‘Netherlands Cannot Do Without Farmers’ Dutch King Declares in Meeting with Farmers

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands visited with disgruntled farmers on Thursday to hear their pleas for help as the globalist government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte attempts to institute EU-driven green agenda goals that could see up to a third of livestock farms in the country shut down.

The royal couple of the Netherlands toured the Deurne region on Thursday, where they met with representatives of the De Peel national park, which is one of the EU designated areas that the government of Mark Rutte wishes to impose nitrogen emission limits on.

The King and Queen were reportedly greeted by dozens of inverted Dutch flags hanging on the fences surrounding the park, a symbol of the farmer protest movement against the green agenda.

Voicing apparent support for the protest movement, King Willem-Alexander said: “The Netherlands cannot do without farmers. It’s not like, we have a problem and you have to solve it. It’s not us against them. The appreciation has to come again and it’s nice to be able to talk with you here.”

According to a report from the Omroep Brabant public broadcaster, the constitutional monarch’s words pleased many of the farmers present, with one farmer, Frank Rooijakkers saying: “I think he will really talk to Rutte in The Hague” on their behalf.

Explaining his situation to the King, Rooijakkers said: “I have a great interest in clarity. In June we will be told that the nitrogen must be halved. It is now September and there is still no clarity about how it should be tackled and that is not expected. We always have to think two steps ahead of political decisions.”

Pig farmer Henriette Driessen also voiced her concerns to the King, questioning if farmers like her are “still wanted in the Netherlands?”

“We have been working on reducing nitrogen in Brabant for a while, but I get the feeling that we are only being pushed back,” she said.

Another pig farmer from the area, John van Paassen, told the King that he was forced to shut down his business, saying: “You sign a piece of paper that you can never be a pig farmer again. That is very difficult.”

Since June, farmers throughout the Netherlands have staged large-scale protests with their tractors, blocking off highways and key infrastructure in response to plans from Prime Minister Mark Rutte to cut nitrogen emissions from livestock farms in half by the year 2030 in order to satisfy goals laid out in the European Union’s Natura 2000 scheme, which mandates that EU member-states remove industry or farming from areas deemed to be of ecological importance.

Rutte’s government has said that in order to meet the lofty goals, some farms will need to reduce their emissions by 95 per cent. The plans could see as much as 30 per cent of livestock farms forced to shut down.

Despite the widespread protests, the government has so far refused to budge from either its emissions cut target or its timeline of implementation to give farmers a chance to adapt to the changes.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka