The Netherlands has been in the throes of a pitched battle between the government and its farmers. The government there declared that it wanted to reduce nitrogen oxide and ammonia, which come from the waste of livestock. This decision was based on climate dogma and not on what is actually practical for the farmers and the Netherlands as a whole.

The farmers’ first salvo was on June 22, when 40,000 of them clogged the roadways to form a protest convoy. Then the Dutch farmers took to their tractors and trucks and parked them outside supermarkets and other stores that sell their hard-earned wares as a protest against the Netherlands’ new rules limiting the aforementioned pollutants, nitrogen oxide and ammonia. The protests are still ongoing, as farmers try to bring the idealists back to reality before they shoot the country’s considerable agriculture economy in the foot.

Sadly, Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have decided to take the same tack against Canadian farmers. In a meeting with the heads of the Western provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Trudeau announced that he was putting a cap on how much fertilizer farmers were allowed to use.

It’s not surprising that Trudeau would flex his governmental muscles to seek to control something he has no idea about. Previously, he picked on the Canadian truckers for protesting his onerous and anti-scientific COVID mandates. Now he’s singling out his nation’s farmers.

It’s a dangerous proposition to distrust those who produce the food we eat. Many of them have been doing this their whole lives; some families have been farming for generations. They know what works and what doesn’t.

In its utopian arrogance, the Canadian government believes that the business of farming just hasn’t been done right. Its attitude is that these farmers can either acquiesce and adapt or watch their livelihoods die.

The Alberta-Saskatchewan press release voiced the devastation that this dictate has imposed on their people: “Provinces pushed the federal government to discuss this important topic, but were disappointed to learn that the target is already set. The commitment to future consultations [is] only to determine how to meet the target that Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Bibeau have already unilaterally imposed on this industry, not to consult on what is achievable or attainable.”

It really is crazy, the actions the Netherlands and Canada are taking, especially considering what has happened in Sri Lanka and Germany. They are the poster children for central planning, and for the disastrous mandating of green practices without sufficient adaptations to scaffold what they were seeking to replace.

But this is hardly surprising. After all, the leaders of these countries have all been heavily influenced by the World Economic Forum. This gathering is led by economist (or Bond villain) Klaus Schwab, who has for years been pushing the ideology of an economic “Great Reset.” Like a spider, Schwab’s web of influence is global. Leaders and celebrities of the world, he claims, should be the ones to guide the course of the planet. “The future is being built by us” is the precise phrase that Schwab uttered at the most recent Davos conference.

In fact, plenty of the fruits of the poisonous tree are linked to this elitist gathering. As our Douglas Andrews recently observed, “World leaders … keep using terms like ‘sustainability’ and ‘saving the planet’ and ‘Green New Deal’ and ‘Build Back Better.’ Even the term ‘social justice’ is tethered to this movement.” Suffice it to say that this is not a group that has the world’s best interests at heart. And yet its influence is pervading the conversations globally and failing spectacularly.

We will wait with bated breath to see what the Canadian farmers do, while hoping and praying that sanity will be restored before the Canadians are faced with Sri Lanka-type devastation.