For the first time, the government has worked out in detail how much nitrogen emissions in each part of the country must be reduced. Around areas such as the Gelderse Vallei and the Peel in Brabant, emissions must be reduced by 70 to 80 percent. According to experts, such percentages are unattainable without buying out farmers on a large scale, something that is very sensitive in the sector.
According to insiders, the figures are contained in a regional strategy that the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) devised in recent months and which the cabinet will discuss next week in the Council of Ministers. It is the most concrete elaboration of Rutte IV’s nitrogen plans to date.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality does not say in the strategy how the goals should be achieved. That task has been left to the provinces in the coalition agreement. They were updated this week via a “technical briefing” about the plans, without being informed in detail what their concrete nitrogen reduction should be. However, she was briefly shown a map of the Netherlands with the reduction percentages per area.
For years, the Netherlands has done too little to combat nitrogen emissions. Nature suffered and deteriorated. This came to an end in 2019 when the Council of State put an end to the nitrogen policy at the time. The issuance of permits to farmers and builders was abruptly stopped, no more building was allowed.
The consequence of this statement is that the amount of nitrogen in the Dutch air and soil has to be drastically reduced. By 2030, 74 percent of the vulnerable Dutch countryside may no longer deteriorate as a result of nitrogen emissions, the cabinet has laid down in the coalition agreement.
Solve nitrogen puzzle
That is a major task. Ministers in both Rutte III and IV have always emphasized the balance when solving the nitrogen puzzle: aviation, shipping, motorists and industry must also help to clear the harmful nitrogen blanket over the Netherlands.
At the same time, the agricultural sector is responsible for most of the nitrogen precipitation in the Netherlands, more than 40 percent. Farmers close to vulnerable Natura 2000 areas, the protected nature that was central to the decision of the Council of State and the nitrogen targets of the cabinet, place the greatest burden on these vulnerable nature zones. Close a farm, and emissions plummet. This benefits the nearby nature reserve.
It is therefore not surprising that the new government strategy places the greatest task on agriculture. Some provinces need to reduce less, such as Friesland and Groningen, where many areas only need to reduce by up to 20 percent.
But in areas in other provinces it can rise to 100 percent, for example on the edges of the Veluwe. Emissions must also be reduced by 70 to 80 percent around the De Peel nature reserve in Brabant (where many pig farms are located and where nature is vulnerable) and the Gelderse Vallei (where many dairy farmers have a business). For the whole of the Netherlands this is 40 percent.
The fact that nitrogen emissions must be reduced to a minimum in a number of provinces, as is apparent from the regional strategy, had actually been established for a long time. Over the past year and a half, several scientific studies have already been published that point in this direction.
Buy up farms
Most striking was an advice from Leiden University, financed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, which was published around this time last year. That advice urged us to act quickly in a handful of areas: the Gelderse Vallei, the Groene Hart (the peat meadow area in the Randstad) and on the sandy soils in Gelderland, Overijssel, Drenthe and North Brabant.
These places are jointly responsible for half of the total nitrogen emissions in agriculture, according to the Leiden study. Circular agriculture and technical adjustments to the stables are only part of the solution in those areas. “You could buy up companies that do not consider reduction feasible for their company in this way,” says professor of environment and sustainability Jan Willem Erisman, the author of the study.
It is up to the provinces to decide for themselves how to reduce emissions. They have until July 2023 to develop a plan. If this is approved, the government will make money available for it.
But first they have to reconnect with farmers. In Drenthe, Friesland and Overijssel, farmers’ interest groups withdrew from the nitrogen consultations in recent months. They believe that the government focuses too much on buying out farmers on a large scale.
The Ministry of Agriculture does not want to prejudge the consultations in the Council of Ministers and the plans.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 3, 2022