We all lose from the global war on farmers
France is in flames. Israel is erupting. America is facing a second
January 6. In the Netherlands, however, the political establishment is reeling
from an entirely different type of protest — one that, perhaps more than any
other raging today, threatens to destabilise the global order. The victory of
the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) in the recent provincial elections represents
an extraordinary result for an anti-establishment party that was formed just
over three years ago. But then again, these are not ordinary times.
The BBB grew out of the mass demonstrations against the Dutch
government’s proposal to cut nitrogen emissions by 50% in the country’s farming
sector by 2030 — a target designed to comply with the European Union’s
emission-reduction rules. While large farming companies have the means to meet
these goals — by using less nitrogen fertiliser and reducing the number of
their livestock — smaller, often family-owned farms would be forced to sell or
shutter. Indeed, according to a heavily redacted European Commission document, this is precisely the
strategy’s goal: “extensifying agriculture, notably through buying out or
terminating farms, with the aim of reducing livestock”; this would “first
be on a voluntary basis, but mandatory buyout is not excluded if necessary”.
It is no surprise, then, that the plans sparked massive protests by
farmers, who see it as a direct attack on their livelihoods, or that the BBB’s
slogan — “No Farms, No Food” — clearly resonated with voters. But aside from
concerns about the impact of the measure on the country’s food security, and on
a centuries-old rural way of life integral to Dutch national identity, the
rationale behind this drastic measure is also questionable. Agriculture
currently accounts for almost half of the country’s output of carbon dioxide,
yet the Netherlands is
responsible for less than 0.4% of the world’s emissions. No
wonder many Dutch fail to see how such negligible returns justify the complete
overhaul of the country’s farming sector, which is already considered one of
the most sustainable in the world: over the past two decades, water dependence
for key crops has been reduced by as much as 90%, and the use of
chemical pesticides in greenhouses has been almost completely eliminated.
Farmers also point out that the consequences of the nitrogen cut would
extend well beyond the Netherlands. The country, after all, is Europe’s largest
exporter of meat and the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world,
just behind the United States — in other words, the plan would cause food
exports to collapse at a time when the world is already facing a food and
resource shortage. We already know what this might look like. A similar ban on
nitrogen fertiliser was conducted in Sri Lanka last year, with disastrous
consequences: it caused an artificial food shortage that plunged nearly two
million Sri Lankans into poverty, leading to an uprising that toppled the
government.
Given the irrational nature of the policy, many protesting farmers believe it can’t simply be blamed on the urbanite
“green elites” currently running the Dutch government. They suggest one of the
underlying reasons for the move is to squeeze small farmers from the market,
allowing them to be bought out by multinational agribusiness giants who
recognise the immense value of the country’s land — not only is it highly fertile, but it is also strategically located with
easy access to the north Atlantic coast (Rotterdam is the largest port in
Europe). They also point out that prime minister Rutte is an Agenda Contributor
of the World Economic Forum, which is well known for being corporate-driven, while his finance minister and Minister
of Social Affairs and Employment are also tied to the body.
The struggle playing out in the Netherlands would seem to be part of a
much bigger game that seeks to “reset” the international food system. Similar
measures are currently being introduced or considered in several other European
countries, including Belgium, Germany, Ireland and Britain (where the
Government is encouraging traditional farmers to leave the industry
to free up land for new “sustainable” farmers). As the second-largest
contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, after the energy sector, agriculture
has naturally ended up in the crosshairs of Net
Zero advocates — that is, virtually all major international and global
organisations. The solution, we are told, is “sustainable agriculture” — one of
the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which form their “Agenda 2030”.
This issue has now been pushed to the top of the global agenda. Last
November’s G20 meeting in Bali called for “an accelerated transformation towards
sustainable and resilient agriculture and food systems and supply chains” to
“ensure that food systems better contribute to adaptation and mitigation to
climate change”. Just a few days later, in Egypt, the COP27 annual Green Agenda
Climate Summit launched its initiative aimed at promoting “a shift
towards sustainable, climate-resilient, healthy diets”. Within a year, its Food
and Agriculture Organization aims to launch a “roadmap” for reducing greenhouse
emissions in the agricultural sector.
The endgame is hinted at in several other UN documents: reducing nitrogen use and global livestock production,
lowering meat consumption, and promoting more “sustainable” sources of protein,
such as plant-based or lab-grown products, and even insects.
The United Nations Environment Programme, for example, has stated that
global meat and dairy consumption must be reduced by 50% by 2050. Other
international and multilateral organisation have presented their own plans for
transforming the global food system. The EU’s Farm to Fork strategy “aims to accelerate our
transition to a sustainable food system”. Meanwhile, the World Bank, in its
climate change action plan for 2021-2025, says that 35% of the bank’s
total funding during this period will be devoted to transforming agriculture
and other key systems to deal with climate change.
Alongside these intergovernmental and multilateral bodies, a vast
network of “stakeholders” is now devoted to the “greening” of agriculture and
food production — private foundations, public-private partnerships, NGOs and
corporations. Reset
the Table, a 2020 Rockefeller Foundation report, called for
moving away from a “focus on maximising shareholder returns” to “a more equitable
system focused on fair returns and benefits to all stakeholders”. This may
sound like a good idea, until one considers that “stakeholder capitalism” is a
concept heavily promoted by the World Economic Forum, which represents the interests of the largest and most
powerful corporations on the planet.
The Rockefeller Foundation has very close ties to the WEF, which is
itself encouraging
farmers to embrace “climate-smart” methods in order to make the
“transition to net-zero, nature-positive food systems by 2030”. The WEF is also
a big believer in the need to drastically reduce cattle farming and meat
consumption and switch to “alternative
proteins”.
Arguably the most influential public-private organisation specifically
“dedicated to transforming our global food system” is the EAT-Lancet Commission,
which is largely modelled around the Davos “multistakeholderist” approach. This
is based on the premise that global policymaking should be shaped by a wide range
of unelected “stakeholders”, such as academic institutions and multinational
corporations, working hand-in-glove with governments. This network, cofounded
by the Wellcome Trust, consists of UN agencies, world-leading universities, and
corporations such as Google and Nestlé. EAT’s founder and president, Gunhild
Stordalen, a Norwegian philanthropist who is married to one of the country’s
richest men, has described her intention to organise a “Davos for
food”.
EAT’s work was initially supported by the World Health Organization, but
in 2019 the WHO withdrew its endorsement after Gian Lorenzo Cornado,
Italy’s ambassador and permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, questioned
the scientific basis for the dietary regime being pushed by EAT — which is
focused on promoting plant-based foods and excluding meat and other
animal-based foods. Cornado argued that “a standard diet for the whole planet”
that ignores age, sex, health and eating habits “has no scientific
justification at all” and “would mean the destruction of millenary healthy
traditional diets which are a full part of the cultural heritage and social
harmony in many nations”.
Perhaps more important, said Cornado, is the fact that the dietary
regime advised by the commission “is also nutritionally deficient and therefore
dangerous to human health” and “would certainly lead to economic depression,
especially in developing countries”. He also raised concerns that “the total or
nearly total elimination of foods of animal origin” would destroy cattle
farming and many other activities related to the production of meat and dairy
products. Despite these concerns, raised by a leading member of the world’s top
public health body and shared by a network representing 200 million small-scale farmers
in 81 countries, EAT continues to play a central role in the global push for
the radical transformation of food systems. At the 2021 United Nations Food
Systems Summit, which originated from a partnership between the WEF and the UN
Secretary-General, Stordalen was given a leading role.
This complete blurring of the boundaries between the public and the
private-corporate spheres in the agricultural and food sectors is also
happening in other areas — with Bill Gates standing somewhere in the
middle. Alongside healthcare, agriculture is the main focus of the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, which finances several initiatives whose stated
aim is to increase food security and promote sustainable farming, such as Gates
Ag One, CGIAR and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Civil society
organisations, however, have accused the Foundation of using its influence to
promote multinational corporate interests in the Global South and to
push for ineffective (but very profitable) high-tech solutions which
have largely failed to increase global food production. Nor are Gates’s
“sustainable” agricultural activities limited to developing countries. As well
as investing in plant-based protein companies, such as Beyond Meat and
Impossible Foods, Gates has been buying huge amounts of farmland in the US, to
the point of becoming the biggest private owner of farmland in the country.
The problem with the globalist trend he embodies is obvious: ultimately,
small and medium-scale farming is more sustainable than large-scale industrial
farming, as it is typically associated with greater biodiversity and the
protection of landscape features. Small farms also provide a whole range of
other public goods: they help to maintain lively rural and remote areas,
preserve regional identities, and offer employment in regions with fewer job
opportunities. But most importantly, small farms feed the world. A 2017 study found that the “peasant food web” — the diverse
network of small-scale producers disconnected from Big Agriculture — feeds more
than half of the world’s population using only 25% of the world’s agricultural
resources.
Traditional farming, though, is suffering an unprecedented attack. Small
and medium-scale farmers are being subjected to social and economic conditions
in which they simply cannot survive. Peasant farms are disappearing at an
alarming rate across Europe and other regions, to the benefit of the
world’s food oligarchs — and all this is being done in the name of
sustainability. At a time when almost a billion people around the world are
still affected by hunger, the lesson of the Dutch farmers could
not be more urgent, or inspiring. For now, at least, there is still time to
resist the Great Food Reset.
The
Great Food Reset has begun - UnHerd
