The initial goal of FDF was to help farmers who are “confronted with the excesses of environmental extremists.” In the meantime, the action group prefers to explain it more broadly: standing up for the interests of the farmer in the broadest sense, which is currently nitrogen.
The language that FDF and their supporters use is robust and provocative. The farmers must, according to the organization, play the angry bull, because “otherwise nothing will be achieved”. Van Maanen: “If nothing is wrong, a bull is quietly eating grass in the country. We would be sweetest, but the situation is not like that now.”
“The action group makes itself heard and does it firmly,” says political reporter Lars Geerts. “Normally you then go around the table together and work towards a solution. What the FDF does is escalate, for example through threatening texts on banners or want to determine who the minister will talk to or not. That makes it for politics difficult to continue the conversation. “
Going in an unorthodox way
So the ‘farmers defense force’ often uses strong terms. For example, they warned other parties not to talk to the cabinet this week. “Anyone who betrays the sector now will know that,” they wrote in a press release. After which Prime Minister Rutte and Minister Schouten broke off the conversation with farmers’ organizations.
An earlier debate in the Provincial States of Noord-Brabant also compared the treatment of farmers with the situation of Jews in World War II.
Tactics. That admits FDF. “We take care of the unorthodox way of going. We go straight with it and that sometimes goes too fast. But where is the limit? Nobody knows.” Board member Van Maanen is therefore happy to compare the Farmers Defense Force with Greenpeace. “They are also more activist than other environmental clubs, I recognize that in our action group.”
And that seems to be appealing: tens of thousands of farmers support the action group and the different approach to discussions with policymakers. Farmers’ organizations have been sitting at the meeting table since time immemorial. But according to the FDF the farmers are “after 30 years of poldering now in the vice” and they want to get out of there.
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