Dutch Farmers Rise Up Against Food System ‘Reset’

The Netherlands is currently in an uproar over the government’s decision to reduce the number of livestock by 30% in an effort to halve its nitrogen and ammonia pollution by 2030.¹ As a result of this “green” policy, many farmers will be driven out of business.² As with current energy shortages, the resulting reductions in farming are said to be an “unavoidable” part of the Green Agenda to improve air, soil and water quality.³

The Dutch government has even appointed a new Minister of Nature and Nitrogen to oversee the climate goals.⁴ Provincial authorities now have one year to work out how they’re going to meet the emission reduction targets.

In a public statement about the new emissions targets, the Dutch government admitted that “The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business.”⁵ Those who do continue will have to come up with creative solutions to meet the new emissions restrictions.

How Do Cows Contribute to Nitrogen and Ammonia Pollution?

Cattle are fed nitrogen in the form of crude protein. While protein is an essential nutrient for cows, nitrogen is not efficiently broken down by cattle, so a lot of it is excreted in the urine and feces as urea. When urine and feces get mixed together, the urea is converted into ammonia.^6,7

Since the amount of ammonia produced is related to the crude protein the animals are fed, one suggested way to lower the ammonia is to reduce the amount of crude protein in the animals’ diet. (Other factors such as season also impact ammonia production, but farmers have no control over that.)

A potential problem with that idea is that cattle have protein requirements just like humans do. It’s particularly crucial for healthy development, muscle growth and lactation. As noted in a 2009 paper⁸ by Jane Parish, a beef cattle specialist in Mississippi, “Providing adequate protein in beef cattle diets is important for animal health and productivity as well as ranch profitability.”

Responsible farmers give their cattle just the right amount, so cutting crude protein could impact both the animals’ health and farm productivity. If they don’t cut crude protein, they’ll have to downsize their herds, and if smaller herds aren’t financially feasible, they’ll have to shut down altogether. Needless to say, many are outraged, as skyrocketing fertilizer and feed costs have already cut profits for farmers and raised prices for consumers.

Curious Timing

As noted in a July 1, 2022, report by Peter Imanuelsen, an independent journalist in Sweden, the timing of this brazen attack on cattle farmers is a curious one, and one that can only really be explained as an intentional strategy to force us into The Great Reset by manufacturing a food crisis:⁹

“We will likely see even more expensive food next year, and unfortunately probably famines in some parts of the world. So, what do the genius politicians in Europe do? They want to shut down farms because of climate change of course! That will surely help! The cows are farting too much!

That’s not a joke by the way. In New Zealand, they want to implement a tax on cow farts and burps! I really don’t get this. We are facing a food crisis and they want to shut down farms in the name of climate change? I guess they really want you to eat the bugs and be happy. They are working on making meat so expensive that the common people won’t be able to afford it. Are you enjoying The Great Reset?”

In response to the new nitrogen and ammonia restrictions, an estimated 40,000 Dutch farmers have gathered in protest, arguing the attack on farming is irrational and unfair, as other industries responsible for far greater amounts of pollution — such as transport, construction and aviation — aren’t facing the same restrictions.

They’ve blocked a number of highways with tractors and even sprayed manure on the town hall in Lochem.¹⁰ Local police have reportedly responded by shooting at some of the farmers. Jimmy Dore reviews the situation in the video above.

What’s Wrong With Nitrogen?

As explained by Plant Based News,¹¹ nitrogen makes up about 78% of the earth’s atmosphere and is essential for life. However, in excess, and in the wrong areas, it can damage the ecosystem. Nitrogen runoff from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and farms using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers can leach into and contaminate water supplies.

Nitrogen runoff can also cause algae blooms when it enters lakes or oceans. This depletes the water of oxygen and creates dead zones where no aquatic life can be sustained. This is why I’ve long advocated against CAFOs and conventional industrial farms that rely on chemicals to grow food.

That doesn’t mean livestock are a blight on the eco system, however. Quite the contrary. Livestock raised in accordance with regenerative agriculture principles will heal and massively improve soil quality and help stabilize the climate. So, it’s not cows per se that are the problem. It’s the industrialization of cattle ranching that causes it to have a negative impact. The answer, then, is not to eliminate meat production. The answer is to transition into a regenerative system.

Since the transition can take a few years, during which profits may be marginal or absent, many farmers hesitate to take this step on their own. Government could facilitate the transition by subsidizing farmers that make the switch, but none have opted to do so. Why? Could it be because regenerative farming is the converse of what The Great Reset is all about?

Dutch Climate Rules Will Cut Meat Availability Across EU

In 2019, the highest administrative court in The Netherlands, the Council of State, ruled the Dutch government was in breach of European Union law that called for stark cuts in nitrogen emissions.¹²

Following that ruling, some 18,000 infrastructure projects were abandoned in an attempt to meet the EU restrictions. The Dutch government also lowered the maximum daytime speed limit on highways to 100 kilometers an hour (61 mph). All of that still wasn’t enough though, so now the Finance and Agriculture Ministry wants to reduce the number of livestock by 30%.

The Netherlands has a significant number of farmers. In any given year, they raise some 4 million beef cattle alone. But reducing the number of cattle by 30% will not only have ramifications for the Dutch, but all of the EU, because The Netherlands is the largest meat exporter in the EU.¹³

In September 2021, Rudi Buis, a spokesperson for the Dutch agriculture ministry, told The Guardian:¹⁴

“We are a relatively small country with a lot of inhabitants, industry, transport and agriculture, so we are reaching the limits of what nature can take. There is a high level of urgency for us to tackle the nitrogen compounds problem. This means that in the near future, choices must be made.”

Apparently, the option they’ve chosen is starvation and nutritional deficiencies for all. The saddest part of it is that eliminating meat production is not going to have the fabulous impact they say it will have. It’s a fraudulent greenwashing enterprise that will destroy humanity instead.

While the notion of a pollution-free world is an attractive one, ultimately, the Green Agenda isn’t about the environment — it’s about creating a control system in which the world’s resources are owned by the richest of the rich, while the rest of the population is controlled through the allocation of those resources, and that includes the allocation of food.

The Global Food Reset Foretold by the Rockefeller Foundation

While looming food shortages are now blamed on climate change and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Rockefeller Foundation discussed coming food shortages as an inevitability back in July 2020, and called for a revamping of the food system to address it. Seeing how true prophets are few and far in between these days, it seems more reasonable to suspect that paper was delineating a known, intentional plan.

The document in question, titled “Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System,”¹⁵ was published July 28, 2020. It describes how the COVID pandemic had caused “a hunger and nutrition crisis” in the U.S. “unlike any this country has seen in generations.”

Mind you, COVID was declared a pandemic March 11, 2020, so by the time this Rockefeller report was published, the pandemic had only existed for four months, and while certain high-risk groups did experience food insecurity, such as children whose primary meal is a school lunch, widespread food shortages, in terms of empty shelves, were not widely prevalent or particularly severe in the U.S.

The title itself is also revealing, as it’s a clear play on The Great Reset, which was officially announced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Prince of Wales in early June 2020.¹⁶ The title alone tells us that the Rockefeller Foundation’s call for a food system reset is part and parcel of the WEF’s Great Reset. Many of the contributors to the Foundation’s paper are WEF members, which further strengthens this connection.

In the foreword,¹⁷ Rockefeller Foundation president Dr. Rajiv Shah also stresses that “a comprehensive playbook” to address the food system will also need to address other issues, “such as living wages, housing and transportation,” and that “all of us” — meaning the self-proclaimed designers of the future — “need to write that playbook together over the coming year.” What better way to predict the future than to actually create it?

All of those things — wages, housing and transportation — are all facets that will undergo dramatic revision under The Great Reset’s Fourth Industrial Revolution, as artificial intelligence, robotics, surveillance, social engineering and transhumanism (the merger of man with machine) take over.

Summary Take-Home of ‘Reset the Table’

In summary, “Reset the Table” describes how they intend to seize control of the food supply and the supply chain under the guise of “equity,” “fairness” and “environmental protection.” As noted by ThreadsIrish on Substack:¹⁸

“The document is very much framed in the Hegelian dialectic of problem, reaction, solution. Here is the problem that they have created (COVID) and now they want to implement the solution (Transforming the global food supply). Naturally this is all ties into lands being destroyed, climate change and trying to move people back into smart cities (Page 5). Surprise, surprise.”

One key to this enterprise is data collection. They want to collect data on everyone’s spending and eating habits, and to facilitate that data collection, they want to shift everything into an online environment, including education, medicine and the buying of food.

Another key to success is “changes to policies, practices and norms.” The goal is to centralize control of the food supply into a single executive office, which is right in line with the idea of a “one world government.” As WEF member Henry Kissinger once said, “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

From Beef to Crickets

Getting back to the issue of Dutch beef production being strangled, the reason global leaders seem so unconcerned with dwindling meat production is probably because they don’t want us to eat meat. They intend for us to eat lab grown synthetic meat that can be patented, and insects,¹⁹ which can easily and inexpensively be produced in mass quantities using very little land.

As noted in a July 2021 WEF article titled, “Why We Need to Give Insects the Role They Deserve in Our Food Systems,”²⁰ insects are “a credible and efficient alternative protein source requiring fewer resources than conventional breeding,” and “a healthy ingredient” that is highly digestible and particularly suitable for senior nutrition.

Insect farming also requires few natural resources, such as water, and could reduce agricultural pollution by nearly 99%. The article points out that the last barrier to making insect burgers the norm is “preconceived ideas about insects as a source of food and legislation with regard to the use and consumption of proteins derived from insects.”

There are indications that “Reset the Table” is promoting a diet of insects as well, because while it stresses the need for a “healthy diet” and “sustainable agriculture,” the words “organic” and “grass fed” do not appear a single time, and the word “natural” is only used in reference to “natural disasters.”

In other words, their versions of “healthy diet” and “sustainable agriculture” do not include what we know are basic criteria for a healthy, nutritious, sustainable and regenerative food supply. The Foundation’s call for changes to “policies, practices and norms” also indicates that the diet they’re talking about involves something that is outside the norm.

Both lab-grown meat and insects are outside the norm of what most people are willing to put in their mouth, and thus policies about what constitutes “food” need to be changed, as do food production practices and social norms about what’s acceptable to eat and what’s not.

Scientists Question Safety of Lab-Grown Meat

While venture capitalists see lab-grown meat alternatives as the cash cow of the future, many scientists are leery. In mid-June 2022, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) held a webinar in which a panel of experts addressed a number of questions surrounding lab-grown meats, including safety and regulatory issues.²¹

One of the panelists was Michael Hansen, Ph.D., a senior staff scientist with Consumer Reports. He raised concerns about cell-cultured meats, where biopsied cells from an animal are grown in fetal bovine blood (extracted from a live, aborted baby calf).

His main concern revolves around the use of manipulated DNA segments, as that could have unforeseen consequences, but he pointed out that we also have no data on the nutritional composition of this kind of meat. As reported by The Defender:²²

“According to Hansen, the piece of flesh biopsied from the animal is an undifferentiated stem cell. The products use bio-engineered proteins in a nutrient solution to induce the cells to differentiate into muscle for meat. This is done in bio-reactor vats similar to those used to make beer.

While scientific papers have covered topics related to cell-cultured meat, Hansen said, none has actually analyzed the nutritional characteristics of the finished product, and academics have not received samples. This implies ‘problems behind the scenes,’ Hansen said, adding, ‘I doubt this technology will work.'”

Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), was also part of the panel. Neltner noted that while sustainable protein sources are needed, lab-grown meats will be proprietary, meaning the full ingredients list and how they’re made is a trade secret, so “We won’t know their effect or what they are.” The Defender added:²³

“The concept of proprietary foodstuffs … led the panelists to address the regulation of cell-cultured meat and the role of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which one panelist called a ‘captured’ agency.

Neltner said he worried cell-cultured meat could be ushered into the food supply under the FDA’s Generally Recognized As Safe program. Under the program, a company simply tells the FDA its product is safe, based on the company’s own documentation, and bypasses the public comment process.’

Neltner, whose primary focus at the EDF is food additive safety, said he preferred companies be required to submit to the FDA a ‘food additive petition,’ which includes a ‘right to challenge.’

Panelists also raised concerns about the effects novel ingredients may have on aspects of the human microbiome. Hansen pointed out that 10 years ago, we could not culture and study microbiome components. But now we can, and it’s important that we know these effects.

For example, Hansen said, it is now known that the genome and genes themselves can be affected by epigenetic changes without even touching the DNA …

Hansen said biopsied cells of an animal used in cell-cultured meat do not contain the immunity actions from the animal’s immune system, which could leave bio-reactor vats susceptible to bacteria like salmonella, fungi and worse unless antibiotics are used. Cell-cultured meat producers claim they may not have to add antibiotics, although even alcohol distillers have to add them to their vats, Hansen said.”

Prepare for Food Shortages

Everything now points to food shortages and famine becoming a reality in many parts of the world, including the U.S. and Europe.²⁴ As yet, stores are still fairly well stocked with essentials, but that will change come winter and into 2023. This means you may only have another six months or so to stock up.

This past Monday, I published an article with suggestions for how to prepare. That article, “Get Prepared With Shelf-Stable Foods,” will be made available for free on Substack, so if you missed it, you can review it now.