politicians or environmental NGOs mentioned in the article have a better solution to offer, and the farmers are correct to oppose their dictates which could result in some appalling social destruction, and in any case will lead to reliance on increased production elsewhere in the globe to make up the shortfall (unless the Dutch people are content to starve). It reminds me of the gilet jaunes protests in that the diagnosis is correct but the policies put in place to tackle the problem are regressive and unfairly target the vulnerable. Like the gilets - at least in their first eruption - resistance seems to be very right wing, and a significant segment of the left is supportive of the govt measures. Of course urban environmentalists know nothing about farming either, but I would hope they'd think twice about supporting govt policies that are crushing working people (albeit in a highly damaging industry). But maybe not, and we're seeing the emergence of stark political divides between an urban/vegan/left wing 'liberal elite' and a rural/traditionalist/right wing oppositional class which contains within it the only real promise of revolution - but probably not the kind most leftists would like to see. In that sense GZ provide a service in bridging the political divide in this way, as they also did with their anti-mandate/lockdown stances and support of the Canadian trucker convoy - some more eruptions of popular energy, again broadly on the right wing. Worrying times! cheers, I |