100,000 people join every year. Are they nitrogen and climate neutral, unlike the Dutch cow?

Desert

We live in the countryside where the farmers and their livestock have to disappear. Green lawns with grazing cows and waving cornfields have to make way for homes, industry, roads, hectares full of solar panels, windmills and even more barren nature.

They call it nature, but let’s call it desert. That’s it, because no more trees are allowed to grow there. We have already seen this clear-cutting in the Peel, where hundreds of hectares have been cleared in the name of nature conservation. Now nothing grows and people find it strange that biodiversity has been damaged. Something that everyone with common sense understands.

Meanwhile, 100,000 people are added every year. Are they nitrogen and climate neutral, unlike the Dutch cow?

Who knows may say.
Monique DaemenRijsbergen

dead letter

The farmers took action almost immediately after the nitrogen measures were announced. After that, the VVD congress received a lot of criticism of the announced measures. If the measures are not adjusted by this government, which I would personally welcome, there is a risk of a complete peasant revolt.

In our polder country this will probably lead to the measures being seriously weakened, and will become a law with a dead letter. And that means sky-high fines from Brussels. Too bad, but unfortunately, that’s how it usually goes in this country when it comes to measures for the benefit of nature.
Maaike van GilstAnimals

cries

The cabinet has presented its nitrogen plans. The (farmers’) reactions to this are easy to guess: tractors will steam up to the Malieveld again and the ministers involved will receive unwanted visitors in their front yards. Cries like ‘No farmer, no food’ and ‘What about the food supply?’ will be reinstated. And those cries are actually only harrowing: where real famine threatens, they are not waiting for Dutch butter, cheese and eggs, but for grain from Ukraine.
Pierre DaanenAmsterdam

clear cut

To my great horror, the calculation of the new nitrogen measures shows that the total livestock population will shrink by 30%: of the 100 million chickens only 70 million will remain, of the 12 million pigs only 8.4 million and of the 4 million cows only 2.8 million.

How will this clear-cutting reach the carnivorous Netherlands? She gets stressed and thinks: how do I still get my daily piece of meat on my plate? I wish them the best of luck with this processing process. Luckily I don’t have that problem, because I’m a vegetarian.
Hans van der MeerWestmaas

Pinch off

Weird that we have fair trade products to give producers elsewhere a better price and that we are pinching the farmer in our own country. If the farmers have better margins, for example, they can scale down their livestock and still earn a good living.
John den BestenSouth Beijerland

harass

The activist who stood in front of the house of minister Sigrid Kaag with a burning torch at the beginning of January, has been jailed for six months. What do you think will happen to the farmers who attack Minister Christianne van der Wal with their huge tractors because of the nitrogen plans?
Gerard MensinkVleuten

Sore spot

Have a chat with a farmer. Ask how many animals he had ten years ago and now. Ask if that growth came from himself. Talking like this, the causes of the nitrogen tax come to the fore. The banks, the feed manufacturers, the dairies, they have led him to this.

Make the link to the role of government in the shutdown in mining, shipbuilding. In this way you talk about his situation together and put your finger on the sore spot: the parties and companies that have supposedly protected the farmers in their growth. Don’t name names.
Ben van den BosHaarlem