Dutch farmers are going too far this time. Prime Minister Mark Rutte is a little peeved that “people are being threatened” for assisting the cleanup. That’s certainly one way to look at it. All the disgruntled agriculturalists did was mix some asbestos in with the garbage before they set it on fire. If the government thinks they pollute, then they can show some real pollution.
Dutch farmers escalate the protest
Unwary drivers ended up crashing into piles of tires and other garbage blocking a highway near the Hague in the Dutch Netherlands. Frustrated farmers have resumed their protests because negotiations were a farce and went nowhere.
Fertilizer emissions will be slashed one way or another whether the agriculture industry likes it or not. Protests, Prime Minister Mark Rutte declared, are “unacceptable.” At least, disruptively effective ones like these are.
Police patrolling the northern province of Friesland report that nobody was injured but “several cars were involved in an accident caused by dumped garbage.”
Dutch farmers' protest continue day and night unabated. Tonight on the A50 motorway in Apeldoorn. Dutch farmers are not joking. pic.twitter.com/A6zCGYLsJe
— RadioGenova (@RadioGenova) July 27, 2022
They reminded drivers of their responsibility to watch for road hazards at all times, not just when farmers are protesting. Now that they are though, motorists should be alert to “extremely dangerous situations” caused by unhappy fieldworkers.
Overnight, a string of incidents sprung up, “including farmers burning hay bales near a major highway, despite police and security authorities appealing to farmers Wednesday to halt the dumping.” Those were the ones with the asbestos in them.
“Protesting is a fundamental right and as long as it stays within the limits of the law, a lot is possible,” emergency services departments declared in a joint statement. These latest actions “seriously endanger road safety and can lead to life-threatening situations for road users.”
Increasingly radicalized protests
ABC News actually dared to cover the story and they’re noting that “in a sign of the increasingly radicalized farmer protests, cleanup operations have been hampered by intimidation of contractors hired to clear roads and by the presence of asbestos in some of the piles of debris dumped on roads.” The Prime Minister had to resort to a tweet about it.
“Willfully endangering others, damaging our infrastructure and threatening people who help clean up is beyond all limits,” Rutte tapped out. “These life-threatening actions must stop. There are plenty of other ways to express your dissatisfaction within the law. Most farmers do that.” These ones are beyond being reasonable because they want to hold on to their family farms.
The government freely admits they’re going to put most of the farmers out of business. Even so, the ruling coalition wants to “cut emissions of pollutants by 50% nationwide by 2030 to improve soil, air and water quality in an EU nation known for its intensive farming practices.”
Those practices also happen to feed half of Europe from a really small footprint making them the most efficient farmers in the world. They don’t get any credit for that, while the cars and industry don’t get any blame for their nitrogen emissions. It isn’t about that. The real goal is to grab up all the land.
Even after a full day of cleanup efforts, the roads were still blocked. “By the end of the day, some roads were still not cleared, in part because some companies involved in the cleanup had received threats. We are doing everything to clear the roads but some contractors are being intimidated.”
The farmers understand the hardship they’re causing for the public but say don’t blame them. At one of the protest sites, a sign remains saying “Sorry for the inconvenience, Rutte IV is driving us to despair.“