Thousands of Dutch farmers block roads in protest against emissions targets

Thousands of farmers gathered in the central Netherlands on Wednesday to protest the Dutch government’s plans to rein in emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia.

They drove their tractors across the country, blocking traffic on major highways in their wake. 

The protest was organised earlier this month after the government published nationwide targets for reducing emissions, sparking anger from farmers who claim their livelihoods — and those of thousands of people who work in the agricultural service industry — are on the line.

Calling it an “unavoidable transition,” the government mandated reductions in emissions of up to 70 per cent in many places close to protected nature areas and as high as 95 per cent in other places. 

The government has been forced to act after courts in recent years began blocking permits for infrastructure and housing projects because the country was missing its emissions targets.

Organisers said some 40,000 farmers converged on a green field in the small agricultural village of Stroe, about 70 kilometres east of the capital, Amsterdam. A stage was set up for speakers to address the crowd and music blared out of speakers while children bounced in a giant inflatable pig.

Farmers hooted their tractors’ horns as they drove onto the field, where a banner on a truck read, in Dutch, “What The Hague chooses is deeply sad for the farmer”, a reference to lawmakers in the city that houses the Netherlands’ parliament. Another banner on a tractor said: “We can no longer be stopped.”

Marijn van Heun, a 23-year-old dairy farmer from the central Utrecht province, said the government plans were stripping young farmers of their futures.

“We cannot invest. Our fathers, our uncles, cannot invest in the future. And so as