Politics in 2022: pumping around abuses that may not exist

It was the day after the new cabinet was sworn in, and officials and MPs following the nitrogen dossier saw the storm looming again.

Caroline van der Plas, the skilled Member of Parliament of the Boer Citizens’ Movement (BBB), had tweeted that evening: “Cabinet has been cold for 24 hours and already shit is done.”

She linked to a scoop on Boerenbusiness.nl, a website with agricultural market data that also publishes journalism. cup: “Officials take criticism from nitrogen study.” It was “unwanted and warning information” that, the piece said, had been “removed” by senior policy officials from various departments from an influential advisory issued in March last year, leaving “scientific criticism” of nitrogen policy “out of the picture”. .

Van der Plas’ message went viral, and BBB threw a second message over it an hour later, now with a quote from the BBB leader. “If all this is true, then we are no longer talking about a nitrogen crisis but a nitrogen scandal.”

The next day she submitted written parliamentary questions, under the assumption that “critical voices from senior officials” in The Hague are apparently undesirable. She drew conclusions from it:

„Do you realize that [dit] is a serious impairment of public support for nitrogen policy?”

“Are you prepared to postpone the nitrogen policy (-) until there is a new advice, including the critical voices?”

The issue matched the mounting tension between the agricultural sector and The Hague.

Distrustful companies and foundations that self-consciously turn reality around. Who put their own facts against the facts of the government.

Those politicians send letters to lawyers, who permanently attack MPs on social media, who bring counter-‘disclosures’ from their own journalists.

It gives poison and grimness, and you notice that The Hague gets demoralized by it.

When it turned out this week (again) that Rutte IV’s nitrogen policy would lead to a 30 percent reduction in livestock in ten years, coalition politicians’ telephones were again filled with ‘alternative facts’ from the sector. “It’s that day again,” you heard.

It has a lot to do with former dairy farmer and agricultural director Jan Cees Vogelaar, an ex-CDA member who was on the FVD candidate list in 2020 and then ended up at JA21. For years he led the Mesdag Fund, which pays for ‘scientific research’ into, for example, nitrogen.

Not that he takes all science seriously. Against The Telegraph doubted he in 2020 whether “the human impact on the climate is really that great.” The three windmills in his yard were also there for another reason: “That is subsidy-driven.”

But earlier, in 2018, he started the turnaround. According to Cattle breeding he posited that there had to be ‘answers to colored reports on agriculture’. For this he set up the Agri Facts foundation, an argus that would ‘scientifically test’ reports, and ‘when necessary, would ‘blow back’ to the highest court. The fight started.

Although Agri Facts’ debut in The Hague was painful. After the nitrogen ruling of the Council of State in May 2019, the Remkes advisory committee worked with RIVM data that showed that 46 percent of nitrogen deposition comes from agriculture. An investigative journalist from Agri Facts presented his own research in 2020, which would show that it involved 25 percent. She made a mistake and had to rectify: 41 percent.

But the influence of Agri Facts in The Hague was certainly not over after that. In recent years, information from the foundation has led to hundreds of parliamentary questions from various parties – PVV, SGP, JA21, BBB, CDA, VVD, etc. And Agri Facts also provides relevant information, a well-informed member of parliament told me. “That’s the annoying thing when you disagree with people: sometimes they do have a point.”

And now that the most exciting period in the nitrogen dossier has arrived, Agri Facts wants to increase its footprint in The Hague.

Last December, the foundation expanded its research capacity, and it turned out that three agricultural companies – Royal A Ware, De Heus, VanDrie – pay for this. The aim is twofold: ‘test the underpinning of agricultural and horticultural policy’ and ‘a fact check’ of publications about the agricultural sector.

Former VVD senator Sybe Schaap, previously an advisor to Agri Facts, told me that animal feed in particular fears loss of turnover due to the shrinkage of livestock. “I think there’s a lot of interest being defended here.”

In the meantime, Jan Cees Vogelaar, no longer involved in the Mesdag Fund and Agri Facts, continues to intensify the confrontation. He is an advisor to another foundation he founded: Nitrogen Claim. Rutte IV wants an ‘area-oriented approach’ for the nitrogen issue, in which farmers contribute ideas per area. And Nitrogen Claim opposes this: the foundation will “litigate” against farmers who participate, he said last month. New harvest.

Agri Facts is also active. TU Delft received a complaint against a professor who₂benefits of a vegetarian canteen would have exaggerated. And the University of Twente about a press release in which a link between intensive livestock farming and zoonoses was insufficiently substantiated.

And last month it was the turn of politics: after BBB put the disclosure on Boerenbusiness.nl, D66 MP Tjeerd de Groot, already hated in agriculture, responded that it was a non-item: underlying documents would show that there was no criticism from officials at all was scrapped. It was a letter to officials.

“In that letter I recognize the criticism of Agri Facts, the doubt brigade financed by the food industry,” he wrote.

Then it was ball. Agri Facts denied and summoned the MP through her lawyer to rectify within a day. De Groot refused. He said this week that he never heard from him again. “Apparently it was just intimidation from a politician.”

Last Friday, Van der Plas’ parliamentary questions about the piece were answered on Boerenbusiness.nl. According to the ministry, there had never been an abuse.

“The warnings referred to in the article are not from senior policy officials,” it said. It was “a substantive contribution sent by an external party to the chairman”. Inquiries with three knowledge providers taught me that that contribution (seven A4 pages) contained the type of criticism that has been expressed more often in the agricultural sector.

I asked Van der Plas on Friday how she looks back on the matter afterwards. She said she believes the minister’s reading “on this point”. She also said she remains vigilant. “There have been affairs with officials before.” And she realized that her question about ‘the damage to support for the nitrogen policy’ had been formulated in retrospect in retrospect.

I also asked the journalist who wrote the piece on Boerenbusiness.nl: Klaas van der Horst, a former reporter who built up a good reputation with the Agricultural Daily and Farm† He was skeptical of the ministry’s denial, and said of his own piece: “I wrote it down a bit, but I’m behind the line.”

In style with the increasing conflict, he told me that in addition to Boerenbusiness.nl, he has a new client: recently he also does research for Agri Facts for a few hours a week.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that three feed companies pay the Agri Facts expansion costs. That had to be ‘farms’. That has been corrected above.