THE WAR ON RURAL COMMUNITIES: Joel Kotkin: Energy Colonialism Will Worsen the Urban-Rural Divide.

In his drive to conquer China, Mao Zedong and his most famous general, Lin Biao, stoked “a peasant revolution” that eventually overwhelmed the cities. In those days, most Chinese toiled on the land, a vast manpower reservoir for the Communist insurgency. Today, in a world where a majority lives in urban settlements, such a strategy would be doomed to failure.

The small percentage of rural and small-town residents in most advanced countries — generally under 20 percent — lack the numbers to overwhelm the rest of society. Political and economic elites feel free to ignore the countryside, but they may find they do so at their peril. Although now a mere slice of the population, rural areas remain critical suppliers of food, fiber (like cotton), and energy to the rest of the economy.

Residents in agricultural areas have good reason to feel put upon. Their industries are often targeted by regulators and disdained by the metropolitan cognoscenti. They may not be hiding in the caves of Yan’an, but farming communities from the Netherlands to North America are rebelling against extreme government regulations, such as banning or restricting critical fertilizers or the enforced culling of herds. Meat and dairy producers are assaulted in a hysterical article in the New York Times that predicts imminent “mass extinction” caused by humans and suggests that to keep the planet from “frying” we will need to reduce meat and dairy consumption in short order.

This is occurring at a time — following decades of remarkable boosts in agricultural productivity — when food insecurity and high prices are again plaguing even wealthy countries but particularly the poorer countries in Africa. This shortfall has worsened, in part due to the Russia–Ukraine conflict, which has reduced the reliability of food exports from the Ukrainian bread basket, making Western production more critical.

Regardless, the inhabitants of the periphery — the vast area from the metropolitan fringe to the deepest countryside — and the farming that flourishes there will face an extraordinarily well-funded green movement that is now depicting “industrial farming” as one of the principal villains in their ever-expanding climate melodrama. Although greens may support the notion of small farmers using artisanal methods, and the wealthy certainly can afford the much higher food prices, niche farming cannot support most farming communities or provide ordinary consumers with reasonably priced groceries.

To be fair, that’s all part of the plan.

The rebellion brewing in the rural reaches may just be in its early phases. Residents in the periphery increasingly see themselves in the cross-hairs of urban interests, particularly by the climate-change policies driven by the ultra-rich and their lavishly funded nonprofits and urban activists. In Europe, where green policies, particularly those resulting in high fuel prices, have hit exurbanites and farmers hardest, they fought back in the gilets jaunes movement. Whether farmers or small commercial enterprises, the increase in the fuel price, part of the attempt to curb carbon emissions, was a direct assault on their future. Their slogan: “Les élites parlent de fin du monde, quand nous, on parle de fin du mois.” “The elites speak of the end of the world while we speak about the end of the month.”

Similarly, the famously efficient Dutch farmers are protesting the government’s attempt to impose emission reductions on agriculture and ban chemical fertilizers. Recently, they have been joined by their Spanish, Polish, and Italian counterparts. Although hardly the peasants of Mao’s era, theirs is largely a class protest against the well-to-do and connected who claim environmental piety by paying “green” indulgences through carbon credits and other virtue-signaling devices, while imposing “enlightened” policies that devastate the less well-off.

Environmentally focused governments are concentrating on reducing agricultural production. There’s a certain irony in the fact that this will hit farmers in the Netherlands, a model of efficiency, both agriculturally and in terms of emissions reduction. Up to 3,000 farms will be closed. In the next few decades, the total of closures could reach 11,000, while another 17,000 might have to cut back their livestock. And there are plenty more examples of cutbacks planned for elsewhere in the EU.

Again, that’s all part of the plan. Making ordinary people’s lives worse isn’t an unfortunate side effect of these policies. It’s the goal of these policies.