Author Robert Paarlberg argues against buying organic - "Nearly half of all Americans claim to prefer organic food, and the label has spread far beyond food. You can now buy organic lipstick, organic underwear, and even organic water... America’s farmers so far have certified less than 1 percent of their cropland for organic production, and fewer than 2 percent of commodities grown in 2017 were organic... fewer than 6 percent of total retail food purchases are organic products... Farmers tend to hold back because producing food organically requires more human labor to handle the composted animal manure used for fertilizer, as well as more labor to control weeds without chemicals (sometimes putting down nonbiodegradable plastic mulch instead). It also requires more land for every bushel of production, further driving up costs. Trying to grow all of our food organically today would require farming a much wider area, damaging wildlife habitat. Rachel Carson, the founder of our modern environmental movement, never endorsed organic farming... The rules for organic farming do deliver some clear benefit in the livestock sector. Producers of organic meat, milk, and eggs are required to provide their animals with more space to move around, an important plus for animal welfare. Also, animal products cannot be labeled organic if the animals were fed or treated with antibiotics, which is good for slowing the emergence of resistant bacterial strains dangerous to human health. Yet even for livestock the organic rule malfunctions, since the animals can only be given feeds grown organically, and organic corn and soy have lower yields per acre, so more land must be planted and plowed. Consumers tend to favor organic food because they believe the advocates who claim it is safer and more nutritious to eat, but there is little or no scientific evidence to support these claims. Others buy organic food because they assume it comes from farms that are smaller, more traditional, and more diverse, but this is not a safe assumption either. Most organic food on the market today comes from highly specialized, industrial-scale farms, not so different from those that produce conventional food. It doesn’t usually pay to challenge popular beliefs, even with scientific evidence, but some have felt compelled to do so in the case of organic agriculture. Louise O. Fresco, trained as an agronomist, is the president of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the world’s leading agricultural university. In her 2016 book “Hamburgers in Paradise,” she drew a harsh conclusion: “Organic farming as a whole is a mish-mash of valuable goals and ideals that have either been insufficiently tested or are completely misguided.” Scientists like Fresco view the organic vision as fundamentally misguided because it depends on an ungrounded distinction between materials that come from nature versus those fabricated by human industry... Visions that privilege what comes from nature over what is made by people have a mystical appeal, but they malfunction as practical guidance. Nature is often alluring and attractive, yet natural materials are anything but safe. Arsenic, nickel, and chromium are all dangerous carcinogens, and all come from nature. Many plants that are found in nature contain dangerous poisons, ranging from the deadly ricin found in castor beans (familiar to fans of “Breaking Bad”) to the itch-inducing urushiol in common poison ivy. .. Copper sulfate is permitted as a fungicide because it isn’t synthetic, but careless use of this chemical can leave dangerous residues on food and pollute our streams. Animal manure is natural, and an excellent fertilizer when composted, but dangerous bacteria will be introduced into fields and also into groundwater systems if a farmer fails to get the heat in the compost pile up to at least 140 degrees. A close friend with a field of organic blueberries on her hilltop farm in Maine developed serious stomach problems when she located her compost pile too close to the well. The biggest weakness in the organic rule is absolutism. Cutting back on the use of manufactured fertilizer is frequently a good idea, but the idea of cutting back to zero is needlessly rigid and absolute. Quests for purity in food and farming are not as dangerous as they are in race or religion, but they are just as lacking in scientific justification, and the advocates can be just as exasperating... The conviction that organic food is a better choice did not become widespread in the United States until the 1980s, when national media reported a number of food safety scares linked to pesticide residues on fresh fruits and vegetables... Consumers pay considerably more for organic. In 2018, the Food Marketing Institute reported that the average retail price (by volume) for organic produce was 54 percent higher than for conventional produce. One USDA study showed that organic salad mix cost 60 percent more than conventional; organic milk 72 percent more; and organic eggs 82 percent more. Organic corn and soybeans sell for twice as much as conventional. These are high premiums, but not high enough to move most farmers toward organic, because the farming costs required by organic methods can be higher still. There is nothing novel about producing foods without the use of synthetic chemicals. Before science first made these chemicals available to farmers early in the 20th century, all crops were de facto organic. When synthetic nitrogen first became available for fertilizer, farmers who began using it saved on labor and enjoyed higher crop yields. The timing was fortunate, since the earth’s population was just then in the process of increasing from two billion up to nearly eight billion today. Vaclav Smil, from the University of Manitoba, has estimated that without nitrogen fertilizer, 40 percent of the increase in food production needed to feed these much larger numbers would never have taken place. For at least a third of humanity in the world’s most populous countries, the use of nitrogen fertilizer in the 20th century made the difference between an adequate diet and malnutrition... organic food only became commercially significant in America after a series of media-led cancer scares linked to pesticide residues on foods. The climax came in 1989 with a report on “60 Minutes” (viewed by 18 million households) describing the chemical Alar, used on apples, as “the most potent cancer-causing agent in the food supply today.” “60 Minutes” had mostly ignored the views of toxicologists. Four years earlier an EPA report had shown that consuming the Alar residues found on food over a lifetime would bring an added risk of only 1 more cancer death per 10,000 people. The director of the National Cancer Institute’s cancer etiology division went further, characterizing the cancer risks from eating Alar-treated apples as nonexistent... Organic today usually does not mean local, since 38 percent of all organic sales originate from California. America’s leading source of organic tea and ginger is actually China. Retail chains do sometimes source small batches of organic food from independent local growers, but often just as window dressing... Assuming the rules do not change, a continued expansion of the organic sector will most likely come from investments by big corporate players who stay just barely within the rules by devising technical workarounds"
Does organic food taste better? A claim substantiation approach - "As the demand for organic foods has grown globally, disputes have arisen on whether organic foods are more nutritious, safer, and better for the environment. To many consumers, though, a major issue is whether organic foods taste different and, especially if they are being asked to pay a premium price, whether they taste better. Via the use of sensory analysis using trained panellists, and consumer testing, research was carried out to determine whether the claim of “organic food tastes better” could be substantiated. The study found that organic orange juice was perceived as tasting better than conventional orange juice; however, no differences were found between organic and conventional milk. Therefore, it is concluded that the global claim that “organic food tastes better” is not valid, and each product type should be treated separately before a claim can be made."
Organic food labels as a signal of sensory quality—insights from a cross-cultural consumer survey - "Results show that the presence of an organic label may lead to an enhancement of taste perception. With the exception of Italy, consumers evaluated the same product sample slightly better when an organic label was shown. For the evaluation of conventional products, the opposite effect was found for three out of six countries. These findings reveal that the positive sensory image of the organic food branch transfers to single organic products, resulting in a better taste evaluation"
Research urged to determine clear-cut benefits of organic foods - "The authors, based at the Limerick Institute of Technology, report that their comprehensive review of the literature shows the difficulty in concluding that organic foods are in any way superior to their conventional counterparts in terms of health promoting compounds... The review of available literature also suggests that there is no statistically significant difference between the sensory properties of organic and conventional fruits and vegetables, concluded the authors. “A survey has shown that many people believe that organic food tastes better; however, blind sensory evaluation studies have so far failed to show any significant difference... The safety of organic versus conventional foods also remains unresolved, find the reviewers. “Strict regulation in Ireland means that promotion of organic foods due to health risks from chemicals used in conventional agriculture is not correct; however, IOFGA ‘reasons to buy organic’may show amore ecological basis to buying organic. Many reviews on the safety of organic versus conventional foods suggest a risk of microbial contamination due to the use of manure as oppose to chemical fertilisers, find the team. However, they report that no literature was found to support this. They also note that research appears to indicate that organic and conventional produce are equally susceptible to environmental contaminants."
Antioxidants in Organics: Hype or Hard Science? - "A well-publicized 2012 meta-analysis done by Stanford University proclaimed, no, organic foods provide no nutritional advantage. A 2011 meta-analysis of similar scope said yes, they do. The intricacies and potential flaws in nearly every study float well above the heads of most journalists and consumers, leaving us unsure of what interpretation of the data to believe... if antioxidant levels were included in the study, organic foods show significantly higher levels... The study also found that conventional foods are four times more likely to carry pesticide residues."
Sri Lanka’s Plunge Into Organic Farming Brings Disaster - The New York Times - "This year’s crop worries M.D. Somadasa. For four decades, he has sold carrots, beans and tomatoes grown by local farmers using foreign-made chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which helped them reap bigger and richer crops from the verdant hills that ring his hometown. Then came Sri Lanka’s sudden, and disastrous, turn toward organic farming. The government campaign, ostensibly driven by health concerns, lasted only seven months. But farmers and agriculture experts blame the policy for a sharp drop in crop yields and spiraling prices that are worsening the country’s growing economic woes and leading to fears of food shortages. Prices for some foodstuffs, like rice, have risen by nearly one-third compared with a year ago, according to Sri Lanka’s central bank. The prices of vegetables like tomatoes and carrots have risen to five times their year-ago levels... Sri Lanka’s plantation minister, Ramesh Pathirana, confirmed a partial reversal of the policy, telling the country’s Parliament that the government would be importing fertilizer necessary for tea, rubber and coconut, which make up the nation’s major agricultural exports... Chemical fertilizers are essential tools for modern agriculture. Still, governments and environmental groups have grown increasingly concerned about their overuse. They have been blamed for growing water pollution problems, while scientists have found increased risks of colon, kidney and stomach cancer from excessive nitrate exposure. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa cited health concerns when his government banned the importation of chemical fertilizers in April, a pledge he had initially made during his 2019 election campaign... Mr. Rajapaksa’s critics pointed to another reason: Sri Lanka’s dwindling reserves of money. Covid-19 lockdowns devastated Sri Lanka’s tourist industry, which generates one-tenth of the country’s economic output and provides a major source of foreign currency. The domestic currency, the rupee, has lost about one-fifth of its value, limiting Sri Lanka’s ability to purchase food and supplies abroad just as prices were rising. That added to lingering problems like its huge debt load, including on high-interest loans from Chinese state banks that required it to take out still more loans... Food prices shot up in September, and people formed lines outside shops for basic items such as milk powder and kerosene. Mr. Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency to regulate prices and prevent the hoarding of essential items. The government also introduced import restrictions on nonessential items in hopes of dealing with the dwindling foreign exchange."
If you die of hunger, you can't die of cancer
Amusingly, someone claimed that saying that they were going organic was just spin and they just banned fertiliser imports because they were short on foreign currency. Given that it was in Gotabaya's 2019 election platform boasting about it, that was hilarious cope
What next for Sri Lanka? | World Economic Forum - "Given its education levels, Sri Lanka may be able to move directly into more technologically advanced sectors, high-productivity organic farming, and higher-end tourism"
Stiglitz, from 2016
Sri Lanka's Organic Farming Experiment Went Catastrophically Wrong - "Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic. The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple of the national diet surged by around 50 percent. The ban also devastated the nation’s tea crop, its primary export and source of foreign exchange... The government is also offering $200 million to farmers as direct compensation and an additional $149 million in price subsidies to rice farmers who incurred losses. That hardly made up for the damage and suffering the ban produced... Human costs have been even greater. Prior to the pandemic’s outbreak, the country had proudly achieved upper-middle-income status. Today, half a million people have sunk back into poverty. Soaring inflation and a rapidly depreciating currency have forced Sri Lankans to cut down on food and fuel purchases as prices surge. The country’s economists have called on the government to default on its debt repayments to buy essential supplies for its people... Sri Lanka’s journey through the organic looking glass and toward calamity began in 2016, with the formation, at Rajapaksa’s behest, of a new civil society movement called Viyathmaga. On its website, Viyathmaga describes its mission as harnessing the “nascent potential of the professionals, academics and entrepreneurs to effectively influence the moral and material development of Sri Lanka.” Viyathmaga allowed Rajapaksa to rise to prominence as an election candidate and facilitated the creation of his election platform. As he prepared his presidential run, the movement produced the “Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour,” a sprawling agenda for the nation that covered everything from national security to anticorruption to education policy, alongside the promise to transition the nation to fully organic agriculture within a decade... Rajapaksa... [was] relying on representatives of the nation’s small organic sector; academic advocates for alternative agriculture; and, notably, the head of a prominent medical association who had long promoted dubious claims about the relationship between agricultural chemicals and chronic kidney disease in the country’s northern agricultural provinces... From the early days of the Green Revolution in the 1960s, Sri Lanka has subsidized farmers to use synthetic fertilizer. The results in Sri Lanka, as across much of South Asia, were startling: Yields for rice and other crops more than doubled. Struck by severe food shortages as recently as the 1970s, the country became food secure while exports of tea and rubber became critical sources of exports and foreign reserves. Rising agricultural productivity allowed widespread urbanization, and much of the nation’s labor force moved into the formal wage economy, culminating in Sri Lanka’s achievement of official upper-middle-income status in 2020. By 2020, the total cost of fertilizer imports and subsidies was close to $500 million each year. With fertilizer prices rising, the tab was likely to increase further in 2021. Banning synthetic fertilizers seemingly allowed Rajapaksa to kill two birds with one stone: improving the nation’s foreign exchange situation while also cutting a massive expenditure on subsidies from the pandemic-hit public budget. But when it comes to agricultural practices and yields, there is no free lunch. Agricultural inputs—chemicals, nutrients, land, labor, and irrigation—bear a critical relationship to agricultural output. From the moment the plan was announced, agronomists in Sri Lanka and around the world warned that agricultural yields would fall substantially. The government claimed it would increase the production of manure and other organic fertilizers in place of imported synthetic fertilizers. But there was no conceivable way the nation could produce enough fertilizer domestically to make up for the shortfall. Having handed its agricultural policy over to organic true believers, many of them involved in businesses that would stand to benefit from the fertilizer ban, the false economy of banning imported fertilizer hurt the Sri Lankan people dearly... the vast majority of anthropogenic changes in global land use and deforestation has been the result of agricultural extensification—the process of converting forests and prairie to cropland and pasture. Against popular notions that preindustrial agriculture existed in greater harmony with nature, three-quarters of total global deforestation occurred before the industrial revolution. Even so, feeding ourselves required directing virtually all human labor to food production. As recently as 200 years ago, more than 90 percent of the global population labored in agriculture. The only way to bring additional energy and nutrients into the system to increase production was to let land lie fallow, rotate crops, use cover crops, or add manure from livestock that either shared the land with the crops or grazed nearby. In almost every case, these practices required additional land and put caps on yields... the truly transformative break came with the invention of the Haber-Bosch process by German scientists in the early 1900s, which uses high temperature, high pressure, and a chemical catalyst to pull nitrogen from the air and produce ammonia, the basis for synthetic fertilizers... The benefits of synthetic fertilizers though go far beyond simply feeding people. It’s no exaggeration to say that without synthetic fertilizers and other agricultural innovations, there is no urbanization, no industrialization, no global working or middle class, and no secondary education for most people. This is because fertilizer and other agricultural chemicals have substituted human labor, liberating enormous populations from needing to dedicate most of their lifetime labor to growing food. Virtually the entirety of organic agriculture production serves two populations at opposite ends of the global income distribution. At one end are the 700 million or so people globally who still live in extreme poverty. Sustainable agriculture proponents fancifully call the agriculture this population practices “agroecology.” But it is mostly just old–fashioned subsistence farming, where the world’s poorest eke out their survival from the soil... At the other end of the spectrum are the world’s richest people, mostly in the West, for whom consuming organic food is a lifestyle choice tied up with notions about personal health and environmental benefits as well as romanticized ideas about agriculture and the natural world. Almost none of these consumers of organic foods grow the food themselves. Organic agriculture for these groups is a niche market—albeit, a lucrative one for many producers—accounting for less than 1 percent of global agricultural production... As long as organic food remains niche, the relationship between lower yields and increased land use remains manageable... Sri Lanka’s tea production alone is larger than the entire global organic tea market. Flooding the organic market with most or all of Sri Lanka’s tea production, even after output fell by half due to lack of fertilizer, would almost certainly send global organic tea prices into a spiral... Rajapaksa continues to insist that his policies have not failed. Even as Sri Lanka’s agricultural production was collapsing, he traveled to the U.N. climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland, late last year, where—when not dodging protests over his human rights record as Sri Lankan defense minister—he touted his nation’s commitment to an agricultural revolution allegedly “in sync with nature.” Not long afterward, he fired two government officials within weeks of each other for publicly criticizing the increasingly dire food situation and fertilizer ban... Much of the global sustainable agriculture movement, unfortunately, has proven no more accountable. As Sri Lankan crop yields have plummeted, exactly as most mainstream agricultural experts predicted they would, the fertilizer ban’s leading advocates have gone silent. Vandana Shiva... Food Tank, an advocacy group funded by the Rockefeller Foundation that promotes a phase-out of chemical fertilizers and subsidies in Sri Lanka, has had nothing to say... Soon enough, advocates will surely argue that the problem was not with the organic practices they touted but with the precipitous move to implement them in the midst of a crisis. But although the immediate ban on fertilizer use was surely ill conceived, there is literally no example of a major agriculture-producing nation successfully transitioning to fully organic or agroecological production. The European Union has, for instance, promised a full-scale transition to sustainable agriculture for decades. But while it has banned genetically modified crops and a variety of pesticides as well as has implemented policies to discourage the overuse of synthetic fertilizers, it still depends heavily on synthetic fertilizers to keep yields high, produce affordable, and food secure. It has also struggled with the disastrous effects of overfertilizing surface and ground water with manure from livestock production. Boosters of organic agriculture also point to Cuba, which was forced to abandon synthetic fertilizer when its economy imploded following the Soviet Union’s collapse. They fail to mention that the average Cuban lost an estimated 10 to 15 pounds of body weight in the years that followed."
Sri Lanka bans sale of fuel for non-essential vehicles - "For the next fortnight, only buses, trains and vehicles used for medical services will be able to fill up with fuel. Colombo, the capital, also announced that schools would be closed for a further two weeks and private sector employees have been asked to work from home to preserve fuel and diesel stocks... up to 70 per cent of doctors were currently unable to commute to work. It is also unclear how Colombo plans to transport essential goods across the country now that fuel has run out, carry out cremations in the Buddhist-majority country or power its hospitals. Its garment industry, one of the country’s last remaining sources of foreign currency exchange, also says it only has enough stockpiled fuel to meet orders for one more week. Now, many Sri Lankans fear renewed, nationwide violence could break out with citizens essentially confined to their homes without access to fuel and access to food and life-saving medicines are also limited. Meanwhile, food costs continue to spiral with food inflation reaching 57 per cent, meaning many lower and middle class households are unable to purchase protein sources, vegetables or fruit, surviving on small daily meals of rice. The United Nations estimates that one-quarter of the total population needs urgent humanitarian assistance and up to 70 percent of households are being forced to skip meals."
Time to blame "capitalism"
Sri Lanka economic crisis 2022: Why the country’s economy collapsed and what’s next? - "both he and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed to resign amid mounting pressure from protesters who stormed both their residences and set fire to one of them... Government workers have been given an extra day off for three months to allow them time to grow their own food... The government needed to boost its revenues as foreign debt for big infrastructure projects soared, but instead Rajapaksa pushed through the largest tax cuts in Sri Lankan history. The tax cuts were recently were reversed, but only after creditors downgraded Sri Lanka’s ratings, blocking it from borrowing more money as its foreign reserves sank"
So much for tax cuts always being good
Eco-extremism has brought Sri Lanka to its knees - "There is a simple explanation, one that the BBC seems determined to downplay. In April 2021, president Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced that Sri Lanka was banning most pesticides and all synthetic fertiliser to go fully organic. Within months, the volume of tea exports had halved, cutting foreign exchange earnings. Rice yields plummeted leading to an unprecedented requirement to import rice. With the government unable to service its debt, the currency collapsed. Speciality crop yields like cinnamon and cardamom tanked. Staple foods became infested with pests leading to widespread hunger. As Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute put it in March: “The farrago of magical thinking, technocratic hubris, ideological delusion, self-dealing and sheer shortsightedness that produced the crisis in Sri Lanka implicates both the country’s political leadership and advocates of so-called sustainable agriculture.” The government promised more manure, but it would take at least five times as much manure as the country produces to replace the “synthetic” nitrogen fixed from the air, and there’s not enough livestock or land to produce that much. In Glasgow for the climate summit last year, Sri Lanka’s president was still boasting that his agricultural policy was “in sync with nature”. At the time, his organic decision was widely praised by environmentalists. Sri Lanka scored 98 out of 100 on the “ESG” – environmental, social and governance – criteria for investment. Vandana Shiva, a feted environmentalist, said: “This decision will definitely help farmers become more prosperous.” She has been silent recently. Dr Shiva has led relentless criticism of the Green Revolution of the 1960s, which brought fertiliser and new crop varieties to south Asia, banishing famine for the first time in history even as population increased. Her (and others’) claims that traditional, organic farming could feed the world more healthily remain wildly popular among environmentalists. Sri Lanka has tested that proposition and found it wanting. As the agricultural scientist Prof Channa Prakash of Tuskegee University in Alabama once told me: “Sure, organic agriculture is sustainable: it sustains poverty and malnutrition.” Farming was organic when millions died in famines every decade and the US prairies turned into dustbowls for lack of fertiliser to hold the soil during droughts. But if you watch or listen to the BBC, you will hear little of this. On its website, under the headline “Sri Lanka: Why is the country in an economic crisis?”, you have to read right to the end to find a grudging admission... The Indian commentator Shakhar Gupta calls Sri Lanka’s organic conversion an episode of “mega stupidity” on a par with Mao Tse-tung’s order to persecute sparrows. In the Netherlands, too, farmer protests are mainly about a policy of reducing the use of nitrogen fertiliser. In this country, organic farming gets publicity far out of proportion to its actual contribution: about 3 per cent of Britain’s farmland is organic. If the world abandoned nitrogen fertiliser that was fixed in factories, the impact on human living standards would be catastrophic, but so would the impact on nature. Given that about half the nitrogen atoms in the average person’s body were fixed in an ammonia factory rather than a plant, to feed eight billion people with organic methods we would need to put more than twice as much land under the plough and the cow. That would consign most of the world’s wetlands, nature reserves and forests to oblivion."
Is organic farming really to blame for Sri Lanka’s ongoing food crisis?
Amazing cope. Even this cope admits that the organic farming policy was a problem, is short of substantiation for dismissing organic farming as a key issue, and doesn't pinpoint the supposed "real cause". It also doesn't explain how in the long term, flooding the organic market won't lead to prices falling (unless the implicit claim is that somehow, the demand for organic will be boosted over time to compensate)
Ukraine Crisis Reveals the Folly of Organic Farming - WSJ - "The energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine disabused many politicians of the notion that the world could make a swift transition to green energy powered by solar, wind and wishful thinking. As food prices skyrocket and the conflict threatens a global food crisis, we need to face another unpopular reality: Organic farming is ineffective, land hungry and very expensive, and it would leave billions hungry if it were embraced world-wide. For years, politicians and the chattering classes have argued that organic farming is the responsible way to feed the world. The European Union pushed last year for members roughly to triple organic farming by 2030. Influential nonprofits have long promoted organic farming to developing nations, causing fragile countries like Sri Lanka to invest in such methods. In the West, many consumers have been won over: About half the population of Germany believes that organic farming can fight global hunger... organic farming produces between 29% to 44% less food than conventional methods. It therefore requires as much as 78% more land than conventional agriculture and the food produced costs 50% more—all while generating no measurable increase in human health or animal welfare... synthetic nitrogen is directly responsible for feeding four billion people, more than half the world’s population. Wealthy consumers can take the related price increases, but many poor households in the developing world spend more than half their income on food. Every 1% hike in food prices tips another 10 million people into global poverty. Advocating for global organics implicitly means suggesting that billions should forgo food... Russia also produces 8% of the world’s nitrogen, the price of which had already more than tripled over the two years before the invasion. Most nitrogen is made from fossil fuels, and many factories have had to stop production as the pandemic and climate policies have raised the price of nonrenewable energy. And it doesn’t help food prices that the costs of transport have more than doubled since the pandemic began."
European farmers rise up - "What started with the Dutch has spread to Germany, Poland, and now Italy as farmers collectively rise up to protest their governments’ destructive climate policies that threaten livelihoods and the global food supply... The Dutch protests have also caught the eye of Poland Agriculture Institute director Monika Prezeworska, who says the government needs to be aware of what’s happening, adding that the Dutch government is treating farmers like “terrorists.” “Shooting at tractors of protesting farmers in the Netherlands represents a new level reached by Western democracy”... Italian farmers have since joined the fight, having had enough of their own country’s insane climate policies. “We are not slaves: we are farmers!” one farmer can be heard hollering at a slow roll. The farmer then tells the other farmers that they should “go to Rome!”"
Dutch farmers protest livestock cuts to curb nitrogen - "Thousands of tractor-driving farmers demonstrated in central Netherlands on Wednesday, causing widespread traffic chaos as they protested against the government's far-reaching plans to cut nitrogen emissions. Advertising In one of their largest-ever demonstrations, the farmers demanded the scrapping of recently announced plans by the Hague-based government, which could see a 30 percent reduction in livestock. The Netherlands, the world's second-largest agricultural exporter, is one of the top greenhouse gas emitters in Europe -- especially of nitrogen -- with much of this blamed on cattle-produced manure and fertiliser... "You can't just close farms that are hundreds of years old. You just can't!" Protesters carried signs saying "The future of farmers is being destroyed" and "Our children are afraid.""
Food prices are not high enough - people are not suffering enough for the Great Reset
Keean Bexte 🇳🇱 on Twitter - "BREAKING: Dutch authorities are becoming unable to respond to the massive amounts of fires across the country. Farmers are throwing rubber tires on the fires to keep them burning after Mark Rutte ridiculed their frustration."
People facing acute food insecurity reach 345 million worldwide - WFP - "The number of people facing acute food insecurity worldwide has more than doubled to 345 million since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict and climate change"
Clearly, we need to do more about climate change and use less productive fertilisers, and blame the resulting famine on climate change, and pretend that covid lockdowns saved lives
EU split over fertiliser plants in poorer nations as food crisis bites - "The European Union is divided on how to help poorer nations fight a growing food crisis and address shortages of fertilisers caused by the war in Ukraine, with some fearing a plan to invest in plants in Africa would clash with EU green goals... supporting fertiliser production in developing nations would be inconsistent with the EU energy and environment policies, officials said. The production of chemical fertilisers has a big impact on the environment and requires large amounts of energy. However they are crucially effective in boosting agriculture output."
Climate change is such a serious threat that we need to freeze and starve to death to combat it
Eva Vlaardingerbroek on Twitter - "🇳🇱The Dutch government claims it can't afford to lower income tax, because it would cost 4 billion per 1%. Yet they're spending 25 billion on a made up nitrogen 'crisis' to expropriate our farmers & 17 billion on immigration. It's all a matter of choice: they want you to be poor. Oh and your energy bill that is up by 300%, causing you to spend around €500 a month to keep your house warm? Guess what; 37% of the bill you’re paying goes straight to the Dutch government in the form of energy taxes. Think again before you think the government is your friend."
Trudeau's nitrogen policy will decimate Canadian farming - "In December 2020, the Trudeau government unveiled their new climate plan, with a focus on reducing nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer by 30% below 2020 levels by 2030... farmer’s groups speaking to Farmers Forum now wondering if he’s intentionally trying to cause a food shortage — which Trudeau previously told Canadians to prepare for... Of course, reducing nitrogen emissions released by fertilizer crucial to the survivability of the agriculture sector isn’t the only target of Trudeau’s government. Every part of the economy has been negatively impacted by Trudeau’s climate agenda. On April 1 — the same day he gave himself a raise — Trudeau decided to go ahead and jack up the carbon tax by an additional 25%, consequently increasing the price of practically everything... Since boosting the carbon tax, gas prices have soared to over $2.00 per litre across Canada, with one Liberal candidate saying that the “silver lining” is that Canadians will be priced out of driving. And as with other problems facing our crumbling economy, Trudeau doesn’t appear to be taking any actions to remedy it — unsurprising, as so often he is the root cause."
LILLEY: Farmers feel ignored as feds push them to reduce emissions | Toronto Sun - "The Western Canadian Wheat Growers commissioned a report that said the plan would cost Alberta $2.95B, Saskatchewan $4.61B and Manitoba $1.58B just in lost production from their canola and spring wheat crops alone. Across the Netherlands, the move by the Rutte government to impose a 50% cut has seen farmers protest over the last two weeks with highway blockades, the shutdown of food distribution centres and protests at supermarkets... “There was no prior consultation. There has been no modeling or analysis provided to explain this 30% target. It appears to have been pulled out of thin air,” one industry source said. In fact, the reduction target wasn’t even developed by Agriculture Canada. It was the work of Environment and Climate Change Canada, which is why neither farmer nor industry groups were consulted. The government has been clear that this plan is part of their strategy for fighting climate change and getting Canada to Net Zero by 2030... Far from not wanting to do their part to reduce emissions, the group says they have already hit net zero emissions with farms in Canada absorbing more greenhouse gases than they create every year. The industry as a whole though paints a picture of a government not listening, with industry reps in several parts of the country saying they are pushing ahead without really engaging the people who will be affected by this... The government continues to call the 30% reduction target voluntary, but they once spent a whole election swearing they wouldn’t increase the carbon tax before doing exactly that."