Last week was a hallucinatory experience for followers of the Binnenhof. Political views that seemed ingrained in the DNA of political parties have suddenly been released. The CDA, deeply rooted in the countryside, is calling for a radical reorganization of agriculture. The VVD, which has been the patron of air traffic for decades, believes that Schiphol should reduce the number of flights.
Nitrogen is a limiting factor for aviation and also for Dutch agriculture. But part of the Netherlands is not so easily resigned to the latter. On Wednesday, 20 to 30,000 farmers will demonstrate in the Gelderse Vallei. The day after, the House of Representatives debates with ministers Christianne van der Wal (Nature and Nitrogen, VVD) and Henk Staghouwer (Agriculture, CU) about the tough nitrogen reduction targets that Van der Wal announced a week ago.
The ink of the cabinet memorandum had not yet dried when the revolt broke out. The VVD party leadership received a motion of censure at the party congress on Saturday. Just over half of those present voted against the nitrogen policy of its own minister Van der Wal. The Overijssel VVD department calls the plans ‘unacceptable’.
The party chairman of the CDA, Pieter Heerma, had it even harder. He had to answer phone calls from white-hot CDA members from the province all weekend. Heerma was so shocked by the resistance in the lower party cadres that on Tuesday he again made noises back to back. The CDA States factions in North Holland, Overijssel and Gelderland publicly oppose the cabinet plan, as do the local departments in De Peel. The Frisian provincial government is also throwing its ass against the crib. CDA and VVD are part of the coalition there.
Split for VVD and CDA
The right-wing coalition parties – and the ChristenUnie to a lesser extent – are in a split. On the one hand, jurisprudence and inescapable European legislation forces these parties to deny their right-wing nature. After decades of delay, they have to adopt serious environmental policies and start protecting nature. If they don’t, courts will shut down the economy. No party wants that on their conscience.
On the other hand, a large part of the (former) VVD and CDA voters are not interested in this reality. They demand that the cabinet make the impossible possible and give intensive livestock farming plenty of room. The business model of heavily subsidized bulk production for the global market must in any case be maintained, according to the lion’s share of the sector. Even if there is really no room for it in this densely populated country. Livestock needs to shrink by about 30 percent to achieve the legally required level of conservation, but for farmers this is out of the question.
The sector and its supporters use fallacies to undermine the nitrogen plans. One of these is the proposition that buying out farmers would cause a ‘cleavage’ in the countryside, with disastrous social consequences. However, the large-scale disappearance of farms has long been the norm. In 1950 there were approximately 420 thousand farms in the Netherlands, now there are only 52 thousand.
The increase in scale in agriculture has caused another clear-cut in the countryside. As a result of land consolidation, hedgerows, bushes and meandering streams have disappeared to make way for monotonous, species-poor meadows and fields. Clear-cutting due to scaling up is apparently less serious than clear-cutting due to environmental policy.
Attraction of BBB
The right-wing coalition parties are in for a tough year. If they keep their backs straight, they can expect an electoral beating in the States elections in March. Polls show that more than 90 percent of farmers vote for a right-wing party. The CDA was once their favorite choice, but farmers now flock to the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) of MP Caroline van der Plas.
This does not have to mean an electoral disaster, because only 2 percent of the Dutch work in agriculture. The problem for VVD and CDA is that a much larger percentage of voters sympathize with the agricultural sector. Like the farmers, many other rural dwellers have a great distrust of the highly educated, urban elite who rule the country. Moreover, quite a few right-wing voters have an intuitive aversion to anything that smacks of environmental policy. They see it as a leftist hobby.
The coalition now has 32 seats in the Senate. That’s six too few for a majority. If the current polls, which predict heavy losses for CDA, VVD and D66, come out in the provincial elections, there will be 26. With so few senate seats, governing will be very difficult.