Dutch farmers are taking to the highways in massed protests against nitrogen plans, Jelle Feenstra reports.
In the Netherlands, farmers are at war with the government. Farmers take to the streets en masse with their tractors. They block roads, supermarket distribution centres and stand on the doorsteps of politicians. They are protesting against the threat of halving their livestock numbers.
The direct reason for the actions are the nitrogen plans of the Dutch government. It wants to significantly reduce nitrogen emissions around 162 nature reserves and is allocating €25 billion ($NZ41.6b) for this. Measures for industry and transport will follow, but it is clear the livestock sector must make a significant contribution to nitrogen reduction. According to a calculation by the National Institute for the Environment, 40% of the nitrogen precipitation on nature reserves comes from livestock farming.
The government plans are causing great confusion. Many farmers, especially in the south and east of the Netherlands, where there are many nature reserves, have to halve their livestock numbers to comply with environmental regulations. According to the proposed nitrogen policy, farmers close to nitrogen-sensitive nature reserves should even quit completely. These are businesses that have been in families for generations. The government threatens to expropriate dairy farms if they do not want to cooperate in the buyout.
Farmers emotional and furious
The farmers are furious, for several reasons. There is great doubt, for example, whether nature really suffers so much from nitrogen. They also doubt that farmers are responsible for 40% of nitrogen emissions. In addition, the standards the Netherlands uses for the amount of nitrogen a nature reserve can have, are many times stricter than in all other European countries.
The standards are so stringent that even if all farmers disappear from the Netherlands, they will still not be met.
The agricultural sector also points out that many proposals have already been made to achieve nitrogen reduction, also in the short term. But these have not been adopted by the government. There is little space for technical innovations, while this is allowed in industry, aviation and traffic. As a result, farmers feel not taken seriously and treated unequally.
More farmers commit suicide
The lack of policy based on facts in combination with a total lack of discussion, participation and future perspective is now leading to strong emotions and protests. The unrest and uncertainty has surged in the Netherlands for a few years now. The suicide rate among Dutch farmers has been alarmingly high.
In the meantime, more and more citizens are joining the protest, because they believe the Dutch government does not listen to the people on other fronts as well. They suspect a double agenda, in which the government is not out to improve nature, but is out to acquire cheap farmland for housing. They fear the whole of the Netherlands will be filled with cities, roads and parks full of windmills and solar panels and that there will be hardly any space left for food production. Many farmers, especially in the south and east of the Netherlands, where there are many nature reserves, have to halve their livestock numbers to comply with environmental regulations. Political opposition parties are fiercely opposed to government policy. They mainly describe the nitrogen problem as a paper problem. While hard clashes are taking place between police and farmer protesters in various places, the government wants to deploy a mediator who should calm things down a bit.
- Jelle Feenstra is an agrijournalist for Dutch pressbureau Langsdemelkweg.
