How many Canadians are aware of the massive protests taking place around the world today? Or if you are aware of the protests, do you know what’s at the root of the upheaval? No matter how much faith you have in our legacy media you will have to admit even if you agree with the way they present information, they do seem to completely leave out some really important issues altogether.
Granted, there’s so much going on the shear amount of upheaval taking place around the globe is certainly hard to keep up with. This simple meme adapted from a photo of the leaders of the G8 taken just a couple of weeks ago shows that British leader Boris Johnson and Italian leader Mario Draghi are already gone and asks “Who is next?”
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Considering the war in Ukraine, the fall of Boris Johnson, and our own inflation maybe it’s no surprise we find little ‘mainstream’ information out there about the farmer protests. But these are far too important for us to ignore. At least two nations are undergoing demonstrations that make Canada’s Freedom Convoy appear quaint in comparison. In the Netherlands, tens of thousands of farmers have been protesting, sometimes violently for months now. In Sri Lanka discontent has been ramping up since the springtime. While issues as diverse as inflation and the war in Ukraine are sited as causes, the root of the unrest in both countries comes down to the way their governments are treating farmers.
In the short videos and articles shared below, we set out to give you a much better understanding of what is happening, and most importantly, why.
“Zijn er ook boeren?” shouted Mick Jagger, in Dutch, into the microphone at a Rolling Stones concert in the Netherlands last week. “Are there any farmers in the house?”
Dutch farmers make for an unlikely cause célèbre. For starters, most are conservative, not liberal. And they are fighting against stricter environmental regulations, not for them.
Yet they are winning over liberal-minded people like me who sympathize with the family farmers who provide us with our daily bread and yet receive so little respect from society’s ruling elites.
And now they’re inspiring protests by other farmers across Europe, including in Germany, Poland and Italy. Along with the protests that brought down the government of Sri Lanka, they constitute a growing global revolt against green elites.
I have praised the current Dutch government for being sensible on matters like climate change. Last year it embraced nuclear energy, one of the first Western nations to do so since the 2011 Fukushima accident spooked the world.
But the government’s poor treatment of its farmers has shocked me. The prime minister recently called the protesting farmers “a – – holes,” and sniffed, “It is not acceptable to create dangerous situations.” And yet it was a Dutch police officer, not a farmer, who inexplicably fired on a 16-year-old boy driving a tractor. Luckily, he wasn’t injured.
While nitrogen pollution worsens climate change, the government says its main motivation for reducing it is about protecting its nature areas. Scientists say that in 118 of 162 of the Netherlands’ nature preserves nitrogen deposits are 50% higher than they should be.
Without a doubt the Dutch should do more to protect their nature areas. The country produces four times more nitrogen pollution than the European average, due to its intensive animal agriculture.
The Netherlands is the largest exporter of meat in Europe and the second largest exporter of food overall after the United States, a remarkable feat for a nation half the size of Indiana. Food exports generate more than $100 billion a year in revenue. Experts attribute the nation’s success to its farmers’ embrace of technological innovation.
But even many on the political left say the government demands are too extreme, based on radical green fantasies and dodgy science. “It seems to be very fast,” saidWim de Vries, a professor at Wageningen University and Research who 10 years ago made alarmist claims about “planetary boundaries.”
What, exactly, is going on?
Michael Shellenberger is the author of “Apocalypse Never” and a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment.”
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The situation in Sri Lanka is even more volatile where food shortages are already affecting 1 in 5 people and threatening the majority of the remaining population. The situation this week turned extremely dangerous as massive crowds forced the President to resign. More on that below.
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COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera on Saturday was jeered by a group of farmers who protested his visit to an agriculture-related programme in Tissamaharama, a town situated in the country’s southern province in Hambantota district, forcing him to flee the premises.
Amaraweera visited the Tissamaharama Divisional Secretariat on Saturday to attend an agriculture-related programme.
Upon his arrival, a group of angry locals, consisting mostly of farmers, gathered opposite the local government body and staged a protest, according to web portal newsfirst.lk.
When the minister attempted to inquire, chaos broke out forcing the minister to flee the premises, the report added.
Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown has taken a severe toll on the agricultural sector.
A blanket ban on the use of chemical fertilisers imposed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in April 2021 has caused a crippling blow to rice production in the country.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has predicted that by September this year, around four to five million out of the country’s 22 million population could be directly affected by food shortage.
In such a grim scenario, farmers across the island nation have been forced to abandon their fields.
Earlier this week, the Cabinet also approved a move to grant government officials one leave per week for the next three months to engage in agriculture to mitigate the approaching food crisis.
The Sri Lanka Army will also take part in a farming drive aimed at cultivating over 1,500 acres of barren or abandoned state land to multiply food production and avert any shortage in the future, newsfirst.lk reported.
Sri Lanka which is facing its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.
The economic crisis has led to an acute shortage of essential items like food, medicine, cooking gas, fuel and toilet paper, with Sri Lankans being forced to wait in lines for hours outside stores to buy fuel and cooking gas.
The nearly bankrupt country, with an acute foreign currency crisis that resulted in foreign debt default, announced in April that it is suspending nearly USD 7 billion foreign debt repayment due for this year out of about USD 25 billion due through 2026.
Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt stands at USD 51 billion.
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This week massive crowds stormed the Presidential Secretariat and then the Presidential House resulting in the President leaving the country and stepping down.
Alberta’s government continues to attract investment and grow the provincial economy.
The province’s inviting and tax-friendly business environment, and abundant agricultural resources, make it one of North America’s best places to do business. In addition, the Agri-Processing Investment Tax Credit helps attract investment that will further diversify Alberta’s agriculture industry.
Beretta Farms is the most recent company to qualify for the tax credit by expanding its existing facility with the potential to significantly increase production capacity. It invested more than $10.9 million in the project that is expected to increase the plant’s processing capacity from 29,583 to 44,688 head of cattle per year. Eleven new employees were hired after the expansion and the company plans to hire ten more. Through the Agri-Processing Investment Tax Credit, Alberta’s government has issued Beretta Farms a tax credit of $1,228,735.
“The Agri-Processing Investment Tax Credit is building on Alberta’s existing competitive advantages for agri-food companies and the primary producers that supply them. This facility expansion will allow Beretta Farms to increase production capacity, which means more Alberta beef across the country, and around the world.”
“This expansion by Beretta Farms is great news for Lacombe and central Alberta. It not only supports local job creation and economic growth but also strengthens Alberta’s global reputation for producing high-quality meat products. I’m proud to see our government supporting agricultural innovation and investment right here in our community.”
The tax credit provides a 12 per cent non-refundable, non-transferable tax credit when businesses invest $10 million or more in a project to build or expand a value-added agri-processing facility in Alberta. The program is open to any food manufacturers and bio processors that add value to commodities like grains or meat or turn agricultural byproducts into new consumer or industrial goods.
Beretta Farms’ facility in Lacombe is a federally registered, European Union-approved harvesting and meat processing facility specializing in the slaughter, processing, packaging and distribution of Canadian and United States cattle and bison meat products to 87 countries worldwide.
“Our recent plant expansion project at our facility in Lacombe has allowed us to increase our processing capacities and add more job opportunities in the central Alberta area. With the support and recognition from the Government of Alberta’s tax credit program, we feel we are in a better position to continue our success and have the confidence to grow our meat brands into the future.”
Alberta’s agri-processing sector is the second-largest manufacturing industry in the province and meat processing plays an important role in the sector, generating millions in annual economic impact and creating thousands of jobs. Alberta continues to be an attractive place for agricultural investment due to its agricultural resources, one of the lowest tax rates in North America, a business-friendly environment and a robust transportation network to connect with international markets.
Canada’s Bee Apocalypse began in 2008. That was the year the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA) first reported unusually high rates of winter bee colony losses. At 35 percent, the winter die-off that year was more than twice the normal 15 percent rate of attrition.
“Successive annual losses at [these] levels … are unsustainable by Canadian beekeepers,” the CAPA warned. This set off an avalanche of dire media reports that now appear on a regular basis. Among the many examples over the years: Huge Honey Bee Losses Across Canada” and “Canada’s bee colonies see worst loss in 20 years”. As each of these stories reminds readers, the disappearance of honey bees will doom our food supply, given their crucial role in pollinating crops including canola, soyabeans, apples, tomatoes and berries.
This year the black-and-yellow striped Cassandras are back at work, with headlines shouting “Scientists warn of severe honeybee losses in 2025” and “The Bees are Disappearing Again”. If it’s spring, the bees must be disappearing. Again.
It is, however, mathematically impossible for any species to be in an allegedly continuous and calamitous state of decline over nearly two decades and never actually reduce in number. For despite the steady supply of grave warnings regarding their imminent collapse, Canada’s bees are actually buzzing with life.
In 2007, according to Statistics Canada, there were 589,000 honey bee colonies in Canada,; in 2024, they reached 829,000, just shy of 2021’s all-time high of 834,000. Figuring a conservative summertime average of 50,000 bees per colony, that means there are approximately 12 billion more honey bees in Canada today than when the Bee Apocalypse first hit.
As for beekeepers, their numbers have also been growing steadily, and now stand at 15,430 – the most recorded since 1988. As CAPA’s report acknowledges, “the Canadian beekeeping industry has been resilient and able to grow, as proven by the overall increase in the number of bee colonies since 2007 despite the difficulties faced every winter.”
How is this possible? As is usually the case where there’s a need to be filled, the market holds the answer.
It is true that Canadian honey bees face a long list of threats and challenges ranging from mites and viruses to Canada’s harsh winters. It is also true that they perform a crucial service in pollinating crops, the value of which is estimated at $7 billion annually. However, this underscores the fact that bees are a livestock bred for a particular agricultural purpose, no different from cattle, chickens or pen-raised salmon. They are a business.
And in spite of its alleged status as an environmental totem, the honey bee isn’t even native to North America. It was first imported by European settlers for its honey-making abilities in the 1600s. Since then, it has been cultivated with deliberate commercial intent – allowing it to outcompete native pollinators such as bumble bees and butterflies even though it is poorly suited to the local winter. (This highlights the irony of all those native-plant pollinator gardens virtuously installed in neighbourhoods across Canada that end up supporting an invasive honey bee population.)
The significance of the bee economy means that when a beehive collapses over the winter for whatever reason, beekeepers have plenty of motivation to regenerate that colony as swiftly as possible. While hives can create their own queens over time, this can be a slow process given the cold Canadian climate. The better option is to simply buy a new queen from a warmer country.
In 2024, Canada imported 300,000 queens worth $12 million, mostly from the U.S., Italy, Australia and Chile. That works out to $40 each. In a miracle of nature, each of these new queens can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day, and each egg takes just two to three weeks to reach full maturity as a worker or drone. It is also possible to import entire “bee packages” that include a queen and 8,000 to 10,000 bees.
As a result, even a devastating 50 percent winter loss rate, something that has occurred only rarely in Canada in individual provinces and never nationally, isn’t necessarily fatal to any beekeeping operation. The beekeeper can purchase imported queens in April, split their existing colonies and be back in business by May or June.
And regardless of the honey bee’s apparent difficulties with Canada’s unforgiving weather (efforts are ongoing to breed a hardier Canadian variant), there’s no shortage of bees worldwide. Earlier this year, the German statistical agency reported the global beehive count rose from 69 million in 1990 to 102 million in 2023. Another study looking back to 1961 by New Zealand researchers found the number of honey bee colonies has “nearly doubled” over this time, while honey production has “almost tripled.” As the New Zealand report observes, “Headlines of honey bee colony losses have given an
impression of large-scale global decline of the bee population that endangers beekeeping, and that the world is on the verge of mass starvation.” Such claims, the authors note, are “somewhat inaccurate.” In truth, things have never been better for bees around the world.
Here in Canada, the ability to import queens from other countries, together with their prodigious reproductive capabilities, backstops the amazing resiliency of the bee industry. Yes, bees die. Sometimes in large numbers. But – and this is the bit the headlines always ignore – they come back. Because the market needs them to come back.
If there is a real threat to Canada’s bee population, it’s not environmental. It’s the risk that unencumbered trade in bees might somehow be disrupted by tariffs or similar bone-headed human interventions. Left on their own, bees have no problem keeping busy.
The longer, original version of this story first appeared at C2CJournal.ca
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