Rabobank: ‘Roughly half of livestock farmers who are a customer needs new nature permit due to nitrogen rules’

Approximately half of the farmers who are the customer at Rabobank need a new nature permit through nitrogen statements from the Council of State in 2019 and 2024. Rabobank confirms this on Tuesday NRCafter reporting from the agricultural trade journal De New harvest.

Since the Council of State declared the Nitrogen Approach Program invalid in 2019, farmers have barely received nature permits to be allowed to expel nitrogen. The Council ruled that nature is so damaged that no extra nitrogen is allowed in the air in the Netherlands. Via a detour it remained possible to start new projects.

That detour is called ‘internal netting’: for example, a chicken farmer could install a better air filter in its stable, reducing nitrogen emissions and he could keep more chickens again without a permit. Last month, the Council of State ruled that a permit must also be applied for internal netting, making it even more difficult to get a permit. In addition, a permit must be applied for retroactively for all projects that have been created with internal netting.

‘Rough estimate’

About 80 percent of livestock farmers are the account holder at Rabobank, who emerged from farmers’ benches. In the Netherlands there are around 30,000 farmers.

Rabobank wants to map the consequences for customers and, for example, looked at requests for low -emission stables, so that farms emit relatively few harmful substances. On the basis of how many financing applications farmers have submitted a ‘rough first estimate’ on the basis of how many financing applications have been available since 2020. Rabobank is currently still working on a precise estimate, but the bank does not yet know when those figures will be published.

2,500 PAS servants are also included in the estimate of the Rabobank. These farms were exempted between 2015 and 2019, if the nitrogen battle on vulnerable nature reserves remained below a certain value. But due to the ruling of the council in 2019, these companies lost their exemption.

After conversations with farmers, Rabobank fears that making sustainability in agriculture will stop. “The market was already uncertain, so the statements of the Council of State do not help of course. A farmer now thinks three times about an investment, “said a Bank spokesperson NRC.

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