It always worked so well, the marriage of convenience between city and rural area. Cities developed for decades as attractive places to live with highly productive sectors that put the Netherlands at the top of many international lists. Agriculture produced good and cheap food – also world-class – and kept green space open. Need more houses? Vinex neighborhoods were then built on agricultural land. There was hassle all around, of course, but the relationship remained in balance.
But the marriage of convenience is over, writes the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (Rli) in a lengthy advice on the role of land use in rural areas. In the report Ground for improvement the cabinet advisor paints a picture of a country that has seriously tied itself in knots. A country that is looking for space for houses, flourishing nature, energy, training grounds for defense and more sustainable agriculture.
The crucial ingredient is missing, the Council writes: land. That is to say: there is land, but it is agricultural land. So an “additional street or neighborhood”, or thirty “large-scale new construction locations”, as in the coalition agreement may sound good, but it is only possible if agricultural land is released. And agriculture also needs more land to become more sustainable.
Much has been destroyed in recent decades, causing the balance between city and country to disappear, the Council concludes. Especially by the government itself, which, according to the advisors, has made bad choices. The space that the Netherlands needs to build a new future no longer corresponds at all to how the land area is distributed.
Three ways things are going wrong with the land in the Netherlands.
1. Too much land in farmers’ hands
Does the countryside still exist? According to Statistics Netherlands, only 17 percent of Dutch people live in a ‘non-urban area’. And yet: cycle, drive, train through the country, and what you see is farmland. Two-thirds of the Netherlands is agricultural land.
The Council writes that this is ‘abrasive’ because agriculture places too much of a ‘heavy burden’ on nature. The ‘basic quality’ of nature is in order in less than 10 percent of the rural area, the water quality is insufficient in 90 percent of the surface water, and emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture have not decreased for ten years.
Compared to other European countries, we score poorly when it comes to biodiversity, the use of crop protection products and ammonia emissions. “Agriculture is responsible for approximately 90 percent of ammonia emissions, 52 percent of nitrogen deposition in nature, approximately half of the nitrogen and phosphorus load on surface waters, approximately a quarter of particulate matter in the air and 17 percent of greenhouse gases,” the advice states.
The agricultural sector needs to change, but farmers are sometimes trapped on their own land
Agriculture is also becoming less important for the quality of life in rural areas. Due to increases in scale – more machines, IT – farms offer less employment and the food industry has also become increasingly large-scale and therefore more automated. The regional economy now relies more on healthcare, services, trade and catering. “Because of all these changes, the adage ‘if the farmer is doing well, then the countryside is doing well’ is much less valid than before,” the advisors write.
At the same time, after the Second World War, the government wanted farmers to work more intensively and on a larger scale to produce a lot of good and cheap food. In the coalition agreement, D66, CDA and VVD write that they want to return to farms that reuse their own raw materials, nutrients and energy, but that requires a huge change from many farmers. And some have lived and farmed the same land for generations and have built up a deep bond with it.
Krijn Poppe, member of the Rli: “It can be very threatening if society wants something different with the place where you live and work. But as a society you cannot continue to deny that it is no longer possible.” Council chairman Jan Jacob van Dijk: “The agricultural sector needs to change, but farmers are sometimes trapped on their own land. It is so expensive that innovation or working more sustainably does not benefit them, even if they want to.”
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2. Land that is way too expensive
Agricultural land is expensive in the Netherlands, the price is nine times higher than the European average. Recently, the price rose above 100,000 euros per hectare for the first time. This is also because the Netherlands wants more and more with that land. The more houses have to be built (1.65 million by 2050), the more training areas for defense (57 new locations were designated last year), the more storage locations for sustainable energy (already too few): the more expensive the land.
Many farmers are waiting. Because their land could well become worth even more. Logical perhaps and it is allowed, but that ‘investment motive’ drives up the price and prevents change. For example, sustainable agriculture requires more land, but offers less space for crops or animals. And farmers need land, because it is linked to the nitrogen they can emit or the manure they can spread. For both, farmers need more land due to stricter regulations in recent years – and they sometimes buy it for astronomical amounts, while Natuurmonumenten or Staatsbosbeheer regularly miss out when they want to buy the same land for nature restoration.
Since land often also serves as a pension for farmers, almost no one sells it at retirement age, for example because they prefer to rent it out. And it is fiscally attractive to retain land, thanks to all kinds of tax exemptions. Van Dijk: “These were once intended to support farmers, but now block access to the land market for new, often more sustainable players.”
So nature restoration, making agriculture more sustainable, building houses on agricultural land? It’s all getting more and more expensive. In December 2024, Natuurmonumenten announced that much less land has been purchased to create ‘new nature’ than was agreed more than ten years ago between the national government and the provinces, while this is crucial to achieving legally established nature goals.
A solution? Poppe: “We propose to make a distinction between production agriculture, for making food, and social agriculture, which pays more attention to social functions [bijvoorbeeld educatie] and sustainability. Then you can adjust financing accordingly and restore the balance.”
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3. A scared government
A stopper scheme for farmers. That is about the only concrete attempt by the government to restore nature. It does not have much effect – because fewer farmers participate than hoped – and the Council sees another problem: even farmers who do participate keep their land. Poppe: “Now, for example, you see dairy farmers who stop and then rent out their land for lily cultivation. That causes new environmental problems. The government should have said: we will buy that land and compensate the farmers. This is simply not adequate.”
The government is shooting itself in the foot, is afraid to intervene and is working against itself, according to the Rli advice. For example, each ministry, municipality and province makes its own rules, which are “sometimes unworkable or contradictory”. And although the new cabinet wants to intervene more when it comes to land, for example by more actively determining the purpose of use and by distributing land through a national land bank, this does not mean that underlying problems will be easily solved. For example, farms receive hundreds of millions of euros in subsidies, for example for sustainability, which are in reality used to buy additional land – which only drives up prices.
If administrators do not dare, we will all be stuck. We need that land
The government can intervene to acquire or otherwise distribute agricultural land, but the options for this have itself been “sharply reduced.” In recent decades, it has become more difficult to demand plot exchange, so that farmers are further removed from vulnerable nature. It is also more difficult to expropriate farmers. If the government does take measures, it almost always tries to reach voluntary agreements with farmers – “for complex tasks, this caution is often an obstacle,” the advice states. The new coalition agreement is also based on voluntary agreements.
Forced buyout of farmers is controversial. And whether it is due to the intense farmers’ protests a few years ago or because BBB politicians are in many provincial governments: administrators rarely dare to do so.
And yet they will have to, the Council writes. Show courage, the report states. Council chairman Van Dijk, who himself was a representative in the province of Gelderland for years: “It almost never comes to actual forced expropriation. In 95 percent of the cases you still reach an agreement about the relocation of a farm. If administrators do not dare, we will all remain stuck. We need that land.”
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