Anti-farming policies could lead to a backlash from British farmers - GP Taylor

I was outraged when I watched an interview with a young eco-warrior who said the only way to stop climate change was to close every farm in the country.

Do some people not grasp or understand where our food comes from? What did the eco-warrior want? Food shipped in from overseas costing thousands of carbon miles with workers paid a pittance?

It is clear that British farmers are the target of the eco lobby and the government. Both have a misguided belief that farms are in some way responsible for climate change and that farting cows should be eliminated and we should all eat bugs or have a plant-based diet.

However, it is not just in Britain that some seek to destroy farming and turn the farms into rural theme parks that produce nothing other than wildflowers and re-wilding schemes.

In the Netherlands, a country whose farming practices are like our own, the government had plans to spend £21bn and buy up 3,000 farms, only to shut them down despite the country being the second largest exporter of agricultural goods and the third largest exporter of fruit and vegetables.

It is as if the Dutch government wants to destroy one of their leading industries just for the sake of nitrogen emissions and the pursuit of ridiculous, virtue signalling, climate policies.

Interestingly, here we see the difference between English and Dutch farmers.

You may not have seen any of this in the press or on TV, because somehow it has not been largely covered by the mainstream media in this country. Dutch farmers organised quickly and attempted to bring the country to a standstill in protest. Their mighty efforts were met with violence from the police to the point where in the province of Friesland, shots were fired at a farmer in a tractor.

Not daunted by this and with the support of the public, Dutch farmers formed their own political party that has recently won a significant electoral victory. This has meant the BBB as they are known, taking 15 seats of the 75 upper chamber, a victory that was seen as a resounding rebuke to Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ruling four-party coalition.

This political tidal wave, backed by many ordinary people, now gives power to farmers to fight for their rights to live and work the land as they have done for hundreds of years. It shows the establishment that they cannot run roughshod over the lives of people. Dutch people know what they have to do to keep food on the table.

Ordinary folk can only take so much and then they have had enough. Even though they may act like dictators, politicians must realise that they are in office through consent and they are our servants and not the other way round. Every one of them can and will be held to account at the ballot box.

If pressure on farmers in this country increases then I believe we will see the rise of civil disobedience as farmers grow increasingly more frustrated and copy their Dutch sisters and brothers.

Imagine, having a dairy farm and your animals being infected with TB spread by badgers and you lose your livelihood. Years of hard work thrown away and all because these creatures cannot be managed.

Dairy farmers in New Zealand have become the target for Greenpeace as the pressure group last week piled flood-damaged belongings on the front steps of a dairy cooperative owned by farmers. Greenpeace said it was because the dairy industry is NZ's biggest climate polluter. Why are food producers becoming the climate pariahs?

Farmers have managed the fields and forests of Yorkshire for hundreds of years. They are the hardworking people who have made this county beautiful. Surely, they should be allowed to manage their land in any way they can and not be hindered by a government obsessed with manipulation and control.

There are many government policies that could be seen as anti-farming, that, in this new era of food shortages should be immediately reversed.

The President of The National Farmers’ Union said that after a labour crisis, a controversial subsidy overhaul and a trade deal with Australia that is expected to cut into UK farm output, “the UK government’s energy and ambition for our countryside seems to be almost entirely focused on anything other than domestic food production”.

GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Yorkshire.