The farmer was again cheerfully abused this week as the mascot of the extreme right, led by the somewhat unexpected messiah Caroline van der Plas. Especially since she has borrowed Baudet’s dog whistle and attributed the nitrogen problem one-on-one to the alleged housing needs of immigrants, the BakkenBradenBeweging is about the largest party in the Netherlands. The hordes, wearing peasants’ smocks, are chasing another new Pied Piper, this time one who also gives them pieces of cheese and sausage and who looks just as ordinary as themselves.
An underexposed element in the nitrogen problem and the imminent reduction of the livestock population is the perpetual property rights that some farmers believe they have. The farmer has been on his land for generations, so his descendants have a perpetual right to that property, with the accompanying job guarantee, many argue. The people romanticize the struggle of the peasantry as existential, as a struggle of the people against the elite. But in reality it is the other way around; a healthier living environment and a better distribution of the scarce space is in the interests of the people, while farmers as large landowners and entrepreneurs stand solely for their own interests.
Although the farmers often belong to the elite financially – the share of millionaires is 18.2 percent in agriculture, among dairy farmers as much as 43 percent are millionaires – culturally they do belong to the people. And that is what the people are content with today. It might be an idea for the Oranges: if Maxima and the princesses exchanged their blond hair for eggplant color with a wet look and had themselves photographed daily with bacon and hamburgers on the barbecue, the monarchy might be able to stretch for another generation.
The current romanticization of the farmer creates a distorted self-image, in which there is no room for self-reflection and self-relativity. They see themselves as the chosen ones, who should not be hindered in their divine task to provide us all with food. Meanwhile, even the most radical farmers, those of the FDF, have repeatedly admitted that their intimidation is just part of a vulgar negotiation strategy: they can be bought at the right price. It is not for nothing that ‘farmer’s smart’ is the way to describe handy businessmen in the Netherlands.
But times are changing, and the children of people who have owned a barge, forge, or tannery for generations have also started doing things differently. Some farmers will have to stop, others will continue. That’s nothing new; even during my school days in the countryside of Twente in the 1990s, there were constantly farmers who gave up. The farm sons and daughters in my class were almost all very smart, and without exception got nice jobs when they couldn’t take over their parents’ company.
Perpetual property is not a human right. The ability to acquire and hold property is. The right to leave behind property is not a human right. But more importantly: you can perfectly defend that people should be able to leave property and defend that there are limits to how much and what exactly can be left behind (untaxed). Just as it is justifiable that some farmers will have to stop, in the interest of the collective.
The peasant problem shows how little meritocratic the Netherlands is, and how widespread conservative dynasty thinking is. I would like to ask the many Dutch people who demand a gilt-edged and guaranteed future for their offspring how it is possible that they have so little confidence in the self-reliance of their own children?