Peter Loeters, his wife Maartje and their two young children stand forlornly outside the family's small farmhouse. A few yards away is an empty barn, padlocked for nearly a year, which once housed 40, egg-laying hens. That was until Peter's permit to keep animals on his own land was abruptly withdrawn by the Dutch state, swiftly shutting down his farm and pitching him into near bankruptcy. He had become the latest victim of a draconian scheme by the Dutch government to overhaul agriculture in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gases and, supposedly, protect national nature reserves foisted on Holland by the European Union.
Peter Loeters, 45, with his wife Maartje and their two children. Their farm faces closure under new government initiatives in the Netherlands. A tractor demonstration in November Citizens are fighting back against the net-zero obsession, beloved of the EU and Holland's 'green' coalition government. My farm is closed. The hens are gone. We have lost our money. My wife cries a lot, we are both stressed and the children know something is wrong. Yet an unconventional saviour may be coming to the family from a remarkable new political movement sweeping Holland, bringing with it lessons extending far beyond this small country.
It could, in time, transform the fortunes of Peter, 45, as well as the lives of the many farmers who tend Holland's 53, farms and smallholdings.
Just 11 days ago an astonishing victory by a fledgling populist party, the Farmer-Citizen Movement BBB , turned Dutch politics on its head overnight.
In a shock result after a huge turnout, the BBB — the BoerBurgerBeweging — became the biggest party in the influential Dutch Senate the upper house , winning a fifth of the seats. Demonstrators attend a rally in Amsterdam in July The BBB has risen on the back of a people's revolution convulsing this normally peaceable nation. Farmers from the Netherlands join Belgian farmers with their tractors to block traffic on a road in the centre of Brussels in March It was an astounding success given that the party was launched only in as a farmers' protest movement.
