A Popular Uprising Against the Elites Has Gone Global
Opinion by Ralph Schoellhammer
A popular uprising of working-class people against the elites and their values is underway—and it's crossing the globe. There is a growing resistance by the middle and lower classes against what Rob Henderson has coined the "luxury beliefs" of the elites, as everyday folks realize the harm it causes them and their communities.
There were early glimmerings last February, when the Canadian Trucker Convoy pitched working class truck drivers against a "laptop class" demanding ever more restrictive COVID-19 policies. You saw it as well in the victory of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran on parents' rights in education and went on to win both suburbs and rural areas. You can see it in the growing support of Hispanic voters for a Republican Party, which increasingly identifies as anti-woke, and pro-working class. And now we're seeing the latest iteration in the Netherlands in the form of a farmer's protest against new environmental rulings that will ruin them.
Over 30,000 Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government in the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years. It would require farmers to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock. While large farming companies have the means to hypothetically meet these goals and can switch to non-nitrogen-based fertilizers, it is impossible for smaller, often family-owned farms. The new environmental regulations are so extreme that they would force many to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for three or four generations. In protest, farmers have been blockading streets and refusing to deliver their products to supermarket chains. It's been leading to serious shortages of eggs and milk, among other food items.
But the effects will be global. The Netherlands is the world's second largest agricultural exporter after the United States, making the country of barely 17 million inhabitants a food superpower. Given global food shortages and rising prices, the role of Dutch farmers in the global food chain has never been more important. But if you thought the Dutch government was going to take that into account and ensure that people can put food on the table, you would be wrong; when offered the choice between food security and acting against "climate change," the Dutch government decided to pursue the latter.
What is particularly frustrating is that the government is fully aware that what it is asking farmers to do will drive many of them out of existence. In fact, the government originally planned to move at a slower pace—until a lawsuit brought by environmental groups in 2019 forced an acceleration of the timetable.
The reaction by members of the agricultural sector has been massive and ongoing since 2019, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed the government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte to ban protests in 2020 and 2021. With the reignited demonstrations this year, the authorities have also switched to a more aggressive approach. There have been arrests and even warning shots fired by police at farmers, one almost killing a 16-year-old protestor.
Yet the sympathies of the Dutch are not with their government; they are solidly with their farmers. Current polls indicate that the Farmers Political Party, formed just three years ago in response to the new regulations, would gain a whopping 11 seats in Parliament if elections were held today (it currently holds just one seat). Moreover, the Dutch Fishermen's Union has publicly joined the protests, blocking harbors with fishing crews holding signs that read "Eendracht maakt Kracht": Unity Creates Strength.
But while the Dutch people are on the side of the farmers, their elites are behaving much as they did in Canada and the U.S., and not just those in government. Media outlets are refusing to even report the protests, and when they do, they cast the farmers as extremists.
Why the disconnect? Every reliable poll of European newsrooms from Germany to the Netherlands show that climate change is a much more important topic for journalists than it is for ordinary people. It's not that average citizens don't care about climate change, but that they have the common sense to know that destroying their farm so the government's emission goals can be met in 2030 instead of 2035 will not change the planet's climate.
After all, the Netherlands accounts for just 0.46 percent of the world's CO2 emissions, and while a further reduction might be desirable, it will not be decisive in combating climate change over the next eight years. It may make the country's elite to feel good about themselves, but it will also result in large parts of the population seeing their living standards decline and their economic existence targeted by the state for ideological reasons.
There is a malaise in the West currently, where ideological goals are pursued at the expense of the lower middle and working classes. Whether it's truckers in Canada, farmers in the Netherlands, oil and gas companies in the United States, ideology, not science or hard evidence, is dominating the agenda, gratifying the elites while immiserating the working class.
Ultimately, there is a risk that climate policies will do to Europe what Marxism did to Latin America. A continent with all the conditions for widespread prosperity and a healthy environment will impoverish and ruin itself for ideological reasons.
In the end, both the people and the climate will be worse off.
Ralph Schoellhammer is an assistant professor in economics and political science at Webster University Vienna.
"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
UN, World Economic Forum Behind Global ‘War On Farmers’: Experts If left unchecked, the U.N.-backed sustainability policies on agriculture and food production would lead to economic devastation, shortages of critical goods, widespread famine, and a dramatic loss of individual freedoms, multiple experts said.
By Alex Newman | The Epoch Times Saturday, July 30, 2022
The escalating regulatory attack on agricultural producers from Holland and the United States to Sri Lanka and beyond is closely tied to the United Nations’ “Agenda 2030” Sustainable Development Goals and the U.N.’s partners at the World Economic Forum (WEF), numerous experts told The Epoch Times.
Indeed, several of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are directly implicated in policies that are squeezing farmers, ranchers, and food supplies around the world.
High-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members within the U.N. system helped create the SDGs and are currently helping lead the organization’s implementation of the global plan, The Epoch Times has previously documented.
If left unchecked, multiple experts said, the U.N.-backed sustainability policies on agriculture and food production would lead to economic devastation, shortages of critical goods, widespread famine, and a dramatic loss of individual freedoms.
Already, millions of people worldwide are facing dangerous food shortages, and officials around the world say those are set to get worse as the year goes on.
There is an agenda behind it all, experts told The Epoch Times.
Even private land ownership is in the crosshairs, as global food production and the world economy are transformed to meet the global sustainability goals, U.N. documents reviewed by The Epoch Times show.
As explained by the U.N. on its SDG website, the goals adopted in 2015 “build on decades of work by countries and the U.N.”
One of the earliest meetings defining the “sustainability” agenda was the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, which adopted the Vancouver Declaration.
The agreement stated that “land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals” and that private land ownership is “a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”
“Public control of land use is therefore indispensable,” the U.N. declaration said, a prelude to the World Economic Forum’s now infamous “prediction” that by 2030, “you’ll own nothing.”
Numerous U.N. agencies and officials have outlined their vision of “sustainability” since then, including calls for drastic restrictions on energy, meat consumption, travel, living space, and material prosperity.
Experts interviewed by The Epoch Times say that some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful corporate leaders are working with communists in China and elsewhere in an effort to centralize control over food production and crush independent farmers and ranchers.
According to critics of the policies, though, the goal isn’t to preserve the environment or fight climate change at all. Instead, the experts warn that the “sustainability” narrative and the other justifications are a tool to gain control over food, agriculture, and people.
“The end goal of these efforts is to reduce sovereignty on both individual nations and people,” said Craig Rucker, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a public policy organization specializing in environmental and development issues.
“The intent for those pushing this agenda is not to save the planet, as they purport, but to increase control over people,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that the goal is to centralize power at the national and even international level.
UN Sustainable Development Goals—Agenda 2030
The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, often referred to as Agenda 2030, were adopted in 2015 by the organization and its member states as a guide to “transforming our world.” Hailed as a “master plan for humanity” and a global “declaration of interdependence” by top U.N. officials, the 17 goals include 169 targets involving every facet of the economy and life.
“All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan,” declares the preamble to the document, repeatedly noting that “no one will be left behind.”
Among other elements, the U.N. plan calls for national and international wealth redistribution in Goal 10, as well as “fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services.”
Using government to transform all economic activity is a critical part of the SDGs, with Goal 12 demanding “sustainable consumption and production patterns.”
Among the specific targets outlined in Goal 12 are several directly linked to agricultural policies that undermine food production. These include “sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.”
Perhaps more importantly, the document demands “environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks.”
As a result, people and especially farmers must “significantly reduce their release to air, water, and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.”
Other SDGs that are directly tied to what critics have called the “war on farmers” include Goal 14, which addresses “marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including … nutrient pollution.” The U.N. regularly describes agriculture and food production as a threat to the ocean.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), led by former CCP Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Qu Dongyu, is helping to lead the charge.
In its 2014 report “Building a Common Vision for Sustainable Food and Agriculture: Principles and Approaches,” the U.N. agency calls for drastic restrictions on the use of fertilizers, pesticides, emissions, and water in the agricultural sector.
As an example of how agriculture must be reformed to be considered sustainable by the U.N., the FAO report declares that “excessive use of nitrogen fertilizer is a major cause of water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.”
The Rome-based FAO didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Another of the 17 SDGs with a direct impact on agriculture and food production is Goal 2, with its calls for “sustainable agriculture” and “sustainable food production.”
Goal 6, meanwhile, calls for “sustainable management of water,” which includes various targets involving agricultural water use and runoff.
Because U.N. leaders see agriculture and food production as key contributors to what they call manmade climate change, Goal 13 is important, too. It calls for governments to “integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning.”
Goal 15, which deals with sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, also has multiple targets that affect agriculture and food production.
All over the world, national and regional governments are working with U.N. agencies to implement these sustainability goals in agriculture and other sectors.
For instance, responding to U.N. biodiversity agreements, the European Union has enacted various U.N.-backed biodiversity programs such as Natura 2000 and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, which have been cited by the Dutch government and others in their agricultural policies.
The U.N. also boasts publicly about its role in imposing the SDGs in Sri Lanka and other nations suffering from food shortages and economic calamities linked to the very same global sustainability programs.
Around the world, almost every national government says it’s incorporating the SDGs into its own laws and regulations.
World Economic Forum ‘Partnership’
Alongside the U.N. are various “stakeholders” that are critical to implementing sustainable development policies through “public-private partnerships.”
At the heart of that effort is the WEF, which since 2020 has been pushing a total transformation of society known as the “Great Reset.” In 2019, the WEF signed a “strategic partnership” with the U.N. to advance Agenda 2030 within the global business community. Epoch Times Photo Logo of the World Economic Forum taken at the Congress Centre 24 January 2007. (JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)
The official agreement defined “areas of cooperation to deepen institutional engagement and jointly accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
Many of the key officials behind Agenda 2030, including top U.N. leaders such as current Secretary-General António Guterres—a self-proclaimed socialist—have also been working with the WEF for decades.
Meanwhile, the WEF has been explicit with its goals. It recently launched a “Food Action Alliance” (FAA) that acknowledges on its website that Agenda 2030 “informs the ambition of the FAA to provide an enduring and long-term platform for multi-stakeholder action on food systems to meet the SDGs.”
Alongside the U.N.’s “Food Systems Summit” in September 2021, the WEF’s FAA released a report outlining its own “leadership agenda for multi-stakeholder collaboration to transform food systems.”
Among other elements, the document summarizes the FAA’s insights on “supporting transformative food system partnerships, and its value proposition beyond the UN Food Systems Summit 2021 towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”
The WEF’s public concern with transforming agriculture and the food supply goes back over a decade, at least.
In partnership with various companies, the WEF released a 2010 report outlining a “new vision for agriculture” that included a “roadmap for stakeholders.” Many of the world’s largest food companies that dominate the market and own countless popular brands are involved.
The WEF’s website is packed with information purporting to justify a total transformation of the food supply by “stakeholders.”
“As global food systems become increasingly interconnected, effective coordination among a diverse set of stakeholders will be required,” WEF says on its “Strategic Intelligence” platform, frequently citing the FAO as its source.
“The potential to craft new, systemic approaches to food systems that include a diverse array of stakeholders presents opportunities to help sustainably feed the world well into the future.”
The organization’s frequent references to “stakeholders” refers to governments, companies, and so-called nongovernmental organizations that are often funded by those same companies and governments. They are all working together on the issue.
For instance, the WEF boasts that it has brought corporate giants such as Coca-Cola and Unilever into the fold toward promoting a “more sustainable future.”
The Rockefeller Foundation, which recently released a report on how to “Reset the Table” and “Transform the U.S. Food System,” is also a key player.
The WEF’s “Food Innovation Hubs” around the world are set to be a major part of this global transformation.
Speaking to the World Economic Forum on “transforming food systems and land use” at last year’s Davos Agenda Week, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced that the Netherlands would host the “Global Coordinating Secretariat of the World Economic Food Innovation Hubs.”
The secretariat, he said, “will connect all other Food Innovation Hubs” in order to facilitate creating “the partnerships we need.”
Neither the WEF nor the Rockefeller Foundation responded to requests for comment on their role in Agenda 2030 and on the agricultural policies being pursued around the world.
Other organizations and entities involved in the push include powerful tax-exempt foundations such as the Gates Foundation, the EU-style regional governments proliferating around the world, and various groups funded by them.
Squeezing Farmers—and the Food Supply
All over the globe, U.N. SDG-aligned government policies are squeezing farmers—especially smaller, independent producers unable to absorb the added costs of added regulation and control.
Celebrating U.N. sustainability ideas, recently ousted Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced at the U.N. COP26 climate summit in 2021 that his government was banning chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
“Sri Lanka recently restricted the imports of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and weedicides due to public health concerns, water contamination, soil degradation, and biodiversity impacts,” Rajapaksa told world leaders, to widespread acclaim.
“Although opposed by entrenched lobbies, this has created opportunities for innovation and investment into organic agriculture that will be healthier and more sustainable in future.”
In reality, even though they were promptly rolled back, the policies produced catastrophic food shortages, widespread hunger, and eventually a popular revolt that ousted the president and his government.
In 2019, the socialist Sri Lankan government also partnered with the U.N. Environment Programme to establish the U.N. Global Nitrogen Campaign, which promotes the U.N.-backed policies on nitrogen that are now proliferating worldwide.
In the Netherlands, headquarters for the WEF’s “Food Innovation Hub” secretariat, authorities are imposing nitrogen policies that are expected to decimate the nation’s highly productive agricultural sector. The plans also include widespread expropriation of farms.
“The expropriation plans of the cabinet are a downright declaration of war on the agricultural sector,” said Dutch Member of Parliament Gideon van Meijeren, of the Forum for Democracy party, as cited by De Dagelijkse Standaard. “Under false pretenses, farmers are being robbed of their land, centuries-old farms are being demolished and farmers’ families are being totally destroyed.”
Experts warned of dangerous consequences stemming from such sustainability policies including food shortages, skyrocketing prices, social unrest, and more.
“You can glimpse the green, sustainable future by beholding Holland and Sri Lanka now,” Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, told The Epoch Times.
And yet, the agenda is spreading rapidly. Canadian federal authorities last week announced similar restrictions on fertilizers and nitrogen after restrictions on energy production were put in place, sparking outrage from provincial officials and farmers.
In Ireland, the United Kingdom, and other European nations, various government entities are also working to slash agricultural production under sustainability programs.
Meanwhile, aside from continuing with policies that pay farmers not to grow food, the Biden administration is seeking to impose WEF-backed “Environmental, Social, Governance” metrics and reporting on companies through the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Farm associations and more than 100 members of Congress argue that the plan would bankrupt owners of small and medium-size farms unable to comply with climate reporting requirements to do business with public firms, even as the world moves toward widespread food shortages.
In part, experts say the insistence on these sorts of policies is because those imposing them are largely insulated from the damage they are causing.
“Global elites in government, transnational organizations, corporate boardrooms—well represented in the WEF—are so caught up in their climate virtue signaling, from which many hope to benefit financially through investments in green energy, that they are slow to notice that they are completely detached from reality,” said National Center for Public Policy Research’s Cohen, who specializes in environmental issues.
“Few of those imposing regulations on farmers have ever set foot on a farm. By virtue of the power and wealth these people already have, they are shielded from the consequences of the misguided policies they impose on the rest of the world. That burden is borne by ordinary people around the world, about whom the Davos crowd and their partners in crime know nothing.”
Small, Independent Farms at Risk: Experts
Sri Lanka’s disaster offers a preview of what will happen to the United States and Europe if policymakers continue to follow the U.N. sustainability agenda, according to Sterling Burnett, who holds a doctorate in environmental ethics and leads the nonprofit Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.
“It’s not a war on farming; it’s a war on small farming and independent farmers,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s a war in support of elite, large-scale agricultural industries.”
Even though the U.N. SDGs speak of helping “small-scale food producers,” Burnett argued that independent farms and ranches are in the U.N.’s crosshairs to help consolidate control over the food supply.
Policymakers are “in the pocket” of major corporate interests including Conagra, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, and others, he said.
“They would just as soon have all their small competitors put out of business,” he said, echoing concerns expressed by numerous other experts.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, whose firm manages more money than any other company in the world, “wants to impose his values on companies using other people’s money,” Burnett said.
Fink, who serves on the board of the powerful Council on Foreign Relations and works closely with the WEF, is a key architect of the push to impose “environmental, social, governance” metrics on U.S. companies.
“This is the super-rich foisting their values on the rest of us,” said Burnett, pointing to those he says are happy to work with communists on the effort.
“As far as the World Economic Forum is concerned, you can’t have a Great Reset if you don’t reset the food supply, because food is necessary to everybody,” he said. “Stalin recognized this: Whoever controls the food controls the people. Same with energy.”
As prices soar and farmers go bankrupt, major corporations, in league with governments and international organizations, will pick up the pieces.
In the meantime, as seen recently in Sri Lanka, hungry people pushed to the brink are likely to react.
“People were not starving on January 6,” said Burnett, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, protest and breach at the U.S. Capitol. “The supply chain crisis is happening, shelves are already going empty, and when people are hungry, they will not sit around and do nothing.”
American Policy Center founder and President Tom DeWeese, a leading expert on and critic of U.N. notions of sustainability, warned that the war on farmers was part of a broader agenda to strip people of freedom.
“Always in the past, when tyrannical forces wanted to rule the world, they built armies and invaded, broke things, killed people, and forced subjugation,” DeWeese told The Epoch Times. “We are now dealing with a diabolical force that has figured out a way to get us to voluntarily surrender our liberties and help them subjugate us.
“What could be such a powerful tool? The threat of Environmental Armageddon,” he said, pointing to the climate-change narrative as the prime example.
Citing numerous U.N. officials and documents, DeWeese says the agenda isn’t to save the climate, but to transform the planet and centralize control over the populace.
Aside from the U.N. and the WEF, major companies such as Vanguard and BlackRock are working to take over and control the food supply, he said.
Already, a handful of companies in which those two investment firms are top shareholders dominate the global food and beverage industry. By taking over the farming, they will control it all.
“The goal is to have total control over food production,” he said, noting that they seek to own all seeds and even grow synthetic meat in facilities already being backed financially by Bill Gates and other billionaires. Genetically engineered crops are high on the agenda, too.
The U.N., the WEF, and others are also moving forward with promoting insects and weeds as food. Across the Western world, insect protein production facilities are popping up rapidly.
But it gets even darker, DeWeese says.
“If people are starving, they are much easier to subjugate,” he said, adding that depopulation and control over humanity have been on the agenda of global elites for decades.
The “war on farmers” also comes amid what critics have described as a government-backed “war on energy” that’s affecting agriculture and virtually every other sector.
This includes limiting energy exploration, shutting down power plants, charging special fees and taxes, and other policies that have resulted in rapidly rising costs across the Western world, although not in places such as China.
The experts interviewed by The Epoch Times urged Americans to resist the war on farmers and the U.N.-backed sustainability policies using a variety of means. These include getting involved politically, adopting different shopping habits, finding alternative sources of food such as local farmers, and other measures.
Officials at the U.N. didn’t respond to requests for comment.
"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
In my hometown, there s a huge family farm conglomerate (3-4 cousins) who together farm probably 10k acres… so much that nobody can really keep track any longer and they are continually adding many “quarters” each winter. Concerned about rising costs and availability of nitrogen fertilizer… they invested some of one year’s profits in a new expansion instead of buying more land for one year.
They chose to build a HUGE poultry confinement complex in the middle of their empire to help supply broiler birds for a new Costco packing plant 100 miles away. They have never had any involvement with chickens and don’t care about making any money on the project. It is simply a way for them to be able to produce nitrogen fertilizer without relying on the market. Their source is dependable, reliable, unlimited and free! They even recruited a large Amish family from Ohio to run the complex who gets to work the complex with access to a sizable garden plot to feed their clan, and a guaranteed monthly income. No risk, no investment. The investing farm family can just leave them alone and collect their free fertilizer and watch a new revenue stream flow in.
The small guys like my family (only 5 quarters), medium sized guys (1-2k acres) and even the regular big operations (3-5k) could never have access to the capital to swing such an operation. The biggest operations get bigger and more able to withstand the fertilizer crunch, which only accelerates their profits which sees their growth rate further increase! Everyone else is just screwed.
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at it�s worst, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine (from "Common Sense" 1776)
Billionaire-funded eco group quietly taking farmland out of production in rural America
via Fox
The American Prairie (AP), a conservation project in Montana, has quietly scooped up more than 450,000 acres of land with the help of its billionaire donors and the federal government.
The little-known project aims to create the largest “fully functioning ecosystem” in the continental U.S. by stitching together about 3.2 million acres of private and public lands, according to the American Prairie Foundation, which founded the reserve more than 20 years ago. The group has recorded 34 transactions spanning roughly 453,188 acres of land throughout central Montana — much of which were once used for farming and grazing — since 2004 and continues to aggressively expand.
“Our mission is to assemble the largest complex of public and private lands devoted to wildlife in the lower 48,” Pete Geddes, AP’s vice president and chief external relations officer, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “For comparison, about 25% larger than Yellowstone.”
PURCHASE OF PRIME NORTH DAKOTA FARMLAND TIED TO BILL GATES SPARKS OUTRAGE
“We’re not asking the federal government to create anything, we’re not asking the federal government for any money,” he added. “Instead, we’re engaged in private philanthropy and voluntary exchange by buying ranches from people who would like to sell that to us.” Cattle are pictured during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cattle are pictured during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Fox News)
The American Prairie Foundation has raised tens of millions of dollars in recent years, according to recent tax filings, thanks in large part to its donors, which include well-known Wall Street and Silicon Valley magnates. Hansjoerg Wyss, a Swiss financier and mega-donor of liberal causes, deceased German retail mogul Erivan Haub, John Mars, the heir to the Mars candy fortune, and Susan Packard Orr, daughter of the Hewlett-Packard Co. co-founder, have all donated to AP, Bloomberg previously reported.
The AP said about 3% of its contributions have come from international donors.
SOUTH DAKOTA REPUBLICAN CALLS FOR BILL GATES TO TESTIFY BEFORE AGRICULTURE COMMITTEE AMID FARM BUY
“It’s an area that doesn’t have a lot of people in it and has been depopulating for a long, long time,” Geddes said. “So, the thinking was, perhaps there’s greater potential for less conflict over conservation in this part of the world.”
However, AP’s plans have faced increasing pushback from top state officials and local ranchers who argue such a nature reserve would remove key land from production and negatively impact surrounding privately-owned lands. Using its donor funds, the group has purchased about 118,000 acres of private land and leased another 334,000 acres of public land owned primarily by the federal government.
"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
“We’re not asking the federal government to create anything, we’re not asking the federal government for any money,” he added. “Instead, we’re engaged in private philanthropy and voluntary exchange by buying ranches from people who would like to sell that to us.”
In all honesty, I don't have any problem with that. If billionaires want to create a nature preserve with their own money, and they're not using the government to force the ranchers and farmers to sell to them, that's their business.
I'm not real sure how it would negatively impact neighboring farms and ranches, but they also had the option of buying or leasing the land themselves. They chose not to. This is simply the free market at work.
This is an outgrowth of a controversial movement that started in the early 90s called the “Buffalo Commons” that was raising money to buy up land across the high plains with the ability to outbid any local with near endless outside funds. As a “non-profit” organization wealthy billionaires can contribute as a d Tax deduction.
Their goal is to remove any human presence, restoring rangeland from what had been farmland, removing irrigation works (wells, dams, canal) removed g roads and burying up small towns to raze. Their goal is to create a contiguous landmass with no fences for Buffalo and the pre-frontier ecosystem to be restored. In the Sandhills of north central Nebraska Ted Turner has been buying up 10s of thousands of acres on a regular basis with the goal of adding his land to this movement.
They are destroying an already struggling society and economy. Ranchers that want/need to expand can’t afford to out bid these non-profits with deep donation pockets. This leaves them vulnerable and all the more likely one forced out of business in a generation… guess who will buy their land? As these groups buy land (and de-develop it) it causes the local tax base to lower so less money to maintain roads, infrastructure, services and schools. This forces them to raise taxes on everyone else to keep up which only exacerbates the problems and accelerates the rate of the expansion of this movement.
If they're getting a tax deduction, that changes things. Then the government is helping to finance them, and not the farmers and ranchers who might otherwise bid on the land. This is not the free market, but the government distorting the market.
"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
There is a similar movement in northern New England in Maine and New Hampshire called the “North Woods” movement. It was also started in the early 90s by the hippy “back to the earth” founder of the “Bert’s Bees” company that made lip balm and other cosmetics. Roxanne Quimby is her name. She made it her personal mission to buy up any and all timber land with her profit. She then later sold the company to some huge multi-national company for billions and dumped her capital gains into her non-profit to avoid taxes to continue her mission. She now goes across the country and world raising funds to help her buy up more lands.
These lands are taken out of timber and pulping production. This is decimating the local economy that relies on the forestry industry for a lot of jobs. Not just in the mills (lumber or paper), but the harvesting and trucking crews, and all the diesel, hydraulics and small engines repair crews that service this equipment. All the crews that are cleaning up slash and replanting trees… all that is gone. Plus much of this land was open to the public (or leased) for hunting and snowmobiling. Now it is off limits. The tree huggers don’t want Bambi to be stalked and murdered on their land, and 2stroke engines have a huge environmental impact… only snow shoeing/skiing on those trails now. Small farmland plots are planted to trees to restore the environment. Again the local tax base is decimated and locals see their taxes go up again accelerating the process.
At one point they wanted to make it into the largest National Park (2x Yellowstone) but have settled on a National Monument for now. I think Arron’s 90k acres.
All of these are tax payer funded (indirectly) de-development regressive movements to drive people off of the land and into urban centers to be more readily controlled and dependent.
Coming to a rural area near you!
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at it�s worst, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine (from "Common Sense" 1776)
Thanks CSC… that guy’s videos are always spot on the mark!
The whole “30 by 30” movement is part of this as well. The global elites (and the governments they control) have a stated goal of having 30% of currently farmed land “under conservation” by 2030. If they are going to accomplish this and stop use of synthetic fertilizer, pesti/herbi/fungicides and GMO seeds… famine is a guarantee. Starving people are desperate people. Desperate people are easily controled and manipulated.
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at it�s worst, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine (from "Common Sense" 1776)
With the created fertilizer shortage they are causing people to become cannibals. They are dissolving human corpses and flushing them into the sewer treatment system. They call it alkaline hydrolysis. The sewer sludge is then spread on fields as fertilizer. Then we eat the food fertilized with human remains that are absorbed by the crops making us cannibals when eat the crops or when we eat the livestock that eat the crops. God only knows how many people and how many pharmaceutical drugs we will be ingesting as a result.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
I should probably disclose that, about 25 years ago, I made a donation (probably about $50) to help form the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve here in Oklahoma. I don't recall if it was tax deductible, and I certainly don't recall claiming a deduction for it. It's a donation I would be happy to make again.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
I hear you. I LOVE nature be it tall (or otherwise) grass prairies or forests, and support their preservation and restoration. I don’t however believe that this should at the expense of farming, grazing, logging and commerce, nor should its preservation be making it harder for those still making a living from the land to be able to continue doing so.
Woods can be managed in a “more sustainable manner” to allow for it to stay commercially productive without banning logging. Prairies can be restored and managed without driving off the cattle and people that work the land. I
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at it�s worst, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine (from "Common Sense" 1776)
Huskerpatriot, have you ever been to the Fontenelle Forest near Omaha, close to Bellevue? When I was stationed at Offutt I would go hiking the trails there on my days off. It was a great way to unwind, and see nature as it was meant to be seen.
Airforce…. Oddly enough, I’m one of the few people that has not. It is VERY close to the AFB so I would imagine it was a great place. I’m WAY out on the southwest corner of the metro area. Our favorite nature walk destination has always been Schramm state park south of Gretna on the bluffs of tge Platte River. I didn’t know you had been stationed at Offutt. During the Cold War it as a HUGE place of immense importance. Though still important it is nothing close to what it had been pre 1994 or so.
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at it�s worst, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine (from "Common Sense" 1776)
I was there forty years ago, and again briefly when I was called up for Gulf War I. I don't know what Offutt is like now. I kept meaning to take the kids and see Schramm, but we just never did, other things kept coming in the way.
Netherlands to SHUT DOWN 11,200 farms to meet climate goals
Guest Post by PeterSweden
If you have followed my reporting you probably know about the protests happening in the Netherlands. Tens of thousands of farmers have taken to the streets to protest against new climate goals which will force farmers to shut down their farms.
They have set hay bales on fire on motorways and dumped manure and even blocked supermarket distribution centers.
Around 1/5 of farms will be forced to shut down!
According to calculations done by the Finance ministry, a whopping 11 200 livestock farmers will be forced to shut down by the government to reduce nitrogen emissions in order to meet European environmental rules. Another 17 600 farmers would need to reduce the amount of animals they keep to meet these climate goals.
And this is bad. Because there are about 54 000 farms in the Netherlands, meaning that around 1/5 of all farms will be forced to shut down and almost 1/3 of farms forced to scale down and reduce livestock.
Meaning that thousands and thousands of farmers will be loosing their livelihoods in order to meet government climate goals.
They are literally going to make people loose their livelihoods in order to meet climate goals. That is crazy. Not only that, think about all the food that will be lost as a result of this. We are already facing a food crisis due to sky high fertilizer prices and grain shortages due to the war in Ukraine.
We need more food now, not less! The climate change fanatics are trying to bring us back to the middle ages.
The state is planning on forcing farmers to sell their farms to the state (buying them out). State sanctioned appropriation of farms and land. Now where have I heard about that kind of thing before…? Oh yes, under Communism. I told you that this is Climate Communism and that The Great Reset is just another word for Global Communism.
And it seems like people in the Netherlands are not happy with these government plans, as the political party of the Prime Minister in the Netherlands, VVD, has reached a new all-time low in the polls. If there was an election now, they would lose 13 of their 34 seats in parliament. A whopping 7 out of 10 voters say that they are dissatisfied with the Cabinet of the Prime Minister. Meanwhile the new party called Farmer-Citizen Movement is now polling in second place.
Farmers held a meeting with the government on Friday, however some farmers are not satisfied with the results and are talking about more protests, with a farmers group that claims to represent 95% of agriculture pledging the ”toughest demonstrations ever”.
So the state is planning on forcing farmers to shut down under the excuse of climate change. Forcing them to sell their farms. Essentially this is a form of seizing the means of production. It is basically Communism. Climate Communism.
And we all know how that has gone when the state has seized farms before. Look no further than what happened under Stalin in Ukraine or under Mao in China.
It is not all bad news however. I guess we will be getting brand new factories producing bug snacks. Or we might get more of ”sustainable” supermarkets like the one named Picnic in the Netherlands which got €600 million in investments, the majority coming from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation! This supermarket focusing on things like vegan food and delivering food in electric vehicles.
And guess what!
A millionaire investor at Picnic who has also been the director there, is family with a Dutch Minister who has been involved with these new nitrogen laws.
You will eat the bugs and you will be happy. You will own nothing and you will be happy.
"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law Monday allowing human composting as a burial method in the state starting in 2027.
Assembly Bill 351, introduced by Assembly Members Cristina Garcia and Robert Rivas, will allow for naturally decomposed human remains to be turned into soil. California will become the fifth state to allow the method.
Garcia said it was an environmentally friendly alternative to other end-of-life methods, such as cremation. She claimed composting will prevent the release of one metric ton of carbon into the environment per person. “With climate change and sea-level rise as very real threats to our environment, this is an alternative method of final disposition that won’t contribute emissions into our atmosphere,” Garcia said, according to the LA Times.
“This new law will provide California’s 39 million residents with a meaningful funeral option that offers significant savings in carbon emissions, water and land usage over conventional burial or cremation,” Katrina Spade, chief executive of a Seattle company that built the first human composting facility in the country, said.
Some oppose the bill on religious grounds for reducing “the human body to simply a disposable commodity.” The California Catholic Conference has submitted a letter opposing the bill. Kathleen Domingo, executive director of the conference, said the means of burial was not a fit method to deal with human remains. Domingo said the method, “can create an unfortunate spiritual, emotional and psychological distancing from the deceased.”
Just don't use human poop in your garden, because that's still against the law. You can't make this stuff up.
In the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, a special thematic part was dedicated to anticipating the future on earth in the winter of 2022. The visitors had the opportunity to vote for the topic they find important and want to learn more about.
The three knowledge offered choices were 1) how development of energy potential may influence climate change; 2) how improving the condition of the environment, forests, parks, and waters may reduce CO2; 3) how improving the conditions of agriculture, land, and farmers may contribute to food security and affordable food. The visitors voted by throwing a bottle cork in one of the three knowledge cylinders, and the option that won the most votes would be promoted in the museum through popular science content.
Out of eighteen visitors, only four decided to vote for the third cylinder on agriculture, and these were children and women.[/b] The rest of votes were shared almost equally between the cylinders for energy and the environment.
The ad hoc experiment I conducted revealed several important issues. How is it possible that the priority question of food security and sustainable agriculture attracted such weak attention? Developing energy and environmental potential for CO2 reduction, although of high relevance, cannot feed the world. But it attracts ecological concerns and mobilizes solidarity sentiments more than hunger in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where a significant part of the populations has only one or half a meal per day.
Making food affordable and accessible to them and dying children in Yemen and Ethiopia (where the war has been going on since 2020) obviously does not engage sentiments as strongly as information that the Earth is 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than one hundred years ago; that glaciers are melting in an enormous vastness of ice; or that polar bears are withdrawing toward the inner continent. Because of the polar bears and glaciers, international meetings of the highest importance regularly convene in Davos; the compulsory climate agreement in Paris was signed; and Greta Thunberg shouted at the United Nations General Assembly, urging radical changes in CO2 emissions.
Environmentalists share one chronic feature: they are preoccupied with the “imagined state of environmental purity and harmony” on a universal level. They associate resolving environmental problems with a larger transformative endeavor. The reduction of carbon emissions is inseparable from a series of seemingly unrelated political projects: ending capitalism and existing power structures, and completely restructuring transportation systems and industries.
It is thus not surprising that concrete places such as Yemen and Ethiopia and their particularistic problems of hunger inspire fewer public statements, and only sporadically evoke expression of concerns at the international conferences. Even in the Carnegie Museum, the knowledge cylinder that suggested improvement of food security attracted only a few curious minds.
In a new environmental era, a role attributed to agriculture is to mitigate environmental and pollution risks first. Dealing with food security and feeding the world population has a secondary importance. The European Green Deal indicates the trend, while its two core strategies, farm to fork (F2F) and biodiversity, practically reveal the whole environmental hypocrisy. Both strategies have been driven by the noble intention to increase sustainable food production and to restore biodiversity, but the unintended consequences of the shift are largely unknown and thus far have never been discussed in a holistic way.
What is the cost of conservation, afforestation, halving pesticide use—of regulations and the expanding bureaucracy that must supervise the path toward an environmentally sustainable future? Such questions get silenced along the way or are ignored in the public debates as if they represented blasphemous attempts to endanger common sustainability goals.
With growing environmental concerns, European Union policy has sidelined food security since the late 1980s. The EU visions of agriculture in 2030 are now more preoccupied with reducing net greenhouse gas emission to at least 55 percent; reducing chemical plant protection by 50 percent; increasing the area under organic farming to at least 25 percent; reducing the sales of antimicrobials by 50 percent; and reducing land use by at least 10 percent, to name a few objectives.
The scientific and market assessments of the European Green Deal F2F and biodiversity strategies already suggest some alarming consequences. The full implementation of the two strategies will need to face the challenges of inevitable shrinking of the domestic food supply and jeopardized local farmers, as well as how the EU and the world in general will cope with higher prices for agricultural raw materials and food.
The strategies will inevitably decrease the EU’s export of its key agricultural produce and will make it a net importer in the markets where is now an exporter. Reductions in chemical plant protection and an increasing shift to organic farming, including hobby urban farming and permaculture, will lead to reduced yields. The conservation of designated nonproductive areas will inevitably increase the price of land and will create substantial pressure on land resources outside the EU.
Two major future consequences of the EU agri-environmental strategies already are evident. Consumers all over the world will bear the costs of higher food prices, affecting the economic efficiency of the whole supply chain. New environmental norms imposed by agri-environmental policies on production and consumption, mainly practiced in the West, will prevent poor countries from participating in markets because they will be unable to meet these standards.
It is likely that the poor will continue to lag and further sink into pauperization. Likewise, environmental externalities that spring from food demand will likely be offshored to poor countries, where ordinary people chronically lack access to private land and still live on three dollars a day—which was a common condition of American citizens in the beginning of the nineteenth century. They will not only remain poor and hungry, but they will be fed by the European CO2. It is an environmental win-win.
In 1983, Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky prophetically asked, “Why is social conscience concerned with environment and not with the education of the poor or relief of the indigent?” Four decades later, the pattern remains the same, and clearly shows that some environmental issues have priority over others. Concerns about countries’ CO2 emissions overshadow interest in whether the countries can feed their own people. The inhumane dimension of these concerns is especially important in the context of the growing world population that will greatly increase demand for food production. And perhaps civilization will not be ready to cope with the problem, given that the top-priority questions are asked and resolved last.
Farmers in the Netherlands are revolting over the government’s plan to drastically reduce nitrogen emissions by 2030 and is pointing to agriculture and farmers as the worst offenders. But farmers have taken to the streets, blocking roads, and distribution centers, and there has been some serious incidents, including police opening fire on protestors,
It all looks as the “nitrogen war” in the Netherlands is an anticipation of the conflict between environment awareness organizations and agriculture, industry over production systems and its consequences.
“I really understand their anger,” Marcel Crok, a Dutch science writer and co-founder of the Climate Intelligence Foundation, said in an interview. “The farmers are also angry because they say, ‘we are the only sector who get all the blame.’ What about industry? What about the traffic? Maybe we should just ban all the cars in the Netherlands because they also emit nitrogen.”
“This plan as announced in practice means that, in certain areas, farmers have to reduce their nitrogen emissions by 70%,” he continued. “That means they simply have to quit.” . . .
“It is not very rational to curb the Dutch agriculture if you realize that they have the highest production per acre in the world and therefore the environmental load per kilogram food is lower than elsewhere,” Simon Rozendaal, a Dutch journalist and chemists said. “So, in a sense Dutch agriculture is a benefit for climate as well as biodiversity.”
“This will definitely affect ordinary civilians and is part of a global agenda, so everyone around the world, especially Western countries, should be aware that this is something that is not just about the Dutch government. This is part of the ‘2030 agenda,’ this is part of the ‘great reset.’”
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