Why Canadians should pay attention to the Dutch farmers protest

Strict new targets for fertilizer emissions have Dutch farmers fighting back, saying they will be forced to close. While, Canada’s targets are not nearly as aggressive, they have been poorly explained and may be badly implemented, causing a lot of fear among Canadian farmers worried they won’t be able to care for their crops.

That fear is being preyed upon by the so-called Freedom Convoy here, who would like to stoke anger against the government, and radicalize Canadians towards their ideology.

Today, we make sense of the difference between the emissions targets, the fear of fertilizer restrictions and the bad actors taking advantage of it.

Kelvin Heppner is the field editor at Real Agriculture. He’s also a farmer near Altona, Manitoba, and he’s covered Canada’s fertilizer emissions reduction plan.

“There’s this large gap of unknown and uncertainty of how we’re going to hit this 2030 target, where we’re at today versus where the government wants us to be by 2030, that gap has left room for people to fill in the blanks ” he said.

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