A former contestant on TV reality show “Farmer Wants a Wife,” who went on to marry the dairy farmer she met on the program, is set to become the next agriculture minister in the Netherlands government as far-right populist leader Geert Wilders fills cabinet posts in his four-party coalition.
Femke Wiersma, a 39-year-old regional official in Friesland, is a founding member of the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) — a protest party launched in 2019 that turned Dutch politics on its head when it came from nowhere to win provincial elections in March 2023.
The BBB will fill the top two jobs at a rebranded Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature, with retired agriculture official Jean Rummenie, 71, serving as state secretary, according to news reports.
