Dutch Farmers Block Paper Factory to Protest Green Double Standards

A man speaks on a smartphone next to a tractor with a placard during a rally of the Nether
RAMON VAN FLYMEN/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

A group of Dutch farmers blocked the entrance to a paper factory in the Eastern Netherlands on Wednesday with their tractors to protest the double standards of the government’s green agenda.

Tractors descended on the town of Renkum in the Gelderland province on Wednesday, surrounding and blockading the Parenco paper mill, which has not been subjected to the same nitrogen emissions requirements that the globalist administration of PM Mark Rutte is demanding of farmers throughout the country.

The Rutte coalition government is attempting to force farms to reduce their nitrogen output by between 70 and 95 per cent by 2030 in order to supposedly comply with the European Union’s Natura2000 agenda, which seeks to classify vast swaths of land throughout the bloc as protected environments in order to shutdown surrounding industry.

The main target of the Dutch government so far has been farmland, with estimates predicting that the nitrogen limits would force 30 per cent of livestock farms to shut down. There have been accusations that the government is merely using the EU programme as a justification to seize the valuable land, given that other EU member states have not yet attempted such draconian measures to meet the bloc’s standards.

The farmers told the local broadcaster Omroep Gelderland that the protest on Wednesday was not meant to be an attack on the paper mill, but merely to highlight the apparent hypocrisy of the government’s green agenda.

One farmer said that they chose the location “because there is a Natura2000 area to the left and right of the Parenco [paper mill]… We have to comply with the rules, but nitrogen is just being emitted here.”

The paper factory ranked 54 among companies in the Netherlands in terms of emitting nitrogen oxides and was the top such emitter in the province of Gelderland.

Following a conversation between the farmers and the mayor of Renkum, the tractor blockade was lifted after a few hours of disruptions.

Last week, there was widespread chaos caused by protesters dumping animal manure, car tyres, and flaming bales of hay on motorways throughout the country.

Despite the mass protests, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who this week became the Netherlands’ longest-serving prime minister, has so far refused to cut his vacation short to address the crisis.

Commenting on the ongoing dispute, Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek told GB News this week that while the mainstream media in the Netherlands attempts to claim that there no support for the farmers, she said “the support for the farmers was originally and still is high.

She said that Rutte “has ruined the country beyond recognition, taking away people’s private property for a nitrogen crisis? That little game of creating a crisis and taking your rights away… people are waking up to that.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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