DUTCH voters went to the polls in crucial regional elections today with a new party of angry farmers posing a challenge to Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his environmental plans.

Opinion polls show the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, or BBB) is set to ride a wave of recent protests to second or even first place in the elections, which determine the composition of the Dutch senate.

The farmers have also won international support from figures, including former US president Donald Trump, as they battle plans to slash livestock numbers and even close some farms in order to cut nitrogen emissions.

A strong showing would mean the farmers could ally with other parties in the senate to block Rutte’s legislation on nitrogen, a greenhouse gas blamed for polluting air and water.

The first exit polls are expected after the polls close at 9pm (2000 GMT).

The BBB was only founded in 2019 and has just one MP, but it has tapped into a strain of populist, anti-elite feeling in the Netherlands, mainly at the expense of Rutte’s ruling coalition.

Rutte, the Netherlands’ longest serving leader who has been in power since 2010, said he has “hope” the four-party coalition led by his centre-right VVD party can solve problems, including the farm plans.

The premier told Dutch television at the weekend that the coalition has “always been prepared to take responsibility under difficult circumstances” and dismissed speculation he could quit.

But farmers in the Netherlands – a nation of nearly 18 million that is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States – say the government has ignored them.

“We don’t really feel heard,” Erik Stegink, national president of the BBB and a pig farmer himself, told AFP.

“Sometimes we don’t even feel welcome in our own country anymore.”

Farmer protests

The farmers’ protests and their symbol of an upside-down Dutch flag have attracted global attention, blockading highways, dumping manure on roads and rallying noisily outside politicians’ houses.

Thousands of farmers rallied in The Hague on Saturday.

The Dutch government aims to reduce nitrogen emissions by 50% by 2030, saying that fertilisers and manure from agriculture are particularly to blame.

It says it must comply with a Dutch court order, adding that it had breached EU rules on nitrogen emissions affecting soil and water.

The court order put a halt to large construction projects in the Netherlands, which also emit nitrogen, and which in turn fuelled an already difficult housing crisis in the densely populated country.

The farmers say they are being unfairly targeted by the still unfinalised proposals compared to sectors such as industry and transport.

The plans have also been seized on by the global far-right, who allege, without evidence, a sinister “globalist” plot to rob farmers of their land.

But opinion polls show that the Dutch far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD) party, which won the last provincial elections in 2019, is set for losses this time.

FvD leader Thierry Baudet has in recent years pushed Covid-sceptic conspiracies and said he hoped “hero” Russian President Vladimir Putin wins the war in Ukraine. – AFP, March 15, 2023.