'Nitrogen Agenda' Used by Globalists to Take Land:Farmer Faces Having to Cull 95 Percent of His Cows

These right here are Dutch farmers over in the Netherlands who have been protesting, blocking roads and using their tractors to shut down major city centers, airports, bridges, as well as food distribution plants across the entire country for several months now. And the reason that the farmers are doing this is rather simple. They are rising up against a government proposal that would put severe limits on nitrogen emissions and in the process it would put about a third of the farmers out of work. Now, this was of course shocking to everyone who heard it around the entire world, because amidst a drought season, amidst a year of relatively poor crops, amidst a year of raging inflation, and of course you had the Russia-Ukraine war leading to actual food shortages, well the idea that a government would kneecap their own domestic farming production was unfathomable. However, that's what was actually happening in the Netherlands. And so, in order to figure out what was really behind these policies, as well as how these policies would affect the actual men and women who work out in the fields, my team and I flew over to the Netherlands in order to find out for ourselves what was really happening there. And I have to tell you, driving around the Netherlands, I suddenly realized why such a small country became the world's number six exporter of food. There are farms quite literally everywhere. No matter where you drive, you can see cows, pastures, you can see horses, sheep, goats, and a lot of different crops. In fact, according to the most recent estimates, small farmers own approximately 60% of all the land within the country, which might actually be part of the reason why the government is pushing them away, but we'll get to that in a second. Furthermore, driving around the Netherlands, well, it reminded me a lot of the trucker convoy that happened here in America. That's because, just like you had people here in the US posted up on the highway overpasses in order to encourage the truckers, well, over in the Netherlands, it was the same thing. There were signs in all parts of the country saying things like, no farmers, no food. Many of the overpasses, as you can see for yourself, had the Dutch flag flying upside down. That's their universal symbol for a country in distress. It's similar to when you fly the American flag upside down. And even the cars, trucks, and tractors that you saw on the roads, well, many of them were flying the distressed Dutch flag, or they had a red handkerchief tied to their vehicle, a symbol that they stand in solidarity with the farmers. Now, eventually, we made our way to a dairy farm located sort of in the middle of the country, owned by a farmer named Martin, who explained to us what would happen to his farm if these nitrogen emission standards were to go into effect. I have about 130 cows, milking cows with young stock, and I have about 70 hectares of land. And that's how I run my business. And how long has the farm been in your family? This farm has been in my family for 30 or 40 years. And so with your milk, what kind of products do you wind up selling, like milk, cheese, yogurt? The company where my milk is going to, most of it is going into cheese and yogurt drinks. And I think most of it is cheese. So then in terms of what the government is trying to push, the new regulations, maybe for the people who are watching this in America, maybe they don't understand what's happening, what the government is trying to do here. Can you sort of set the stage for them? The government sets out of the blue new regulations for the agriculture in Holland. And they are so extreme, like I have to reduce for 95% in my number of cows. And so I can run a farm on 5%. So that means for me it's over and done with. I have to sell it. And due to the regulations, I can't sell it to anybody. Nobody wants to buy it. Yeah, the government wants to buy it. And that's why they set those regulations, I think. The regulations that they're pushing right now to reduce the number of nitrogen, it would make it so if they pass your farm here, you would have to reduce your level of nitrogen by 95%. So I mean, besides getting rid of all your cows, how else can you do it? Is there any other way? There's no other way. There's no other way. So you would just have to either shut down or sell 95% of your cows. I don't think. Yeah, it's a bit like that, I think. And so we feel discriminated in Holland because we have to solve the problem for them. Because if my milk goes into cheese and if I quit and the rest of Holland eats the same amount of cheese all day, nothing has changed because the cows will be somewhere else and the cheese will come, will be imported into Holland. So nothing will change. But on paper, they have a solution. But the people have to change. We all have to change. So what do you think of the way that the government is running this potential program that they've implemented? Because sometimes when these types of programs go into effect, they say like, well, here's a 10-year goal and we're going to slowly reduce it. But it seems like what they're proposing is not a 10-year goal. It would just be like an overnight thing. What's your opinion on that? Yeah, it's not realistic. If the government has a plan, most of the time it takes them 5 or 10 years to work it out and then it's done. But in our case, it has to be in a year. So yeah, I think it's impossible. Because when they were telling their plans, they almost immediately told also that, and if we didn't listen, we farmers in Holland, they would expropriate my farm. So they just say, you have nothing to say, we just take your land and it's ours. So yeah, and that will take a lot of lawsuits for them. So I don't think a year is realistic. And then also, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you were to sell your farm to the government, you also would not be allowed to start up another farm. Do you think if enough farmers are forced to do that, that would actually be a big detriment to farming in Holland? Because you have your knowledge, you have 50 years of knowledge of how to run this farm. If you and people like you go away, they no longer farm, all that knowledge is just gone. But it seems like they're not really thinking this through. We don't need farmers, we have scientists to know how to tell how to run a farm. Now, while Maarten and I were speaking, one of his neighbors stopped by. It was a man named Leo, who was also a dairy farmer just up the road. And he likewise told us about what the nitrogen standards would do to his farm as well. So I know that the government laid out a map, right, of their proposed regulations. And in the map, it showed that different regions had to reduce their nitrogen by different amounts. What does your farm fall into? I'm not sure because the map is not very clear, but I think it's 50 percent. 50 percent. Wow. So you're saying that if these new regulations were to go into effect, you would have to drop your nitrogen output by 50 percent? Yes. Wow. What would that mean for your farm? Not good. We can't lose 50 percent of our production because we have to make our money. We did our investments and it has to come back, the money. So yeah, that's not good. Because the regulations are right now being proposed and debated. If they actually go into effect, let's say they go into effect this month, what would that actually look like for your farm? Would you be able to just continue going, but you just have to reduce your volume? How would that work? Or would you not be able to take that 50 percent loss? That doesn't work. How do I have to manage that? That doesn't work. We have our buildings, we have our investments. Do we have to invest more? The same cattle on more land. Do I have to buy land? From who? But here's the thing. You might look at this whole situation and you might feel a lot of sympathy for these farmers. But at the same time, you might say, hey, you know what? This is all for the greater good. Because if these nitrogen emission standards aren't implemented, well, the environment will be ruined. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, I wanted to mention that the sponsor of today's episode is a super cool company called Secure. They're a cool company for people that actually care about their privacy. Because listen, if you don't think that these giant tech englomerates and all these different alphabet agencies within the U.S. government are spying on your messages, well, then frankly, you are not paying enough attention to the news. However, all that can be in the past, because with Secure, they have awesome proprietary technology that has all your messages and all your emails actually go through Switzerland as they're making their way back and forth between you and your recipient. And so let's say you're here in America and the person you're messaging is over in Canada, Mexico, or anywhere else in the world. Well, it doesn't matter because all your messages are actually going through Switzerland back and forth from one to another, meaning that they're not subject to the Cloud Act and they are only subject to Swiss laws, which are some of the safest in the entire world. Their technology is awesome, it's proprietary, and they're a company that actually cares about your freedom. They care about getting the facts out, which is why they sponsor a company like ours. And best of all, they are offering a 25% off deal for our viewers, for the viewers of Facts Matter. So head on over to secure.com and use promo code Roman to get 25% off. And the rates are not even that expensive to start with. It's only $5 for the messenger and $10 for the email and messenger combo. And they even offer a seven day free trial. So again, head on over to secure.com, use promo code Roman, save some money and support an awesome sponsor. However, is that really the case? Will the environment really be in danger if these nitrogen standards are not met? Well, in order to figure that out, we went over to the home of Mr. Jaap Honeykamp, a scientist who studied this nitrogen issue for the past eight years. And he was even commissioned by the nitrogen ministry within the Netherlands to look into the matter. And what he told us, well, I can only say that it was rather surprising. Nitrogen does something with ecosystems, obviously, otherwise a farmer wouldn't use nutrients to put on the land. But the problem is, how do you define what is bad or what kind of change within habitats which are the recipient of nitrogen deposition would be regarded as damage? That is a hard nut to crack because you have to decide on what kind of time frame you would like to think change is unacceptable, what the level of nitrogen deposition would be, which would be unacceptable. So there are many questions which you can ask and which we asked in a paper which were recently published, is that damage is not unequivocal. It's actually quite an ambiguous term because is growth or a change in biodiversity, is that bad in itself or is it just change? Could you regard it as damage? And how do you, what kind of reference point do you take? I can think of many different approaches to that issue. And what we found is, and that comes to the term critical load, that's the term used, is that the term critical load, that's the definition is above which a certain risk to an ecosystem increases, is a very, very difficult definition to work with because, again, time frame, kind of damage, what are we talking about exactly, what kind of experiments have we done to define a critical load, many questions to be asked. And the problem is that the Dutch government decided that these critical loads are definitive with respect to the quality of the habitats we have. And that's a very strange approach to this issue. Okay, so my understanding is correct. So you're saying that too much nitrogen below this critical point, this critical load point, will change the ecosystem from what it was to something else because everything has to kind of adapt to this amount of nitrogen. And they're saying that's damaging. But what does that actually look like? Will plants die? Will animals die? Well, again, a good question because what is too much nitrogen per se compared to what? There are a few definitions around, there are some experiments done, some observational studies, but what we usually found in studies is there is a change in growth. For instance, a growth is exceeded or sped up with respect to nature areas where there is no nitrogen deposition or very limited nitrogen deposition. And of course, the question is, if you speed up growth of certain plants, is that a bad thing? Could be, but I'm not sure. I have no idea whether that's a good reference point. You can have other reference points. There's a reduction in biodiversity. So less plants and more plants of a certain type which like nitrogen and less plants of plants who do not like nitrogen. Again, is that a problem? It could be, but again, it's a definitional issue. So too much nitrogen is too unspecified with respect to what we have defined as a critical load. But there is a much bigger problem is the following, and that requires a bit of explanation. Any standard coming from science, food safety, car safety, whatnot, can be related to scientific research, which is fine in itself. But it doesn't say that that kind of standard needs to be implemented as is within society because there's always a cost and there are benefits and costs which you have to trade with each other. So I'm well versed in the food safety arena and any kind of standard in the food safety arena can be derived from scientific experimentation. But it doesn't mean that that value, that standard, is immediately implemented in food production systems. Why? It might be too costly. It might actually result in shutting down production altogether. So the next step with any kind of standard is let's do a societal cost-benefit analysis because it might be wildly expensive. It might actually result again in shutting down types of production of certain foods, which we don't want. And with these critical loads, these are numbers, so many kilograms, nitrogen per hectare per year, have never ever went through this societal risk-benefit analysis, which is unheard of because not all standards, but most standards in the food safety arena, have to go through that system of societal cost-benefit analysis because you want to know, is this practical? Would this work or not? We can say as scientists, well, this is the standard we would like to see. Hang on a minute. How will that result in the whole system of food production, logistics, retail consumption? You have to know that. We have never done that with these critical loads, which is unheard of and very unscientific, but also results in very strange results. For instance, if we would ban all agricultural production in the Netherlands, these critical loads, for about three quarters of them, would still not be able to be reached. So we're still above these critical loads. It's even worse if we would evacuate the whole country, all people, every industry, all of it. I think probably 40% of all these critical loads still cannot be maintained. We're still too high. So that gives you an idea how wildly strange this whole process has been of implementing critical loads in law because they never ever went through this risk-benefit trade-off risk assessment, which society needs to figure out, are these standards useful? Can they be maintained for a long time? No, we don't know. We have never tried. We've never done that. And so that also means that if we would implement these and we would kick out, say, one third of the farmers, we still don't know what the result would be related to these critical loads, which doesn't make any sense. So the return of investment in terms of nature, we don't know what the result is. So we have no idea what the result is. Yeah, we know that one third of the farmers is gone, basically reducing production, reducing income as a country, but the return of investment in the focus nature, we have no idea. And so then, if too much nitrogen isn't really a problem in and of itself, then why exactly is the government choosing to do this? Why are they willing to spend billions of dollars to buy up this land and shut down so many farms? Well, the farmers themselves have an idea. What do you make of that? Do you think it's really about nitrogen or is it about something else? Land? Yeah, definitely. Buildings. Houses. However, who knows better about what lawmakers are thinking than an actual lawmaker himself? And so while we were over at The Hague, we got an opportunity to sit down and speak with Mr. Terry Boudet, the leader of an opposition party in the Netherlands that's actually fighting back against these nitrogen standards. How is it possible that in an age where everybody's talking about possibility of food shortages, of insecure supply chains, the Dutch government is pursuing this policy which will lead to even more dependency on international supply chains and thus uncertainty for the Dutch consumers. The answer is that the people governing this country are following the script written by the EU to realize what they call a great reset. They want to make us more dependent on international supply chains. They want to weaken Dutch sovereignty and autonomy. And also, they want to continue mass immigration into the Netherlands. And if you are going to bring more people to the populated country, you're going to need to take the land from the farmers and put houses there. That's the agenda, to turn the Netherlands into a giant city without its own means of production, without its autonomy in terms of sovereignty, but also in terms of food production, and to make people dependent on the international rulers, the globalists who are trying to take over. And it's not just to facilitate the continuous immigration. There's also a perhaps spiritual or deeper thing that is looming behind this, which is that farmers and in general people living on the land and of the land and with the land, they have a strong connection to the history. They are proud of their often family companies that have been in the family for several generations. And so these are not post-modern, post-historical, post-national people. They are proud family people who have their own business, who live of their own land, who have a connection to the history and to the nature of this country. And so they form a direct threat to the globalists post-territorial, post-identitarian agenda. The real point here is the Great Reset, mass migration, transnational governance, and that's why people have to become atomized. They have to lose their connection to the land, and that's why they're hitting on the farmers. And so to sum it all up, my biggest takeaway from this trip to the Netherlands has to do with the whole nitrogen debate. Sort of like what Terry Boudot talked about in his interview, that the reason that the government wants to limit nitrogen is to maintain this arbitrary level of special plants that the Dutch government agreed to protect back in the year 2000. And when I was interviewing the scientist, the one who studied this nitrogen issue for eight years and was even commissioned by the nitrogen ministry to look into it, I asked him very specifically. I said, what is the danger of having too much nitrogen? And he answered to me that there is no real danger. It is just based on what the bureaucrats in the government want to maintain its quote-unquote nature, because having more nitrogen in the will change the type of plants that thrive. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, it would just be different than what is there now. However, it seems like parliament is using this whole nitrogen issue as the pretext for getting the farmers off of their land. And one of the pieces of evidence that this is the real intention of the lawmakers is the fact that several farmers that I spoke with, they mentioned that there was actually a technological innovation that they could add to their farms, which would separate the poop from the pee of the cows, and thus it would reduce the amount of nitrogen through ammonia by something like 70%. That's because when the cow poop and cow pee are mixed together, that's when it creates a lot of ammonia and creates the nitrogen quote-unquote problem. And if the government was really to help these farmers implement this new technology, it would ironically cost the government less money than the amount of money that they earmarked to buy up all the farms. Meaning that if the goal was to really reduce nitrogen, they could use this approach, save money and not have 30 to 50% of the farms shut down. However, the fact that this was not the approach that the government was taking had many of the farmers that I spoke with telling me that this was evidence of the fact that the real goal here, the real goal of the government, is to buy up as much land from the farmers as possible on the cheap. Just for your reference, currently, as I mentioned earlier, farmers own something like 60% of all the land in the Netherlands. And the end goal appears to be, after getting rid of the farmers, to turn the entirety of the Netherlands into something like a giant tri-state city. Essentially, the New York of Europe. And just as a fun fact, at the bottom of the tri-state city website, it has this extremely reassuring sentence. I guess that's what you call a pre-fact check. Regardless though, I believe that the reason that so many people are suddenly so interested in what's happening over in the Netherlands is because the policies being pushed there are very similar. They in fact quite literally mirror the policies being pushed here in America, especially under the guise of the Green New Deal. However, I think these test cases of places like the Netherlands and even Sri Lanka provide a good opportunity for us to see what these policies look like in practice. And frankly, it looks like starvation and the loss of 30 to 50% of the farming sector jobs. If you'd like to take a look at anything that we discussed in today's episode in more detail, I'll throw those links down into the description box below this video for you to check out. And then until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epoch Times. Stay informed and most importantly, stay free.