The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - 156. Opposing Views： Dutch Farm Crisis ｜ Michael Yon & Nick Ottens

00:00:00.000 You know, they don't talk about nitrogen in the other countries, by the way, just Netherlands.

00:00:04.400 You know, they franchise these, you know, this attack is happening globally.

00:00:12.200 So the World Economic Forum makes a different menu for each country.

00:00:16.680 Here it's a nitrogen, right?

00:00:18.320 But they don't even talk about nitrogen next door in Germany.

00:00:21.080 You know, it's only here.

00:00:22.580 And again, why would you take some of the most efficient farmers in the world, if not

00:00:27.180 the most efficient farmers in the world and knock out their farms and then get somebody else to do

00:00:33.280 this, to create less food with more chemicals. See, it doesn't make any sense. It's just nonsense.

00:00:39.300 Do you think it's reasonable to put such a large exporter of meat under the same

00:00:43.840 emission laws as other countries in Europe? Well, yeah, that's what some of the farmers

00:00:50.880 and some of the meat industry are arguing, saying we have to follow the same strict regulations,

00:00:56.120 but we produce so much more

00:00:58.060 and we have so much less space.

00:00:59.980 Is it really fair?

00:01:02.520 Well, we should have argued that 30 years ago

00:01:05.100 when we were making the rules.

00:01:06.500 Like we made this agreement

00:01:07.640 and we haven't kept our word

00:01:09.860 to our other European partners for 30 years.

00:01:13.160 So now if we go back to Brussels

00:01:14.900 and argue for leniency,

00:01:16.460 then the European Commission will say no.

00:01:18.680 Like we haven't forced you to take action,

00:01:21.320 but we're also not going to make the rules looser now.

00:01:26.120 Welcome to episode 156 of the Michaela Peterson podcast.

00:01:35.340 I'm Michaela Peterson.

00:01:36.580 This is an episode of Opposing Views, where I speak with individuals on opposite sides

00:01:41.840 of a contentious issue.

00:01:43.640 This episode discussed the Dutch farming crisis and the origins behind it.

00:01:49.260 This is a topic everyone should be paying attention to.

00:01:52.040 It isn't an isolated incident.

00:01:53.760 I interviewed Nick Ottens, a Dutch political writer for the Atlantic Sentinel, and Michael

00:02:00.000 Jan, a journalist and America's most experienced combat correspondent.

00:02:05.200 We discussed two completely different views about what started the Dutch farmers' protests,

00:02:09.800 what the Dutch farmers are trying to achieve, the global context of the crisis, the local

00:02:14.520 effects of the Netherlands, the efficiency of Dutch farming, and more.

00:02:18.280 Thanks for watching and enjoy this episode.

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00:03:58.360 Michael Jan, welcome to my podcast.

00:04:00.660 Thank you for having me on.

00:04:01.920 I'm in The Hague, Netherlands.

00:04:03.820 You know, Netherlands has basically two capitals, Amsterdam and The Hague.

00:04:06.840 and tomorrow I'll be in the other capital. You might say the real capital. I don't know what

00:04:12.300 the Dutch will say about that, but I'll be back in Amsterdam for a big protest.

00:04:16.620 Wow. Okay. So before we get started, can you give me a brief background about who you are

00:04:22.060 and what it is you do? Yes. I'm Michael Yon. I'm from Winterhaven, Florida, originally,

00:04:28.380 but I've lived overseas most of my life, all over the world. I have an office in Thailand.

00:04:33.020 I've lived and worked in more than 80 countries and as you can see I'm here now I was in Mexico

00:04:39.620 a couple of weeks ago tracking the migration which is huge and before that I was in Texas

00:04:46.300 and Panama and Colombia and Morocco Greece Lithuania tracking migration issues and food

00:04:53.380 and energy as well because all of these things are I'm a war correspondent and all of these things

00:04:58.160 are important to war right because war is all about conditions not that i always do just war

00:05:04.520 that would be untrue but but i do uh watch where conflict is and the things that can bring um you

00:05:10.820 know things that we need to pay attention to like right now we see panama melting down which is

00:05:15.340 something i've been warning about for some time now and in panama although it's not much on the

00:05:20.580 news right now i believe but you know we've got the panama canal there which obviously is wildly

00:05:24.980 important and also Panama is an invasion corridor to the United States and there's huge numbers of

00:05:32.460 people coming from about 150 countries through Asia and Africa and South America and they come

00:05:39.680 through Colombia and then they head through that jungle called the Darien Gap. It's a gap of jungle

00:05:45.180 there between Colombia and Panama. I've spent months down there in the last year or so and from there

00:05:50.400 They just head north and end up all over the United States and Canada.

00:05:54.360 So it's massive.

00:05:55.540 Right now, there's roughly 10,000 migrants.

00:05:59.180 This number will change within hours.

00:06:01.820 I mean, there's massive numbers coming in right now due to various reasons.

00:06:06.000 And they're heading north.

00:06:07.760 And in May of this year, there was 310,000, just in May, illegal alien entries that were

00:06:16.780 known into the United States.

00:06:18.060 three hundred and ten thousand in one month that were known but that number is skyrocketing so

00:06:24.020 these are the things i watch i watch food i've been warning about potential famine now since

00:06:29.020 january of 2020 i've warned about it every day for 30 months now and now it's coming to pass

00:06:35.480 and so that's why i'm in europe right now that's why i'm in the netherlands because the farmers

00:06:40.440 are revolting here uh they're not revolting as in disgusting they are revolting against the world

00:06:46.920 economic forum and so uh they are that's why i left mexico and came straight here uh the german

00:06:53.480 farmers have joined polish farmers and you may have seen the italians and spanish as well

00:06:59.340 not to mention americans i mean this is a big big deal okay so this this isn't just

00:07:05.900 farmers in the netherlands no this is huge uh you know and i'm a global player i don't you know i

00:07:13.720 don't watch just texas or california or thailand or china i spend a lot of time in all of these

00:07:18.900 places well i don't think i can go back to china they kicked me out of hong kong in 2020 with much

00:07:25.160 prejudice and actually if they were smart they would have kicked me out earlier but uh but uh

00:07:30.340 but i spend a lot of time in asia and just all over the world actually and so i'm constantly

00:07:35.780 because everything must be taken into context right and there's there's no truth in the world

00:07:40.960 without context. Like for instance, right now, many people are starting to watch Panama in the

00:07:45.840 last few days and they're trying to judge which way Panama is going to go. And having done this

00:07:53.300 for so many years around the world, I can pretty much make a good estimate of which way it's going

00:07:57.960 to go. I'm watching the context. I'm watching the conditions. It's not about sparks. Amateurs always

00:08:04.340 talk about sparks, like what will be the spark that sets off the fire? It's not about that.

00:08:10.180 It's about conditions. When the conditions are right, there's always sparks.

00:08:13.240 You can have a firework factory blow up in a rainforest, but it's rainy and it's a rainforest and it's not going to catch the forest on fire.

00:08:21.220 But, you know, in a dry forest, somebody throws out a cigarette and boom, you know, a town burns down.

00:08:25.520 And so it's about conditions. Right now in Panama, the global conditions clearly are deteriorating with energy supplies, food supplies, transportation, many other things.

00:08:37.520 and so panama sits within panama is a small boat you might say in a big sea and uh in the sea that

00:08:45.040 it's in is getting choppier and choppier and uh and the panama canal is very important to us

00:08:50.560 obviously it runs right through panama and so this is a big deal that's why i've been watching

00:08:55.160 panama so closely that and some other reasons and and you see so watching the conditions

00:09:01.300 my estimate is that Panama will go in a bad direction which is very serious for us and so

00:09:09.060 and that's why I'm here in Netherlands. Netherlands is arguably the number two food exporter in the

00:09:13.680 world. If this were a small food exporter somewhere I wouldn't probably have come because

00:09:19.580 there's other items on the table that demand attention as well and so I'm constantly reprioritizing

00:09:25.400 and trying to go to the things that I sense are the most important.

00:09:31.440 And so that's why I've been watching food and energy and migration patterns

00:09:34.780 very intensely since January of 2020 when the pandemic started.

00:09:41.480 In fact, I was one of the first, by the way, calling out the pandemic.

00:09:44.520 I was in January.

00:09:46.120 I was loud and clear about it.

00:09:48.240 Remember back in January, February, March of 2020,

00:09:51.760 when you called it a pandemic you would be knocked off of social media yeah and uh and so so i was

00:09:58.480 out there saying i think it might be a pandemic you know i'm not sure but that's the way it looks

00:10:04.040 and anyway we see how history has unfolded since then it's been quite interesting uh and so that's

00:10:09.800 where we're going right now you can see that we're going we're going into global famines and uh and

00:10:15.820 that's why i'm here in this huge food exporter and it's only 17 million people in this country

00:10:20.400 I mean, Netherlands is a tiny country that they've reclaimed much of it from the sea.

00:10:26.460 This is an amazing country.

00:10:28.200 I mean, geographically, they've created much of the country.

00:10:32.800 I mean, these are extraordinary people.

00:10:35.260 And they, you know, this is, I call it like flat pyramids.

00:10:38.520 You can't, I mean, the amount of technology and work that they put into building this country is so extraordinary.

00:10:44.420 And you just can't imagine.

00:10:47.120 I mean, you know, these old windmills are so sophisticated that have been, you know, out working for centuries to, you know, pump the water out of the places that they reclaim and finally to plant and make this land so fertile.

00:11:06.700 These are the most efficient farmers in the world, arguably.

00:11:10.180 And so we've got the WEF.

00:11:12.080 Go ahead.

00:11:12.660 You wanted to say something?

00:11:13.580 Well, you said most efficient.

00:11:15.360 They're already the most efficient farmers in the world.

00:11:18.080 They're extremely efficient and arguably the most efficient.

00:11:21.040 Of course, you might get farmers fighting about that.

00:11:23.160 So we'll just let that lay.

00:11:25.400 But yeah, probably the most efficient in the world.

00:11:27.820 And certainly, let's just say extremely efficient.

00:11:31.500 And so they can get a lot done with a little bit.

00:11:36.140 And much of this is land that they reclaim from the sea anyway, right?

00:11:39.080 and so now with the world economic forum is specifically targeting netherlands the dutch

00:11:45.760 farmers and trying to take their land away and they're succeeding with some of it right now

00:11:50.100 and they're saying they're using the excuse of you know nitrogen and ammonia and all these sorts

00:11:55.120 of things but in fact in fact that's chaff that's decoy right it has nothing to do with nitrogen

00:12:00.220 in fact they don't say anything about nitrogen to the german farmers right over the border which

00:12:03.940 is just close by they don't say anything to the polish about nitrogen it's just netherlands

00:12:09.060 because they, with the World Economic Forum, they tailor, make, it's like a, I travel around

00:12:15.240 the world watching the things that they do. And CCP, you know, Chinese Communist Party,

00:12:19.700 I watch a lot of things. But in some of these fights you see are franchised, right? It's almost

00:12:25.620 like a fast food franchise with a different menu in every country. They study, you know, how will

00:12:31.480 our, how can we achieve our goals in this country? Well, here we should, you know, according to this

00:12:38.100 culture we should do this we'll have a different menu here right so in netherlands they go after

00:12:42.980 nitrogen right which is just ridiculous but why would you not why would you knock out the most

00:12:48.320 efficient or arguably the most efficient farmers in the world and take them off of their farms

00:12:53.000 so that you can get who to do it india you know i mean farmers i spent about a year in india i mean

00:12:59.720 that's they're not exactly as efficient as the dutch to put it mildly and so um and so it was

00:13:07.000 But there's much more at play here. For instance, the World Economic Forum. Clearly, Bill Gates is buying up farmland everywhere.

00:13:14.240 And he has Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested six hundred million dollars in this picnic food distribution centers, one of which burned down here about two weeks ago.

00:13:24.080 I went to see it hours after they put it out. And it's these food distribution centers that you order online with an app and you don't go to the store.

00:13:33.480 and then they just the electric vehicles deliver this food to your home so it sort of knocks out

00:13:40.200 the grocery store so basically with their cricket farms and these sorts of things people like bill

00:13:46.740 gates are working to take complete control over food supply from production to distribution so

00:13:53.820 that's just bottom up right so cricket factory to table right and but they got to take out these

00:14:01.240 farmers and another part of this taking out the farmers that are the most efficient uh whether

00:14:05.780 that's the united states or here or germany um they're working on something called tri-state

00:14:11.460 city which almost no americans have ever heard about tri-state city many dutch haven't heard of

00:14:17.600 tri-state city is the the the world economic forum are working to take this land for another goal

00:14:25.140 tri-state city is this mega city that's planned between the tri-states of belgium germany and

00:14:31.040 netherlands in that tri-state border area it'll be a mega smart city these smart cities are

00:14:37.980 you know basically making us the farm animals so they want to take out these farmers the frisian

00:14:44.400 farmers and and take their land and make this tri-state city and then they'll have control of

00:14:50.360 that food supply right and another problem with farmers is they have common sense and they think

00:14:55.360 for themselves right so this has been a constant problem for authoritarians farmers have always

00:15:00.240 been a needle in in the side for authoritarians for instance in ukraine for stalin he wanted to

00:15:07.560 knock out the farmers which so they labeled them kulaks the the uh the ukrainian farmers and uh

00:15:14.440 and so basically kulak became a very bad word nobody wanted to be called a kulak and so they

00:15:19.500 they uh labeled them and and uh and started attacking and did the uh a lot of more famine

00:15:25.440 between especially 1932 and 33 and killed billions right and took their land and replaced the farmers

00:15:32.320 with other farmers who were not as good by the way which created more famine right and so and

00:15:37.960 mal did the same thing so this is a common thing with farmers farmers they have their own cultures

00:15:42.560 they have their own ways they don't do what the boss wants them to do the boss being whoever the

00:15:47.060 authoritarian of the day is and so these authoritarians always want to go for the farmers

00:15:52.620 Another important aspect of the Dutch farmers is they are one of the backbones of the culture of this country. Right. And so you'll see the Mark Rutte is the is the prime minister of Netherlands. Right. Mark Rutte.

00:16:06.400 And you can see Klaus Schwab, the let's say the mafia boss of the World Economic Forum, specifically praising Mark Rutte in front of a crowd of his, you know, dark cult, let's call it.

00:16:22.360 And, you know, he's like, where can you get such a prime minister or something like that?

00:16:26.620 You can see the video. You know, it must have been making Trudeau quite jealous, actually, you know, because he and Trudeau or Mark Rutte and Trudeau are a couple of his boys.

00:16:34.440 Right. And Mark Rutte is like, yes, you know, you know, you know, Mark Rutte is just a boy of the World Economic Forum, as is Trudeau and as are many others.

00:16:42.920 Right. And so they if they can take out these farmers, they'll do multiple things at once, gain more control over the global food supply, gain that means production and distribution and and and also break the backbone of the culture,

00:17:00.200 back the cultural backbone psychological backbone of the netherlands so they're of the dutch people

00:17:06.360 and so they're the wef has been pushing this massive migration into europe as you know and

00:17:14.500 north america and this of course is you go out to some of these small villages and you look around

00:17:20.300 and it's mostly people from middle east and africa and this is dutch villages who what are they going

00:17:25.180 to take over the farms. Stalin did this back in Ukraine, right? Replace the farmers, the Kulak

00:17:31.780 farmers with Russians. And the Russians were just unable to farm and not just Russians, but it was

00:17:36.880 often people from the cities who really didn't know it. I guess, you know, it appears there's

00:17:41.680 a great book on this called Red Bannon. You know, it appears that those authoritarians just thought

00:17:47.460 anybody can run a farm. Yeah. Yeah. It's easy. It's not like anybody. Yeah. It's like, here's

00:17:51.780 a spaceship anybody can fly a spaceship they don't realize that's a lot of knowledge it's not

00:17:56.640 just knowledge it's also it's a way of life it's hard work it's seven days a week so when i was

00:18:02.880 down in mexico a couple of weeks ago and i saw dutch farmers um you know starting to protest

00:18:09.800 well they've been doing it for two and a half years and or at least two and a half years oh so

00:18:13.760 it hasn't just it hasn't just been a month-long thing this has been happening for years it's it's

00:18:19.080 it's picking up now it's picking up so when i so when i see farmers in all the countries i go to

00:18:24.580 as a workhorse one i instantly look for farmers i look for truckers i look i talk with law

00:18:30.560 enforcement military what do you think about the military what do you think about the police

00:18:33.980 government but you really want to talk with farmers when you see farmers starting to are

00:18:38.380 the truckers in canada when you see them starting to take to the streets these are people that

00:18:43.240 don't want to waste a lot of energy they're not baristas or something you know what i mean they're

00:18:48.260 not just going to get upset these farmers they work seven days a week you know at the end of the

00:18:53.260 day they go to bed you know what i mean they and they wake up early and they go right back to work

00:18:58.760 so when you see a bunch of farmers out on the street you need to stop and go and say what's

00:19:04.020 the problem why are there a thousand tractors on the road uh because i know something's wrong

00:19:10.020 if a thousand every every country i go to i can get along with the farmers i don't care where

00:19:16.080 is when i was in afghanistan for two years i was out with farmers all the time iraq too i can get

00:19:20.860 along with them and and uh where thailand nepal india and china it doesn't matter they all have

00:19:27.460 common sense you know what i mean and they all don't like to waste energy so when the farmers

00:19:32.660 are upset you need to stop and ask them so these farmers unlike many farmers in the world like down

00:19:40.400 in panama where i've been spending a lot of time recently uh the farmers there are more like you

00:19:45.940 know they just they have simpler needs they just want cheap gas you know just fix the cheap the gas

00:19:51.620 thing just you know fix a little little things if you tweak this i'll be happy but these farmers

00:19:57.300 here in netherlands are more sophisticated they realize that this is a big game like they are all

00:20:02.600 highly cognizant of uh the world economic forum and schwab and all these relationships you know

00:20:10.280 with the picnic uh food distributions and the cricket pack they're you know they don't most

00:20:15.160 of them don't even want to talk about nitrogen because they know it's nonsense right they know

00:20:19.120 it's just chaff it's just a decoy and and it's all about taking their land knocking them off the land

00:20:24.760 taking control of the food production and distribution and complete control authoritarian

00:20:30.240 control now look at ukraine if you were to design a war last year i was in lithuania tracking

00:20:36.180 migration from belarus over to uh into ukraine right lukashenko the the dictator was pushing

00:20:41.580 and he still is even yesterday pushing migrants to to uh lithuania so i flew from africa up

00:20:48.120 lithuania last year to ask what's up with these migrants belarus pushing migrants trying to push

00:20:55.200 them into poland and trying to push them into lithuania uh something's up i mean to me that's

00:20:59.480 a signal right that's not noise yeah and and poland wasn't letting them in and poland's not

00:21:04.560 like that i lived in poland two years poland is just not going to to roll over that's not how

00:21:10.740 following roles right and lithuania is hardcore too actually they're pretty serious people

00:21:14.960 and uh so the lithuanians so i i said hey i'm down in morocco what's going on and they're like fly

00:21:21.900 up here we'll give you complete access so i flew up to lithuania got complete access for three

00:21:27.480 weeks a month intelligence elected officials army police border patrol access to the camps where

00:21:34.200 they were holding the migrants and i started warning about russia doing something either to

00:21:38.680 the baltic states or perhaps to ukraine we see now it's ukraine but if you're what i'm getting

00:21:43.480 to with all this is none of this just started right it's all been building and and not only

00:21:49.120 that this whole region is always i call it the middle east for white people you know i lived in

00:21:53.840 europe for six years right i mean this is a fractious area we always look at the middle east

00:21:58.180 as a complex area where everybody always fights each other well that's europe too actually it's

00:22:03.360 just that since world war ii we've had the u.s army and the u.s military stationed over here

00:22:08.700 very thickly and i was i used to be a soldier actually stationed in germany so i mean we kept

00:22:14.600 we kept the place you know mostly peaceful actually for the most part and so it was very

00:22:20.700 prosperous that those days are coming to an end and and the old freshness is acting up again so

00:22:26.180 bottom line is, if you were to design a war to create global or to exacerbate the conditions

00:22:35.580 that will lead to global famine, that would be Ukraine, Russia, right? Another good target

00:22:40.880 would be the energy. For instance, Nord Stream, the gas supplies that are coming from

00:22:50.280 uh russia to europe luckily russia just turned on nordstrom again in the last i don't know 18

00:22:57.060 hours or so that's probably about right uh you know they you're germany in particular is so

00:23:04.160 dependent upon russia for energy it's unbelievable so you got germany over here going yay let's help

00:23:10.320 you know ukraine go to war i'm like hey you know russia has you by the throat you know what i mean

00:23:15.520 If you don't know what your throat, if you don't know how important your throat is, Putin sure does.

00:23:21.080 So Putin shut off Nord Stream a few days, about five days ago for annual maintenance.

00:23:26.800 And, you know, everybody's starting to worry about that.

00:23:29.000 Keep in mind, the liquid natural gas that they need to run many of those factories and whatnot is also needed for the Haber-Bosch process, which is used to make ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which is vital and important.

00:23:42.160 right now they can make up a lot of that natural gas from the united states much of which ships

00:23:47.660 out of texas however roughly one month ago maybe three weeks we had an explosion which you can

00:23:53.340 find on the news yeah at a texas port so that explosion at the that uh at that uh port uh at

00:24:00.820 the lng facility curtailed our natural gas uh exports to europe and then we had an explosion

00:24:07.660 in the field on the pipeline in texas so that's two and then we had an accident at or whatever

00:24:13.240 happened in oklahoma at an lng facility bang bang bang three right in a row in the last about three

00:24:19.840 weeks while you know russia's just uh is throttling europe and meanwhile you've got people

00:24:28.860 like zelinski telling canada don't send that there's a turbine that you have up in canada

00:24:33.500 to refer that needs to be refurbished to for just maintenance right and but that turbine is needed

00:24:39.660 to make the nordstrom nordstrom one pipeline work right and uh and zelinski over in ukraine is

00:24:45.920 saying don't send it back and he's you know he's he's hitting on canada like you can't send it

00:24:51.240 back in germany you shouldn't he's basically zelinski uh you know the t-shirt man over in

00:24:57.880 Ukraine is telling Germany just freeze to death this winter, because, you know, we need we need

00:25:03.540 we need to to cut off Russia's, you know, money pipeline. It's not going to cut off Russia's

00:25:10.440 hard currency. They're selling to the hard currency is going to have a new meaning here

00:25:17.640 soon. But they're selling also now they're opening more sales routes through Saudi Arabia,

00:25:22.540 through uh china through uh india i mean it's not russia when you're dealing with russians

00:25:29.700 they're very smart you know they're you can't just walk in and beat up the russians you know

00:25:35.540 they they're thinking people they play chess in many dimensions yeah and and you know these people

00:25:41.860 that predicted that this ukraine war would be over very quickly i'm like hold on rambo that's

00:25:46.340 not how this goes you either haven't been in a lot of wars or or or you're trying to sell something

00:25:52.160 because that's not how this works and those are russians they're not little chumps you're not

00:25:57.160 going to just come push them around they've got all kinds of buttons and valves that they can

00:26:01.260 you know manipulate and they're doing it wow you really have an eye on this from no no you've you've

00:26:09.260 just have an eye on this from on a world level it's very interesting it's very i'm constantly

00:26:15.560 walking the line so whether it's you know afghanistan or iraq or sri lanka you know last

00:26:21.700 time i was in sri lanka which was what i don't know five years ago or so uh maybe maybe five

00:26:28.040 there was plenty of food there was you know is a land of plenty right and yet the wef world

00:26:35.660 economic forum same ones are hitting us here in netherlands i say us because the farmers

00:26:41.160 whenever i see farmers uprising i stop like what's going on here should i get on an airplane and go

00:26:47.520 talk with these farmers and uh so they you know the world economic forum somehow persuaded

00:26:52.560 probably through you know uh payoffs i don't know how they did it specifically it doesn't matter

00:26:58.200 the mechanisms are not specifically important but they got the government of sri lanka to the wf got

00:27:05.420 the government of sri lanka to go organic which is now leading to while the government while sri

00:27:11.480 Lanka is now, you know, a failed state. It went from a stable country almost instantly to a failed

00:27:18.960 state. Think about that. And one of the things that's interesting about famine, let's talk about

00:27:24.800 pandemic, famine, war, and migration. Pandemic, famine, war. This is a triangle of death. These

00:27:33.120 three things always go together. Pandemic, famine, war. If you get a big one, pandemic, you're going

00:27:39.460 to get famine and war. If you get big famine, you'll get the other two. And if you get a big

00:27:43.440 war, you'll get the other two, right? If you get three musketeers, you get one, you get them all,

00:27:48.280 right? I'm not talking about a small, you know, go invade Grenada and have a shootout for a week.

00:27:53.440 I'm talking about a really serious war. You're always going to have famine and pandemic, right?

00:27:58.240 And then that creates this human osmotic pressure, the push and pull of migration.

00:28:03.840 There's many things that create the human osmotic pressure, the hop. It can be just economics.

00:28:08.760 There's the positive pressure, which is like a fire, you know, like a war, a pandemic, famine, that positive pressure that pushes you out.

00:28:17.440 Like, we got to get out of here, you know, a war, you know, fire, let's run from the fire.

00:28:21.580 And then there's the negative pressure that pulls you in, like, let's go to Canada because that's a nice place, right?

00:28:26.240 So you've got the vacuum or the thing that sucks you in, right?

00:28:30.080 And so there's the positive and the negative pressure, right?

00:28:33.800 And so anytime you get the triangle of death, it gets ramped up here.

00:28:37.060 And that's why in January of 2020, I started warning about famine, because this is all I do

00:28:41.780 is study war and conflict and migration and famine. And by the when this pandemic kicked off,

00:28:47.640 I had already read 40 books, four zero books on pandemic before it started. And then during

00:28:52.620 lockdown, I read 20 more. Right. And so likewise, I study famine just as hard. And so, you know,

00:28:58.860 I'm watching these things. And now people are starting to ask, why were you so far ahead on

00:29:02.900 the famine i'm like because i know when you get one get the other two that's just how it goes and

00:29:09.260 it's funny i was talking about this one time on an interview maybe a year ago and a lady said you

00:29:15.180 talk about this like you discovered it yourself and i'm like well i kind of did and she goes

00:29:18.940 no it's in the bible i was like wait a minute it is in the bible they so so they knew about it

00:29:24.760 2 000 years ago you know what i mean they it's so i mean and so i started looking back and i

00:29:30.180 looked up many of these scriptures in the Bible, I'm like, they were clearly describing pandemic

00:29:35.620 famine for horsemen. I mean, you know, it's crystal clear, but me studying war, reading

00:29:41.580 hundreds of books on war, spending years in wars, studying pandemic, seeing food shortages, you know,

00:29:47.840 I'm just watching it on the ground and reading about it in books and realizing, wow, if you get

00:29:53.080 one, you're definitely getting the other two. It's like if you, so famine also creates famine.

00:29:58.220 when you get famine it creates more famine like fire creates fire or creates war famine creates

00:30:04.480 famine why does famine create famine famine creates famine uh through various mechanisms

00:30:10.840 one is once you go into the initial food shortages and people are hungry they're going to they're

00:30:16.980 going to start stealing stuff because they're hungry they're not criminals they're hungry

00:30:20.060 people right they're going to do what life tells them to do which is eat so they start robbing the

00:30:24.740 stores, which is happening in Panama right now, as we speak. I'm getting almost hourly updates

00:30:29.300 from Panama. They're robbing stores, robbing the trucks, robbing the trains. So those things will

00:30:33.340 stop flowing, right? So that makes it worse, right? So then people start to rob the farms.

00:30:38.720 And also the governments always do price controls when you get into famine. Every time,

00:30:42.400 and the government just started price controls in Egypt and also Panama and other places, right?

00:30:48.680 What does that mean?

00:30:49.360 Price controls, for instance, controlling the price of gas.

00:30:55.280 Like, you know, we have to stop the gas at $3.25 a gallon in Panama.

00:30:59.020 They just made an agreement to make it $3.25.

00:31:02.400 I think they signed that agreement and immediately that didn't work and they started fighting again.

00:31:06.640 But the bottom line is that won't hold because they set the price at such a level that the business people can't afford to do it, right?

00:31:18.060 so you'll get the gas that went through and as long as they can keep the subsidies going but then

00:31:24.220 you know you can okay the price of gas is 325 but you can't get the gas right you can't get the

00:31:30.120 diesel so yeah you got a low price but if you can get it and you can't right so this in turn it's a

00:31:37.400 complex system that starts to break down right in other words the tractors don't work in other

00:31:42.180 words you don't get the fertilizer that you need so famine creates famine through various mechanisms

00:31:46.800 One is the price controls are counterproductive. They stop farmers from growing because the farmers can't make money. Right.

00:31:52.620 And another thing is the government start taking from the farmers direct like they're doing in Egypt right now, forcing the farmers to sell to only approved warehouses, that sort of thing.

00:32:04.580 That's what Mao did. That's what Stalin did. That's what they always do without exception.

00:32:08.800 Again, because the government's like, oh, we're in trouble. We need to do price controls. We need to start taking control of the food supply. Right.

00:32:16.460 So they start going home to home and house to house and redistributing food.

00:32:21.040 That's only Band-Aids. And then and then people start robbing directly from the farmers.

00:32:26.160 That's why when you saw these huge migrations into Europe in about 2016 or so, I kept warning.

00:32:32.800 I lived in Europe for six years. I started warning, you know, the you don't understand what's going to happen.

00:32:39.360 I spend so much time in their countries. They will start robbing directly from the farmers.

00:32:44.500 and uh at first it'll just be a pain but the moment that you have something serious going on

00:32:49.360 um the farmers will stop growing so this is a again so the food that initial famine that you

00:32:56.440 tend to get will will exacerbate and and explode right it will it will increase because the farmers

00:33:04.200 will stop planting they'll stop uh doing their farm work right and so then you end up with

00:33:11.220 that second season of the famine is worse now as the months unfold and the food supplies dwindle

00:33:19.620 and the nutritional health of let's say 10 million or 20 million or 100 million people

00:33:24.480 you know you've got a whole society now that's malnourished their immune systems are weakened

00:33:29.400 and you can see where this is going imagine tens of millions of people or hundreds of millions of

00:33:34.260 people with weakened immune systems pandemic right and so you'll get something called famine

00:33:39.120 fevers and all the big famines you always get famine fevers one of the famine fevers is typhus

00:33:44.380 another one is relapsing fevers and then there's others and then you get waterborne illnesses like

00:33:50.440 cholera these things you know often in famine more people actually die from from the diseases

00:33:57.560 than the actual famines uh but because it's all part of the same system right they're not they're

00:34:02.720 not really separable so they they feed into each other and the weaker you get the less able you are

00:34:07.420 to defend yourself but when i say defend yourself that might mean just growing crops right so you

00:34:12.600 know and it just gets worse and it melts down for some period of time so that's what we're looking

00:34:17.080 at now we're on that front there's different types of famines as well there's like i call them a

00:34:21.200 light switch famine the one that's kind of sudden it can kind of start and and then can and it can

00:34:26.800 end quickly or slowly but for instance in here in netherlands in 1944-45 they had something called

00:34:33.280 the Hunger Winter, the Hunger Winter. That was when the Nazis came in and destroyed a lot of the

00:34:38.360 food production and distribution facilities, seized a lot of their food because the Dutch

00:34:43.320 were resisting and the Nazis wanted to knock them in the head. So they did so with their food.

00:34:48.900 And so that famine was very sudden. It started very quickly. And then Americans and others came

00:34:53.800 through with Market Garden and other operations and swept the Germans out of Netherlands. And

00:35:00.940 the famine was over very quickly. Roughly six months or so, the famine was over, right? But

00:35:06.980 many other famines, they start very slowly, and they gradually pick up. And most famines don't

00:35:13.160 last for more than a couple of years. But there are others that last seven, 10 years, even longer,

00:35:18.480 right? These are the slower, gradual famines, you kind of gradually fade into it. And then you

00:35:25.020 reach some, you know, if you'll have wars in the interim and lots of disease, and then you'll

00:35:31.200 slowly leave it, right? So we're in that circle of life. You know, it's not like that we're going

00:35:38.820 through something that's never been done before. I mean, this is it. Our ancestors have all been

00:35:43.680 through this stuff, and we're about to see it ourselves. So I spoke to somebody from the

00:35:50.320 Netherlands, a journalist reporting there. And his view was that the Netherlands has been producing

00:35:55.400 too much nitrogen, that they've been producing too much nitrogen for the last 30 years, and that

00:36:00.540 it was kind of a law passed from the European Union into the Netherlands, and that they need

00:36:07.000 to do this because they're destroying insect species, and it's affecting birds in the Netherlands

00:36:15.020 because of all the pollution that has to do with livestock. What do you think about that story?

00:36:20.320 The journalist is a shill. You know, it's clearly a shill. And it's BS. Let's say it flatly, it's bullshit. You know, it's just, you know, they don't talk about nitrogen in the other countries, by the way, just Netherlands.

00:36:38.500 you know with all these friends they franchise these uh these you know this this attack is

00:36:44.960 happening globally so the the world economic forum makes a different menu for each country

00:36:50.700 here it's a nitrogen right but they don't even talk about nitrogen next door in germany you know

00:36:55.400 it's only here and and and and again why would you take some of the most efficient farmers in

00:37:00.420 the world if not the most efficient farmers in the world and knock out their farms and then get

00:37:05.940 somebody else to do this, to create less food with more chemicals. See, it doesn't make any

00:37:11.020 sense. It's just nonsense. And, you know, and, and, but go ahead. I think their view was, well,

00:37:18.700 each country has a limit, the amount of nitrogen they can produce. And because the Netherlands

00:37:23.920 produces so much food and they're small, they produce over the limit. And so this is, these

00:37:27.980 are laws that were made in the nineties. And because they're producing over the limit, they

00:37:31.380 just have to produce less they're actually not laws it's bureaucratic nonsense that comes from

00:37:36.540 brussels right and so basically we've got bureaucrats like the epa in the united states

00:37:41.660 the uh you know the environmental protection agency which by the way let me clarify something

00:37:47.640 as somebody who travels the world extensively like china sometimes they're probably not going

00:37:53.860 to let me back in china again but when you're landing in beijing or shanghai or other especially

00:37:58.760 Beijing. I mean, there's so much pollution down there. It looks like your airplane is going to

00:38:03.780 get stuck in it before it lands. Like it's stuck in the amber. It's really bad. And it's likewise

00:38:09.040 in India. So when you're in countries like this and you see how terrible those rivers are,

00:38:13.720 they're like, okay, I'll take some EPA. You know, we need some EPA. You know, I understand it. I

00:38:19.440 want it. But then these, these organizations, these like the EPA and the CDC in the United

00:38:27.240 States and others, they become abusive. They become tools for authoritarians to bureaucratically

00:38:33.080 make quote unquote laws. These bureaucrats who, how are they even, did they even get into their

00:38:39.280 positions in Brussels, right? Nobody even knows who they are, right? So they come up with these

00:38:44.400 ethics, these mandates, you might say, they're just rules. They're not laws. And they say,

00:38:52.040 well you know we're the eu and we're we tell everybody in the eu what to do and therefore

00:38:56.600 the dutch farmers can't produce so much nitrogen you know these are probably people that never took

00:39:00.840 a chemistry class in their life 78 of that the air that we breathe 78 of that's nitrogen every

00:39:06.960 breath we take right now is 78 nitrogen right the whole fertilizer the plants can't grow without

00:39:13.360 nitrogen the whole world our lives revolve around nitrogen right so i mean it's just nonsense but

00:39:20.680 But so when you're chasing that nonsense, though, and you start talking about they're winning, they're absolutely winning.

00:39:26.220 As somebody who studies information war, remember the kinetic wars, you know, the gunfights and all that stuff, which I did years of that and various wars and conflicts, very tuned into that kinetic side.

00:39:38.620 That's the high school level of war.

00:39:41.220 PhD level war is information war, right?

00:39:44.040 It's all between the ears.

00:39:46.120 And I've written three books on information war.

00:39:48.720 I've actually written six books, but three was just on information.

00:39:51.580 Unfortunately, they're only in Japanese because I've been focused for some time trying to wake up the Japanese about the information wars that they are undergoing.

00:40:03.120 And I see what they're doing in Japan.

00:40:06.420 I see what they're doing in China.

00:40:08.220 I see what they're doing in Philippines and Thailand, trying to split Thailand in three parts.

00:40:12.780 They're doing the same in Malaysia, trying to get Indonesians and Malaysians to fight each other, like with musical, you know, appropriation.

00:40:20.780 Like, you know, look at look at the fights between Indonesia and Malaysia about who who started the music.

00:40:27.380 You know what I mean? They get people to fight about this little nonsense stuff.

00:40:31.160 You know, and the next thing you know, it's like, you know, people beating each other up in the streets about it or who can wear a kimono.

00:40:37.040 You know, Japanese don't like people wearing kimono dresses, which is nonsense.

00:40:41.120 Japanese are I deal with Japanese constantly literally seven days a week right I've written

00:40:46.860 three books that are only in Japanese so I wrote them in English but they were published only in

00:40:50.780 Japan trying to wake up the Japanese information work what I'm getting to is information work

00:40:55.340 is my backyard right and my front yard you know so I and and so when I look at the nitrogen thing

00:41:03.020 I just see it for what it is that chaff like recently I was off in Morocco with a workhorse

00:41:08.140 friend of mine named chuck holton and and there's this new language on the road signs and i was like

00:41:13.420 chuck what language is this that's not arabic it's certainly not english and uh it's no in fact

00:41:20.020 it's no language that i've ever seen before and and he's like i don't know and i said it looked

00:41:25.880 like some strange language i said you know what i'll bet that's some information campaign and so

00:41:30.260 get back to the hotel and look up you know strange language road signs morocco well it's this new

00:41:35.960 written language for Berber class of languages. Berber is not a language, it's a class of

00:41:41.460 languages, right? And they don't, it's a, they don't have a written language for Berber. So

00:41:45.820 they've come up with this new written language for Berber. And now there was some controversy

00:41:51.380 in the beginning. If you're going to have a new written language for Berber, it should be in like

00:41:56.640 modified Arabic. So they all, they already know the Arabic alphabet. Everybody knows how to

00:42:02.500 pronounce the letters and that sort of thing but no they just made up a new one you should look up

00:42:06.200 this berber alphabet it looks like burbies talking to each other it's like computers talking to each

00:42:11.900 other these strange symbols but this is how you get people to fight each other right we get everybody

00:42:16.620 to start fighting over little things about you know get the french speakers to fight the english

00:42:21.000 speakers some of that will be organic so when you're trying to get people to fight each other

00:42:25.960 you find little frictions that they already have and you pour the salt on or you just come in and

00:42:30.600 make stuff up, right? Like, Hey, that nitrogen is really poisonous. It's killing the insects or

00:42:35.240 whatever, you know, and, and, uh, and, uh, you know, it's killing these bugs. So let's take the

00:42:40.120 most efficient or arguably the most efficient farmers in the world and get somebody else to do

00:42:44.920 it and to make the food. It doesn't make sense. So for me, since this is what I do seven days a

00:42:53.160 week, it's really obvious. So I don't, I don't, I won't even argue about the nitrogen thing because

00:42:57.860 I deal with this in so many countries, right? But in every country, it'll be something else.

00:43:02.280 It'll always be something else. Oh, you grow a different type of potato than we do or something,

00:43:06.780 you know, and they'll start fighting about, hey, we invented that potato. And, you know,

00:43:10.620 you won't believe how many things you'll see. What's the reason behind getting people to fight?

00:43:17.700 What's the end goal here? Oh, divide and conquer. For instance, there's an information campaign now

00:43:23.460 against the farmers in netherlands so for instance yesterday when i did uh interviews um actually

00:43:31.580 with your father right which is incredible interviews and uh while we were waiting i'm

00:43:36.800 talking naturally i'm interviewing everybody around me you know what i mean so there's a

00:43:40.920 lot of camera and audio and the makeup ladies doing my makeup you know and i had makeup on

00:43:47.500 And so, and I asked her about the farmers and all that.

00:43:53.740 She's, oh, yes, you know, they say bad things about the farmers on the news.

00:43:57.880 You know, they're blocking the streets and stuff.

00:43:59.760 So there's some kind of anger building up from some people against the farmers.

00:44:04.440 And I said, oh, that's interesting because that's what they do everywhere.

00:44:09.220 So the farmers rise up and that's your backbone.

00:44:11.540 That's the people you should be defending, right?

00:44:13.600 Like if the farmers are rising up, I'm just going to be like,

00:44:15.940 i need to drive out and talk with farmers you know and instead they're like hey the farmers

00:44:20.280 are bad guys that's what stalin did in labeling oh hey but that's why your food prices are high

00:44:28.120 because the farmers are making so much money that's why you know this that's why that the

00:44:33.320 farmers are the problem so you do an information war against the farmers and then you know and then

00:44:37.940 and then you cause many problems for the farmers and then the farmers start to act up or the

00:44:43.460 truckers in Canada. And then you start to demonize the truckers or the farmers, right? And by the

00:44:49.220 way, the truckers in Canada were very inspirational for truckers in the United States. I drove all the

00:44:54.300 way across the United States with truckers from California to Washington, DC, because they took

00:44:59.260 the lead from the truckers in Canada. They were flying Canadian flags all across America. I talked

00:45:04.300 with your dad about that. And nobody, he didn't even know it. I was like, it was unbelievable.

00:45:08.480 There was hundreds of thousands of people on the side of the road. I drove all the way from

00:45:11.460 In California, I was jumping from truck to truck.

00:45:14.000 I went with them for like two weeks, right?

00:45:16.220 And so I was listening to the truckers talk,

00:45:18.520 hundreds of thousands of people,

00:45:20.020 Canadian flags everywhere.

00:45:21.740 They were being Americans flying Canadian flags.

00:45:24.280 I said, we should have taken the lead.

00:45:25.720 They're like, well, Canadians took it.

00:45:27.000 So we're flying their flags right beside ours, right?

00:45:29.280 And I said, go Canada.

00:45:30.660 And they're saying that here.

00:45:31.640 A lot of the farmers here too are,

00:45:34.060 I don't think Canadians even know that.

00:45:35.980 The Canadians know that the effect that your truckers had

00:45:40.300 was actually important was very important it looks like the thing just died out in Canada but

00:45:44.900 it didn't yeah you know and so it's it's it's it's you know it's out here and it's growing still

00:45:50.680 and um that here's here's the thing in in Netherlands now they're flying the flags upside

00:45:56.440 down inverted right that's what we do in the United States when you're under duress right

00:46:00.720 you fly the flag upside down so here you know their flag is red white and blue three stripes

00:46:06.540 so they just inverted blue white and red so yeah about maybe 10 days ago the government said hey

00:46:12.700 these are representing a danger flying over the bridges and the danger is people take a photo of

00:46:18.380 it with their phone and put it on instagram and and it spreads right and so the government started

00:46:23.600 taking these things down that sort of thing and people you know other people like started putting

00:46:28.400 more of them right so i mean the bottom line is the demonization of the farmers it's happened over

00:46:34.900 and over and over around the world authoritative Mao did it with in China there's a great book on

00:46:39.720 this called Mao's Great Famine it's a great book there's another book with Stalin doing it in

00:46:44.600 Ukraine Ukraine which is called a red famine and it goes into detail about the demonization of the

00:46:51.740 farmers and so when I hear when I was getting ready to do the interview with your father and

00:46:56.100 the makeup lady's doing the makeup I'm like what do you think about the farmers you know and she's

00:47:00.260 like oh you know she she liked the farmers everybody here knows farmers uh but she's like

00:47:05.340 wow you know they're saying some bad things about them on the news and i said oh it's the normal

00:47:10.020 demonization process and um and she went on about it and so i talked after the interview yesterday

00:47:16.520 we sat down and had dinner together numerous of us and we talked about things for a while

00:47:20.760 so it's it's the sort of thing that i see all over the world every i spent a year again in the in the

00:47:26.180 war out in uh in uh in nepal with the malice right i've walked up to mount everest in the

00:47:32.160 in the meantime just to the bottom and you know i was walking walking all over that i've walked

00:47:36.980 all over those mountains man that's some serious mountains and uh and i was out with the malice

00:47:41.440 all the time and asking them what's up and all i would hire guides to carry my books you know

00:47:47.480 now i got this thing i'd carry like a thousand books on it right but back then i had a big

00:47:51.980 pelican case i had to rent a horse at one point to carry my pelican case filled with books so i'd

00:47:56.920 have like candles reading books and you know but these mouths are like you know they would they

00:48:01.380 could never persuade me to be a mouse they would never hurt me because i would just be like ah that

00:48:06.100 mouse stuff is nonsense you know but they would if i were in nepalese they would have killed me

00:48:11.060 for sure but they would just be like ah you know whatever come on let's walk you know but you know

00:48:16.000 but the mouse were trying to get everybody to divide and conquer get everybody to split up

00:48:21.320 You can't get people to cooperate. You go over to Afghanistan, where I spent two years.

00:48:26.540 All the different ethnic groups, they just naturally are fractious. They can't get it together.

00:48:32.480 You always have to have an outside force to come together. I say force. Let's say influencers or spackle, let's say, that comes and gets or gets grouped like the Nepalese.

00:48:44.000 It's never going to be a really wealthy country because they always fight each other.

00:48:47.340 You know, it's always like this group fights that group. So if you want to take the country over, you just exacerbate those fights. It's the same in Afghanistan. It was the same in India until the British came. Right. So, you know, I spent almost a year in India as well.

00:49:00.800 the indians they'll have a love hate with the british they're like well you know the british

00:49:05.140 did this that and the other was very bad but the the indians will give credit where credit's due

00:49:09.360 they're like but you know they did teach they did give us a common language uh and helped us with

00:49:13.800 the railways and these sorts of things and now india has you know is really made some really

00:49:20.480 greatness they're really coming along but all these disparate groups fighting each other this

00:49:24.860 is unconventional warfare 101, divide and conquer. And that's what WEF, World Economic Forum,

00:49:32.040 or as they call it in Netherlands, WEF, that's their number one, the substrate of their war

00:49:37.860 is divide and conquer. Before you know it, they'll have Canada and the United States

00:49:41.620 wanting to go to war with each other or something. You know, they'll figure out how to do that

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00:51:35.360 rest of this episode. So what can say somebody watching this is concerned about famine? Is there

00:51:41.540 anything that the average person can do to either prepare or fight back yeah many things one is

00:51:47.920 at this point now in january of 2020 when i first started warning about it we could have still

00:51:55.580 averted it at this point there's too much inertia we're clearly going to have global famines

00:52:00.660 i don't actually and i'm a very positive thinking type of a man you know i just don't see a way out

00:52:06.280 at this point so now it's down to mitigation right um even though it hasn't really started

00:52:12.520 in earnest yet it's all about conditions again amateurs always talk sparks it's about conditions

00:52:18.640 the conditions are set for huge global famines one is it depends on your conditions right

00:52:24.440 how you should prepare um if you live on key west till you've got one set of issues and one set of

00:52:32.500 you know it's warm you don't have to worry about freezing the death you're also not going to have

00:52:36.740 a big farm right you know i mean you're not going to grow anything down there um you're going to be

00:52:41.920 short on food let's say if you live in any of the island nations if you live in japan which

00:52:45.900 imports about 70 of the food or so right or if you live in hawaii imports about 90 of the food

00:52:51.760 you're going to be short you're and you know you're going to be uh bidding against the world

00:52:58.540 on the price of that food right uh like for instance if i were in hawaii i mean if i were

00:53:04.920 if i were you know uh some rich guy that lived on one little island off in the south there

00:53:09.600 i would look at it differently than living on honolulu i would be thinking about going somewhere

00:53:13.500 else but if you live up in northern canada or i've been up the yellow knife you know and that

00:53:18.580 sort of thing i'd be looking at it very differently so first look at your own circumstances

00:53:22.440 Where do you live?

00:53:23.640 What are your economic conditions?

00:53:25.300 What are your capabilities?

00:53:28.440 Stocking up can be good for short-term sorts of things.

00:53:32.220 That's what I've done as a work correspondent.

00:53:34.180 I've basically hidden acorns all over the place.

00:53:37.180 So if I get to one of my acorns, I'm good to go.

00:53:39.280 As a work correspondent, I can't just stop and grow a bunch of food.

00:53:42.860 So that's my set of problems.

00:53:44.320 So I look at my problems.

00:53:45.340 What are my problems as a work correspondent?

00:53:47.820 My weaknesses are I'm traveling all the time.

00:53:51.420 so i can't just stop and build a compound you know and uh and not that that would be necessarily the

00:53:58.380 best way to go anyway and my strengths are i do travel around all the time and so and and i'm

00:54:03.900 very knowledgeable about different circumstances around the world and the united states and so i've

00:54:09.740 basically implant you know put little acorns of food if i can get the one of them i can you know

00:54:14.620 be there for a long period of time and and be quite healthy and that sort of thing uh but other

00:54:18.860 people if you live in new york city where are you going to get your food from uh if your electricity

00:54:23.180 goes out if you're and and the the thing is is famines tend to cause a general a lot of people

00:54:29.680 say the united states can't go into famine and to that i would say you haven't studied much yet

00:54:34.340 you know the united states absolutely can go into famine and at this point or parts of it certainly

00:54:39.080 could and at this point i would say probably greater than 50 chance at this point that parts

00:54:44.560 of the United States will go into famine between somewhere, I don't know, 2023, 2024, 2025. It's

00:54:52.000 all about conditions, right? And right now we're living off the food that we've already produced,

00:54:56.500 right? And our production is diminishing like it's going off the cliff, right? So what would

00:55:04.240 you do? Look at your own circumstances. What are your own capabilities? How much resources do you

00:55:10.640 have. And one of the most things that's most important is, as individuals, we're all quite

00:55:17.420 weak, right? One of my principal strengths is I know a lot of highly capable people. So I've been

00:55:24.120 working on my network, right? And that's what everybody should work on is their network,

00:55:28.260 right? Your network of people, because as individuals, we're all quite weak. But as

00:55:32.140 teams, we can be in tribes, you might say, we can be strong or even powerful, right? And so work on

00:55:38.920 your human network like for instance one uh man that he's a veteran down in south texas i met with

00:55:44.800 him quite a bit he came down to see me in mexico actually and we talked about that through he's

00:55:49.560 like i'm going to take care of my community he's taking charge this little town in texas so he's

00:55:54.160 like so i've been taking inventory uh who can do what he's like there's this one old lady she's

00:55:59.220 really worried she's like i i don't have any money in all this he's like well let's list down what

00:56:04.560 your skills. And she's like, well, you know, I can do this. I know how to sew. And she knows how

00:56:09.920 to can food was one. He's like, can food. I need that. Okay. You're going to be our official food

00:56:15.700 canner because that's going to be really important. And so you got a job, you know, make yourself

00:56:20.620 useful because once you're, once you're like, one of the things I'm very useful for is accurate

00:56:25.480 information, global recon, and, you know, giving you information that's actually actionable,

00:56:30.020 right that makes me quite useful and so i'll be welcome in any trap because i i can be eyes and

00:56:35.920 ears right uh that lady she can can food i need to eat you know and so uh so we have to work as a

00:56:43.260 team and right we have to work um the doctor can do doctor stuff you know you know that's how you

00:56:51.320 have to everybody has more skills than they even imagine right you like there's more skills in your

00:56:57.000 head than you can even think about right now. You know what I mean? Because you're probably not

00:57:00.420 normally thinking about them because you're normally focused on doing other things like

00:57:04.600 doing your very important podcast and these sorts of things. But let's say, you know, our

00:57:10.140 communications do go down and you can't do podcasts anymore for some period of time,

00:57:14.840 you need to focus on other stuff. And so you'll have to, you know, dig into your repertoire and

00:57:20.480 like make yourself useful. And one of those things that you're obviously good at

00:57:24.940 is talking with people and uh because i've watched quite a few of your podcasts you know i talk with

00:57:30.940 people you're a good listener i can see you let me ramble on and you know and then and that's like

00:57:35.940 and uh and uh and um and organize organize you know organizers are incredibly important

00:57:44.260 you know like that man in south texas he's like taking an inventory of his whole town he started

00:57:50.320 with his church what are their skills he's like i'm making a spreadsheet who do i he's getting

00:57:56.300 people with radios because he you know assuming phones may not work or power goes down radio up

00:58:02.360 right and uh you know getting on them and you know we'll get through this it's not like the

00:58:06.460 end of the world our everybody listening to this has our family have been through all sorts of

00:58:13.800 hell. Our generations have been through so many things. And we're here, right? We're natural

00:58:21.600 survivors, especially people that are thinking ahead, not being afraid. I'm a war court. Some

00:58:27.480 people say, since January 2020, when I started warning about famine, some people said, wow,

00:58:36.360 you've done so much war, but you're afraid. No, I'm not afraid. I'm just warning you. I'm a war

00:58:40.860 correspond i've been in more firefights than you've seen in most movies right it's like i i don't like

00:58:45.840 them and they're not fun but at the same time i continue to go back to them right so i mean i'm

00:58:50.640 going to be fine i know i'm going to be fine and you're going to be fine if you think ahead and you

00:58:56.080 work on your networks and you think about your resilience make sure you stockpile the things

00:59:01.000 that you need now that you won't be able to get later uh like uh canning supplies you know the

00:59:06.840 types of salts that you need the types of vinegar the you know jars and a lot of stuff you know what

00:59:13.560 i mean and uh and then we'll get through it and then when it's over we'll be telling uh children

00:59:19.220 our children someday like how bad it was and they'll think you're exaggerating and you know

00:59:24.540 and uh yeah they'll be like it couldn't have been that bad you'll be like yeah well i was

00:59:30.540 eating the horse's saddle. I had to boil it. Oh my goodness. Okay. Uh, if people want to follow

00:59:40.420 you online or want to go anywhere for more information about this, do you have recommendations

00:59:44.780 for them? Uh, I go on locals every day, locals.com and I have a website as well. Um, uh, Michael

00:59:51.680 yawn.com. I'll ask the name is Y O N Yankee Oscar November. And, um, and I do a lot of interviews

00:59:58.380 i have for years and uh but locals.com is where i've published every day and on locals i try to

01:00:05.340 actually answer uh questions actually on my own website i don't normally answer questions but i'll

01:00:10.480 do it on locals because it's easier for me uh it doesn't i can quickly get to them um obviously i

01:00:17.240 can't answer everything i try but you know i work basically and then sleep and then work

01:00:22.100 Yeah, like you, I'm sure.

01:00:24.400 Yeah, yeah.

01:00:25.580 Okay, well, similar, but not quite, not exactly the same.

01:00:30.280 Thank you very much for coming on.

01:00:31.820 That was really interesting.

01:00:34.160 I might have to have you back on just to talk about the entire picture,

01:00:38.980 because I know this was a little bit more focused on famine,

01:00:42.080 but that was very interesting, so thank you for that.

01:00:45.260 Anytime. You know how to reach me.

01:00:46.960 nick ottens welcome to my podcast thank you for having me uh so before we get started can you

01:00:57.100 give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do uh so currently i'm a journalist

01:01:02.000 based in the netherlands uh before i reported from spain i lived in boston for a few years

01:01:07.600 and in the past i've worked for a number of political risk consultancies and an american

01:01:12.980 non-profit and at the non-profit i also worked on food and agriculture issues and now as a journalist

01:01:19.780 i write mostly about dutch spanish and french politics and food and agriculture is still one

01:01:25.220 of my interests okay great um let's let's get started then what is going on in the netherlands

01:01:34.260 in regards to the farmers protest can you just give a brief overview about what that's about

01:01:38.580 So the protest started about four weeks ago, and the government put out a plan for reducing

01:01:44.700 emissions of nitrogen.

01:01:47.340 The plan is to cut emissions in half by 2030, and since farms are the main source of nitrogen

01:01:53.620 emissions, they produce about 40% of overall emissions, they will have to reduce their

01:01:59.120 emissions by 40%.

01:02:02.620 Most of the farmers we're protesting are livestock farmers, because almost all of the nitrogen

01:02:07.780 that's produced in farming is ammonia pollution, which only comes from livestock farms. There are

01:02:15.060 about 30,000 of them in the country. Under the government's plans, about 11,000, so one in three

01:02:21.320 would need to quit altogether. And another 17,000, which is almost the remainder, would need to

01:02:27.160 downsize. Okay. What's the protest trying to achieve? Well, so they're worried about the

01:02:37.240 cuts obviously and opposed to them so many uh dairy farmers many pig farmers they're they're

01:02:44.560 struggling to break even most years because the price of milk the price of meat is more or less

01:02:49.620 at break-even price so they're saying if you're going to ask us to to remove 10 or 20 of our

01:02:55.680 animals that means we'll be bankrupt so for them reductions within the current model are not really

01:03:02.720 an option. And obviously the farmers who would quit are opposed to that because they want to

01:03:07.980 continue farming. How does the public in the Netherlands feel about the protests and what's

01:03:14.460 going on? So there's a lot of sympathy with the farmers. If you look at the polls, about 70% of

01:03:21.440 people, they understand why farmers are upset. About 40% of people support the protests themselves

01:03:27.220 that have taken place. So they have blocked motorways and food distribution centers with

01:03:32.020 tractors, and another 35% are opposed to the protests and the people in the middle are

01:03:36.660 unsure.

01:03:37.660 So I think it's fair to say that the country is kind of split down the middle in terms

01:03:40.980 of whether to support the protests, but when it comes to supporting the farmers, the clear

01:03:46.080 majority are sympathetic and they understand why farmers are upset.

01:03:50.340 Is it true that the Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world?

01:03:57.080 Yes, so after the United States, we're the second exporter of agricultural products,

01:04:02.700 although it's worth knowing that about 9% of those exports are flowers and bulbs.

01:04:08.240 So that's not food.

01:04:09.800 And then another 27% or 29% are re-exports.

01:04:14.240 So those are products, for example, imported from North America or from South America,

01:04:18.680 which are imported through the Netherlands, the port of Rotterdam, and then go on to the

01:04:22.080 rest of Europe.

01:04:23.960 For the remainder, that's mostly food products.

01:04:27.320 But in order to export that much, we also have to import a lot.

01:04:31.040 So we're the largest exporter of meat in Europe and the fifth largest exporter of dairy in

01:04:37.780 the world.

01:04:39.340 Most of those exports go to Germany, to France, to Belgium and the UK, so the countries surrounding

01:04:44.160 the Netherlands.

01:04:45.160 But we're not a big country.

01:04:47.360 We don't have a lot of land to grow cereals and soy to feed the animals.

01:04:51.720 So that is mostly imported from North America and from South America, fed to the animals

01:04:57.100 here, and then the products, the dairy and the meat, is exported again to our neighboring

01:05:01.440 countries.

01:05:03.400 Do you think it's reasonable to expect the Netherlands to reduce their emissions given

01:05:07.820 the fact that they're the second largest exporter?

01:05:12.600 Well, it's not really much of a choice because the government is sort of under a legal obligation

01:05:17.080 to.

01:05:18.020 So these ammonia emissions have been in excess of the legal limit for 30 years.

01:05:23.840 Ever since these regulations were introduced, they are European regulations for the protection of conservation areas.

01:05:30.620 The rules were introduced in the 1990s and we have never met them.

01:05:34.360 So it's not really a choice.

01:05:36.140 The question is how.

01:05:37.280 How are we going to do it?

01:05:38.220 So the reason it's such a concern is because when there's too much ammonia pollution in the environment around farms,

01:05:44.980 It actually helps certain plant species grow, but it means that other plants wither and

01:05:50.320 they die.

01:05:51.320 And those are sources of nutrition for insects.

01:05:55.720 If those insect species disappear, about 70% of the insect population of the Netherlands

01:06:00.280 has disappeared in the last 30 years.

01:06:03.580 That means that a source of food for birds disappears.

01:06:06.820 So we see entire ecosystems collapse in the country.

01:06:10.660 So it's not really a question of whether to reduce emissions, but how and by how much.

01:06:17.220 To go back to your question, of course, that will affect exports.

01:06:20.760 It means that if we want to feed our own people first and we reduce farming, it means that

01:06:25.860 we can export less or at least less dairy and less meat products, less milk, less eggs.

01:06:31.600 The other farming, the other types of farming, the growing of crops, cucumbers, tomatoes,

01:06:36.780 paprika, that's not affected.

01:06:38.920 Those are major export products as well, and actually more profitable export products.

01:06:43.980 The margin on dairy and meat is pretty low.

01:06:47.460 So it's a question, is it worth it to reduce emissions, given that we're not making that

01:06:55.160 much money and we're getting all of the pollution, which is harmful to our animals, to our environment?

01:07:00.660 I think the, well, at least the government decided it is.

01:07:03.000 so with these new regulations do you know how much less meat and dairy will be exported

01:07:12.120 what percentage perhaps no that's a bit hard to say so the question now is if we just make a 30

01:07:20.020 reduction in in livestock farming which you would need to do in order to achieve a 40 reduction in

01:07:25.780 emissions you would say well there's one third less dairy one third less meat right but that's

01:07:31.560 necessarily the case. There are various other options. You can either move further into the

01:07:35.960 direction of more intensive animal farming, so keeping a higher number of animals on the same,

01:07:42.440 on the same space at lower cost, but that tends to increase emissions. The alternative is switching

01:07:49.960 in more in the direction of organic farming, so having fewer animals on more land, but then of

01:07:54.920 course the, the decrease in production will be even steeper, because you simply have fewer animals,

01:08:01.160 they will live longer they will live healthier they'll be happier but you'll have less meat you'll

01:08:05.560 have less dairy do you see any parallels or potential parallels between what's happening

01:08:10.840 in the netherlands and what sri lanka tried to implement with their organic farming yeah well

01:08:17.720 from what i know it seems that they try to move very fast and essentially abolish factory farming

01:08:23.960 within a few years that's not a reasonable goal to set on dutch farmers for decades they have been

01:08:30.760 pushed into this sort of system by the banks and by the companies that buy their products,

01:08:36.200 and by the consumers who want cheap food, not just in the Netherlands, but also in Germany,

01:08:40.120 France, Belgium, to produce higher and higher volumes of meat and dairy and eggs

01:08:46.360 at a lower and lower price. So the whole farm system has been pushing them in that direction

01:08:52.520 and designed around that model of intensive animal farming. So you can't simply get rid

01:08:57.320 of that in a few years it needs to be a transition and the government needs to help which it is it's

01:09:03.000 making 32 billion euros available which is about four percent of dutch gdp over the next eight

01:09:09.160 years to help farmers either to to downsize or to expropriate to buy out those farmers who cannot

01:09:19.000 continue or to relocate them because there might also be farmers who are now situated right next

01:09:24.200 to a conservation area where their emissions are too high but if another farmer quits somewhere

01:09:29.640 else in the country they might move they just need some financial help to do so and continue

01:09:33.880 farming there so there's a lot of money there is time there's eight years to meet this call to get

01:09:39.480 there it still won't be easy but i don't expect a sri lanka like scenario because i don't i think

01:09:46.680 that the dutch government is a little wiser than that i hope um do you think are people

01:09:53.640 concerned about the unintended consequences for people who depend on these food exports?

01:09:59.320 Well, sure. First of all, there are the consumers in other countries who depend on them,

01:10:04.360 although I wouldn't expect people in Germany and in Belgium to starve if we produce less

01:10:08.440 meat. But we also export all over the world, so it's a fair concern. And there is a whole

01:10:14.520 industry that is dependent on the farmers. So you have the companies that produce the animal feed,

01:10:19.640 which they sell to the farmers.

01:10:21.080 There are the logistical companies

01:10:22.480 which transport products.

01:10:24.220 There is the meat and dairy processing industry.

01:10:26.840 There's the supermarkets.

01:10:28.300 All of those that employs

01:10:30.740 tens of thousands of people in the country.

01:10:34.640 So there's a lot of people

01:10:35.580 whose livelihoods depend on this.

01:10:37.840 And there will be people who lose their jobs,

01:10:41.200 who will lose their business as a result.

01:10:44.900 Do you think this has anything to do

01:10:46.720 with kind of the push for more plant-based?

01:10:49.640 that's been going around, I think, around the world? Or is this purely climate?

01:10:55.320 Yeah, it's kind of the other way around. It's not so much that the move towards a more plant-based

01:11:00.440 diet is the reason for doing this. It's more that we need to do this because of the ammonia emissions,

01:11:06.280 which are local, destructive to our nature. And in order to be able to do that, we should switch

01:11:13.320 to a more plant-based diet because we'll just won't be able to produce the volumes of dairy

01:11:18.440 and meat that we have for the last 20, 30 years.

01:11:23.380 Okay, let me see what else I have here.

01:11:27.380 Okay, so you talked a little bit about the local benefit of reducing nitrogen emissions.

01:11:33.260 What happens if the emissions aren't reduced?

01:11:36.520 So then you see a continuation of what we've been seeing.

01:11:39.400 Now to be fair, the farmers have reduced nitrogen emissions by a lot in the last 30 years by

01:11:46.260 about 65%.

01:11:48.420 So that has been a large improvement to the conservation areas, to the local nature, to

01:11:56.180 the quality of our air, to the quality of groundwater, but it hasn't been enough to

01:12:01.300 arrest this decline in the loss of biodiversity.

01:12:06.200 So you see that insect populations are shrinking.

01:12:09.000 You see that certain bird species, which were very common in the Netherlands 20, 30, 40

01:12:13.220 years ago, have become rare.

01:12:16.040 So we need to reduce further in order to give these conservation areas a chance to recover.

01:12:23.160 And if we don't, well then we'll just have to accept that we failed and that we need

01:12:27.860 to give up these conservation areas.

01:12:31.400 If farms begin to close in fairly large numbers, will the remaining farmers be able to make

01:12:37.360 up the difference in food production or will the total output be less?

01:12:42.480 Yeah.

01:12:43.480 Well, that's an interesting question.

01:12:44.700 So if you look at, as in I'm not sure, but I hope they will be, if you look at just the

01:12:50.440 reductions, and you would assume that everybody else continues to farm as they do now, then

01:12:55.440 the answer would be no.

01:12:57.140 However, there are many innovations which could help.

01:12:59.540 So there are innovations in growing crops, in horticulture, in growing in greenhouses,

01:13:06.520 where you'll be able to increase productions.

01:13:08.960 There is innovation in cultivated meat, or what people might call lab-grown meat.

01:13:13.640 There are two Dutch companies, which are quite large, and one of them just this week announced

01:13:17.960 that they have been able to lab-grow the first pork sausage. In order to do that,

01:13:23.880 they will still need animal tissue. So they need to work with farmers to get animal cells,

01:13:29.320 which they then take to their lab, to their facilities, to grow meat.

01:13:33.000 That could be a new model for farmers and for the Dutch food industry to, at the very least,

01:13:39.720 maintain the level of meat production that we have now and potentially grow it because there's

01:13:43.920 huge growth potential in these companies. They only need a little bit of animal material in order to,

01:13:49.720 I don't know, grow 40 steaks. So we might actually, if we invest in that, then at the end of the day

01:13:58.880 in 2030, our meat production might actually be higher with fewer farmers and fewer farm animals.

01:14:04.860 do you know much about uh the lab grown meat like when they grow meat do they grow a muscle tissue

01:14:12.640 do you know how that works like is that what the end product is yeah i'm not i haven't actually

01:14:18.140 seen it in the flesh but the way that that's been described to me is they take animal cells and

01:14:24.280 understood in a certain growth medium it is grown and at the end of the process you have a piece of

01:14:29.880 meat, which looks and tastes and smells exactly like a real piece of meat wood.

01:14:34.260 And in a sense, you might argue it is real meat, because it starts with an animal tissue,

01:14:39.460 animal cells.

01:14:40.920 So the Dutch government is subsidizing for 60 million euros research and education into

01:14:47.040 this field.

01:14:48.440 There are two large Dutch companies which are active globally, so I have high hopes that

01:14:53.160 this could be not a complete replacement, but an important addition to the animal farming

01:14:59.640 that we do and also help those animal farmers who remain to actually make more money than

01:15:07.400 they do now.

01:15:08.600 Because right now, most animal farmers, they don't make a lot of profit.

01:15:12.020 The price of meat, supermarkets always want the lowest price.

01:15:15.880 Consumers aren't willing to pay, that's much more.

01:15:17.700 And now the government is saying, get rid of 20% of your cows or 20% of your pigs.

01:15:22.800 This could be a huge help to them if they are able to sell animal tissue to cultivated

01:15:27.940 meat companies at a good price to combine those two types of farming, to on the one

01:15:33.340 hand provide animal cells to cultivated meat companies and on the other hand sell the meat

01:15:38.400 of their own animals as a sort of a luxury product after they've had a full and normal

01:15:42.940 life.

01:15:43.940 So these laws, you said they're being implemented by the government, but they have been around

01:15:50.180 a while and it's more being implemented from the European Union?

01:15:54.440 Well, the thing is, the European Union hasn't implemented them at all.

01:15:59.540 So they have been telling us for 30 years, every year, they've been writing a letter

01:16:03.060 to the Dutch government saying, you're not meeting the rules, you're not meeting the

01:16:06.680 rules.

01:16:07.680 But they haven't taken any action.

01:16:09.380 It's only since the Dutch Supreme Court ruled three years ago that the Dutch government was

01:16:16.400 not doing enough, that it forced the Dutch government into action to come up with a plan.

01:16:22.520 that plan is here now. It's a European rule, but Europe doesn't have the capability to enforce it,

01:16:29.700 and they haven't enforced it. It's the Dutch government that is now finally choosing to

01:16:34.300 enforce it. Okay. And I think I asked this before, but do you think it's reasonable to put such a

01:16:40.400 large exporter of meat under the same emission laws as other countries in Europe? Well, yeah,

01:16:48.620 that's what some of the farmers and some of the meat industry are arguing saying we have to follow

01:16:53.820 the same strict regulations but we produce so much more and we have so much less space

01:16:58.340 is it really fair well we should have argued that 30 years ago when we were making the rules

01:17:05.260 like we made this agreement and we haven't kept our word to our other european partners for 30

01:17:11.220 years so now if we go back to brussels and argue for leniency then the european commission will

01:17:16.820 say no like we haven't we haven't forced you to take action but we're also not going to make the

01:17:21.780 rules uh looser now i think another point which is sort of related to this is the question is it

01:17:29.480 fair to put it all on the farmers and there i think the answer is no because it's not just the

01:17:35.000 farmers there's a whole industry around it so if you look at just agriculture per se that's about

01:17:40.000 1.4 percent of the dutch economy but if you add up all of the companies that are working around

01:17:46.080 farmers. So the meat processing industry, the dairy processing industry,

01:17:50.620 supermarkets, slaughterhouses, animal feed companies, the companies that build

01:17:53.940 the technology. That's 6.4% of the economy, so that's a large sector.

01:17:59.280 And the banks, who give the loans to the

01:18:02.100 farmers, the big companies are making the most money. They have the

01:18:05.980 financial buffers to invest in a transition

01:18:09.780 to a form of agriculture that is less polluting and more animal friendly.

01:18:14.300 It's unreasonable to expect the farmers to do this all by themselves.

01:18:17.620 That's for sure.

01:18:20.860 Okay, let's see.

01:18:21.820 What else do I have to ask about this?

01:18:23.660 Do you think anything's going to come of the protests?

01:18:25.960 How long have they been going on?

01:18:28.360 So for four weeks, you see that they're becoming a bit less intense than when they started.

01:18:33.860 In the beginning, there were demonstrations outside parliament,

01:18:36.960 outside the home of the Minister of Nature policy.

01:18:40.740 There were death threats.

01:18:41.640 There were fires, there were riots.

01:18:44.900 Now it's mostly been peaceful protests, but they do continue.

01:18:49.660 The government has appointed a mediator in an attempt to meet with representatives of farmers to try to work out a solution.

01:19:00.700 The government has set national goals, but the provincial governments, or sort of the state governments,

01:19:07.060 they will have to implement the policy at a local level and translate those goals

01:19:12.100 into local policy. So deciding on a case-by-case basis which farms need to go, which farms need to

01:19:17.620 stay, which farms need to downsize. So there is a lot of room for flexibility over the next few

01:19:22.740 years to try to save as many farms as possible. But the government has been very clear that we

01:19:30.260 We are not going to reduce the goal of cutting emissions in half by 2030.

01:19:36.320 That's sort of set.

01:19:38.240 And then how to achieve it, there is room for flexibility.

01:19:41.980 And you talked about it a little bit, but can you describe again how it would be possible

01:19:48.920 to achieve this?

01:19:50.020 What flexibility is there other than shutting down some of these farms?

01:19:53.660 Yeah, so there are actually quite a lot of options.

01:19:57.820 So the possibility of relocating, imagine you're a farmer, you're situated right next

01:20:01.600 to a conservation area.

01:20:04.160 If you move two kilometers away, that could already make a big impact on the emissions

01:20:09.000 in that conservation area, because the emissions are pretty local.

01:20:12.880 There is technology, so there are machines which can capture the ammonia emissions from

01:20:17.520 the stables and recycle it, either into fertilizer or into a biogas.

01:20:23.820 That's expensive though, but the technology exists, so that could be a solution for quite

01:20:27.580 number of farms. There is cheaper technology to separate dung and urine so that less ammonia is

01:20:35.580 produced from the manure of animals in the first place. That also requires investments in the

01:20:41.180 stables, but there are many farmers who have already made those investments in the last, like,

01:20:45.900 10 years, and they have seen reductions. All of those things could add up. Farms that are currently

01:20:53.260 a hundred percent livestock farmers, they could also say, if they wanted to reduce by say 50%

01:20:59.900 and grow crops in addition to livestock farming, crops which might serve as animal feed,

01:21:05.900 they would probably need financial help to make it work, but that could also, that would

01:21:10.540 significantly reduce emissions and it would also improve the welfare of the animals and the health

01:21:15.740 of the animals, because currently we give them a lot of sort of synthetic food, because natural

01:21:21.260 food is more expensive biological or organic farming is still pretty small as a share of

01:21:29.420 overall farming it's like five percent but it is growing and that too is something that can help

01:21:34.940 because you have lower emissions from organic farming and the eu goal is to achieve 25 organic

01:21:42.300 farming in 2030 i kind of doubt we'll make that since we're coming from five percent to grow to

01:21:48.140 25% but growing towards that goal and there are many farmers who want to would help but again

01:21:55.020 that needs that their products will be more expensive so they will need financial help

01:21:58.820 to make that work. Okay so you said that 5 to 25% for organic farming which isn't

01:22:04.860 like basically 0 to 100 which is what happened in Sri Lanka. Well I think that's a bit of an

01:22:11.380 exaggeration, but it is a lot. It needs to increase by a lot in order to meet the EU

01:22:18.340 target. The interesting thing is the majority of farmers want to switch to organic farming

01:22:24.840 because they will require less fertilizer, less animal feed. They will use less pesticides,

01:22:33.680 less antibiotics for animals because they're healthier. And I think for a farmer, it's

01:22:39.080 more enjoyable to have fewer animals so that you can actually take more

01:22:43.880 individual care of them. But it is expensive and right now it doesn't look

01:22:49.580 like a majority of consumers are willing to pay that premium. So I think what

01:22:55.700 needs to happen is in that chain in between farmer and consumer all of those

01:22:59.840 companies which are taking out a little bit of the profit until the product

01:23:04.640 reaches the consumer, they all need to chip in. So the meat processing, the dairy processing

01:23:10.380 companies, the supermarkets, the logistics companies, the wholesalers, they all need to

01:23:17.660 accept a lower profit margin on organic products so that by the time it reaches the store,

01:23:23.540 the price difference between organic farming and the products that come out of the factory farming

01:23:27.900 is reduced. I think that's the way to make it work.

01:23:32.020 Is the government, so you said the government is offering money to farmers.

01:23:35.840 How is that getting into farmers' hands?

01:23:39.120 So that's like sort of a two-step level because the central government is giving money to the provincial governments

01:23:44.580 and then they will decide which farms can stay and which need to go.

01:23:48.160 And the ones that need to go will receive compensation based on the value of their land.

01:23:53.640 So it's just the value of their land at the time and that's the amount of money they get?

01:23:57.600 that also still needs to be worked out

01:24:00.460 because farmers are arguing

01:24:01.700 well that's fine

01:24:03.100 but I have 2 million euros in debt with the bank

01:24:05.280 so you can pay me for my land

01:24:08.840 but I need to pay off that loan

01:24:10.440 and then the government is saying

01:24:12.560 well we don't want all of that money

01:24:13.840 to eventually end up with the bank

01:24:15.900 which has been making all these loans

01:24:17.580 so that's another thing that needs to be

01:24:20.180 worked out in more detail

01:24:22.640 over the next few months

01:24:23.700 to make sure that farmers

01:24:25.260 actually get to keep that compensation.

01:24:28.520 It probably won't be 100% for all farmers,

01:24:32.660 especially if they have high debts and little land.

01:24:38.080 But it needs to be worked out in a way that is fair, obviously.

01:24:41.840 So part of the protests, I suppose,

01:24:43.680 are people who are concerned about bankruptcy.

01:24:45.680 Yes, absolutely.

01:24:47.340 And they're afraid of being left with huge debts with the bank.

01:24:52.140 the same bank that has been encouraging them to invest in larger stables in technology so their

01:25:00.260 debts have been growing in order to meet previous regulations for emissions for animal welfare so

01:25:05.860 you can imagine that the average farmer sort of feels uh sort of exhausted by this because they've

01:25:12.480 been trying and they have been doing their best to meet so many rules and regulations over the

01:25:17.820 last 20, 30 years. Now there's something else, and it could result in them losing their farm.

01:25:24.480 So I understand the frustration, but something also needs to be done, because we're just not

01:25:31.540 meeting our obligations, and we are not taking good care of our natural environment.

01:25:39.380 How do you feel about kind of the, I don't know whether or not it's propaganda or misinformation,

01:25:45.240 but other information that's been going out online regarding the farmers' protests.

01:25:50.080 I know there's been quite a bit in the U.S. kind of equating the farmers with, well,

01:25:58.480 the Canadian truckers, for example, or people fighting for freedom.

01:26:03.460 How much of that is true?

01:26:06.440 Well, I think that there is a commonality where you see sort of this divide in many

01:26:13.080 Western countries between the big city and the countryside. And people in more rural areas feel

01:26:17.980 that the people in charge, people in the government, they don't understand our way of life. They are

01:26:23.780 making these decisions over our heads. So I think that's a commonality. Although the Netherlands

01:26:29.920 is such a small country that the difference between city and countryside, I mean, if I take

01:26:34.080 a train from Amsterdam in an hour, I reach my parents' home, they live in the middle of the

01:26:39.320 countryside. If I take a train the other way in an hour, I'm in Belgium. So the difference between

01:26:44.940 city and countryside is much smaller here than in the US and Canada or even Spain or France.

01:26:50.620 But it does exist. There is a different way of life. And it doesn't help when politicians who

01:27:02.460 have been raised in the city, who live in a big city, who don't really know the countryside well,

01:27:09.320 need to make these decisions and the farmers they're the organizations which are meant to

01:27:15.220 represent them they have left the negotiations so you get a clash where the two sides aren't

01:27:25.540 talking with each other anymore and maybe that has something in common too like this sense of

01:27:30.460 alienation of not understanding each other like talking at a different level

01:27:34.560 So I think that there is a commonality with what's going on in other democracies.

01:27:42.480 I think you've mentioned this already, too, but what percentage of the meat industry or the dairy industry actually is exported versus just feeding people in Netherlands?

01:27:53.500 I don't remember exactly. I thought it was about 40 percent.

01:27:59.360 Okay, so quite a big chunk of it goes to other countries.

01:28:03.100 Yes, for sure.

01:28:04.620 And don't pin me down on the number.

01:28:07.220 Yeah, yeah.

01:28:08.400 But a lot for sure.

01:28:10.600 And if, as I mentioned, these reductions go through,

01:28:15.600 you would see a significant decrease in Dutch exports of dairy and meat.

01:28:20.780 Okay.

01:28:21.200 And people aren't worried about this causing food shortages,

01:28:25.040 or is that part of the concern?

01:28:27.320 No, because most of these products,

01:28:29.740 they're exported to germany to france to the uk and to belgium so these are not countries that

01:28:35.220 are going to starve just because we're able to sell them less yogurt and less sausages

01:28:39.820 now the concern i think is more with the livelihood of farmers and that some farms

01:28:46.640 will just relocate to these countries go to germany go to belgium set up farms there

01:28:52.720 And then you're also relocating the emissions.

01:28:58.680 So then Germany will have the same problem in a few years.

01:29:01.660 If they need to produce more of their own meat,

01:29:04.260 some of them will be Dutch farmers coming to Germany.

01:29:06.740 And then their emissions of ammonia will go up.

01:29:09.180 And then we have solved our problem,

01:29:10.920 but we have created a whole new problem for the Germans, for example.

01:29:14.660 Are there other countries in Europe that produce far under the amount of,

01:29:19.920 I guess, ammonia you're allowed to produce?

01:29:22.220 Well, yes, because it's not so much a total amount.

01:29:26.260 Although if you look at the total, the Netherlands has the highest emissions of ammonia per hectare in the EU.

01:29:32.660 But it's more the how much buffer do you have around it so that the conservation areas, nature, trees, water, the ground can absorb the amount of ammonia.

01:29:45.440 So we pollute so much ammonia in such a small country

01:29:48.140 that it's just too much for the plants,

01:29:51.000 for the quality of our soil to handle it.

01:29:54.460 This is why they don't have this problem in France

01:29:56.780 or in Germany or in Spain,

01:29:58.060 because they have a farm industry

01:29:59.820 that is sort of the same size as ours,

01:30:02.120 but much more land.

01:30:04.060 So the emissions spread out.

01:30:07.320 Okay, that all makes sense.

01:30:09.660 Let me see.

01:30:10.500 Do I have any other questions here?

01:30:11.920 I think that pretty much covered it.

01:30:18.540 Is there anything else you want to mention about what's going on?

01:30:24.300 Well, there's sort of political implications, obviously, for the government.

01:30:29.620 So we have a coalition government of center-left and center-right parties,

01:30:34.560 so they're pretty much in the middle.

01:30:37.120 And they're in an impossible situation,

01:30:40.420 Because on the one hand, they need the support of left-wing parties, because they don't have

01:30:44.600 a majority, who want to go further or want to go fast.

01:30:49.200 On the other hand, the ruling Christian Democrats and the ruling Liberal Party, and Liberal

01:30:54.560 is a center-right party here, they have a lot of supporters in the countryside.

01:30:59.780 So they feel resistance from their own voters, from their own provincial deputies, saying

01:31:06.560 this is too much for us, this is going to cost us votes in the next election.

01:31:11.340 But if they make concessions, then the left-wing parties, whom they also need, will withdraw their support or force the government to resign.

01:31:21.520 So it's sort of an impossible situation for the parties in the middle.

01:31:25.060 Whatever they do, they will be unpopular.

01:31:27.920 Yeah, that's for sure.

01:31:28.960 um um what do you think about the kind i don't know exactly what to call it but the idea going

01:31:36.100 around that this is just the government stealing land under the guise of ammonia reduction no that's

01:31:42.760 that's like going one step too far the government does need land to build houses because we also

01:31:49.640 have a huge housing shortage in the country about 300 000 but you don't need that much land to build

01:31:55.960 houses like half of the Netherlands is agricultural lands if you just take one

01:31:59.280 percentage of that you would have enough land to build 300,000 homes the

01:32:04.060 problems is with the permitting so the court case that happened three years

01:32:10.060 ago where the Dutch Supreme Court said that the government is not doing enough

01:32:14.140 to reduce ammonia emissions or nitrogen emissions of which ammonia are part that

01:32:20.560 That put on hold all of the construction permits, because when you build a road or a house or

01:32:27.640 whatever, you also release a little bit of nitrogen.

01:32:30.480 And the judges said, you are already releasing too much nitrogen, you can't emit more.

01:32:35.800 So in the last three years, we have barely been able to build homes.

01:32:40.100 So we need to solve this problem in order to start this permitting process again, so

01:32:46.260 we can build roads, so we can build houses, so companies can expand.

01:32:50.500 So in that sense, there is a link between the farm crisis and the housing crisis.

01:32:55.660 Interesting.

01:32:56.760 Okay.

01:32:58.080 Interesting.

01:32:58.900 Okay.

01:32:59.340 Well, I think that answers all the questions I had.

01:33:02.040 If people want to read more about this, is there anywhere they can go online?

01:33:06.340 Well, they should go to my website.

01:33:08.260 They can go to AtlanticSentinel.com.

01:33:10.140 That's my blog.

01:33:11.340 And there has been some coverage in the international press about this as well, but not that much, surprisingly,

01:33:17.860 because I think it actually has implications globally.

01:33:21.520 Like to me, we have sort of reached the limits

01:33:24.320 of factory farming in the Netherlands.

01:33:26.400 So I think that's a warning to other countries

01:33:28.520 which are on that same trajectory

01:33:29.880 that if you don't do anything,

01:33:31.720 you'll be in the same situation we are

01:33:33.360 in 10 or 20 years from now.

01:33:35.520 So I hope there will be more interest

01:33:36.900 and I'm sure your show will help

01:33:38.820 to generate more interest in the topic.

01:33:41.260 Hopefully, yes.

01:33:42.900 Okay, well, thank you very much for coming on.

01:33:45.300 I'll link your blog in the description

01:33:47.360 if anybody's interested in checking it out.

01:33:49.300 But thank you again.

01:33:50.880 Thank you so much.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - August 04, 2022

156. Opposing Views： Dutch Farm Crisis ｜ Michael Yon & Nick Ottens

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