The making of regressive rural populism in the Netherlands

This research aims to unpack the underlying reasons for the populist farmers’ protests and the 2023 electoral win of the right-wing farmers’ party (BBB) in The Netherlands by asking how and with what outcome the interactions among farmers, agro-industry, and electoral politics have shaped a protest coalition in response to the government’s nitrogen reduction proposals. It does so by focusing on the mechanisms behind the making of regressive rural populism to explain how farmers call for reproduction of an industrial agricultural system that simultaneously causes environmental and climate degradation and further exploitation of the farmer. Through ethnographic research with farmers across The Netherlands this paper argues that decades of rural abandonment, transformation of the countryside by industrial agriculture, and social differentiation of the farmer have created fertile breeding ground for rural populism. The influence of the agro-industry in media, research, education, and the reinforcement of the farmer as both the steward of the countryside and a successful entrepreneur, upholds the intertwining of agro-industry with farmers. The upholding of cultural hegemony aided by the agro-industry results in the disregarding of the differences among most farmers in favor of a unified protest coalition. In the end, the Dutch case shows not only the effects of a right-wing rural populist coalition shaped by the role of agrocapital, but the risk of what happens when farmers are weaponized against sustainable food-system transitions by those actors which benefit mostly from the current system. As a conclusion this research presents buildings blocks to untangle the complicated marriage between farmer and agro-industry using the framework of food sovereignty.