

This is correct. However, many websites/newspapers/magazines/etc. love to get more clicks with sensational headlines that are technically true, but can be easily interpreted as something much more sinister/exciting. This headline is a great example of it. While you interpreted it correctly, or claim to at least, there will be many people that initially interpret it the second way you described. Me among them, admittedly. And the people deciding on the headlines are very much aware of that. Therefore, the headline can absolutely be deemed misleading, for while it is absolutely a correct statement, there are less ambiguous ways to phrase it.








The “poorness” isn’t as much of a talking point here afaik, but more to do with the reduction of livestock farming. Long story short, a lot of our soil is currently used for agriculture, which means we have a lot of nitrogen emissions, mostly from fertilizers. The only viable solution is to vastly reduce our livestock (with proposals going so far as to halve it). Unfortunately, the farmers don’t like this, so they blocked the roads and brought manure into cities.
Now I should stress that I am absolutely in favour of halving our livestock, but the farmers here were also really fucked over in some regards. Big banks, predominantly the Rabobank, pressured farmers to take on big loans to build even bigger stables for livestock, knowing full well that this was coming. They are counting on the government to help out the farmers, which means a lot of taxpayer money for them. There are many farmers that behave like assholes, going so far as to intimidate politicians at their homes, so I have little sympathy for them. But I cannot deny that the situation was not entirely of their own making.