After more than five months of negotiations, Minister Piet Adema (Agriculture, ChristenUnie) has not succeeded in concluding an agricultural agreement on a profitable sustainable future for the agricultural sector. This means another delay in solving the nitrogen crisis.
Wednesday should have been the day of the big breakthrough in the agricultural agreement, but after almost twenty-four hours of negotiations at the Ockenburgh estate in The Hague, Minister Adema had to admit that he had not yet reached an agreement with his interlocutors at the so-called ‘main table’. Adema again expects “intensive talks” in the coming weeks, he said on Thursday morning after the failed consultation. “Something really needs to be done.” Prime Minister Mark Rutte also spoke out in those terms, who had also joined the consultation for a few hours last night.
Sjaak van der Tak, chairman of the largest agricultural organization LTO Netherlands, says that “several important themes are still open” and speaks of “the duty” to find out “in the next two or three weeks”. According to LTO, the pain still lies in four themes: land use, manure processing, financing agricultural nature management and a solution for the PAS reporters (farms whose permits have been withdrawn by the Council of State). He expects “big steps” from the cabinet for this.
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New sustainability label
In recent days, various reports trickled out through the media that an agreement was near – which turned out to be premature. However, a breakthrough had already been made regarding the contribution of the banks. They would now be prepared to contribute 4 billion euros to making agriculture more sustainable, in the form of more favorable loan conditions, such as a grace period or interest rate reduction.
The parties have also agreed that a new mandatory sustainability label will be introduced for all agricultural products in the supermarket, such as milk, eggs and meat. With such a label, the food becomes more expensive, but the farmer receives a better compensation. This better compensation would compensate for the fact that a farmer will keep fewer animals or can no longer use his land as intensively as now. It is still undecided who will bear these higher costs, the consumer or the supermarkets.
Yet the same themes that have been complicating negotiations for months continue to lead to disagreement. The so-called ‘main table’ of the negotiations, which includes farmers’ organizations LTO Nederland and the representative of young farmers NAJK, continues to disagree about land use, manure and the earning model of farmers.
The coalition agreement also includes the intention to create so-called buffer zones of ‘landscape land’ next to the protected Natura 2000 areas. In those zones, nature management would go hand in hand with agriculture. Various agricultural organizations turned against this, because they fear that farmland will eventually become a nature reserve through this route. Farmers’ organization Agractie stepped out of the negotiations in March for this reason – “no farmland with restrictions” – among other reasons.
A compromise that was then devised are so-called ‘eco-system services’: a farmer then carries out nature maintenance and is paid for it by the government. This compensation is part of the solution for farmers’ new revenue model. The NOS reported on Tuesday that Minister Adema wants to structurally request 600 million euros from the cabinet for this. Adema would also ask the cabinet for 6.7 billion euros for the overall agricultural transition. It is unclear whether this money should come from the transition fund of more than 24 billion. The parties also do not seem to agree on how high and how long this compensation should be.
Another important point on which the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Fisheries (LNV) and the farmers’ organizations disagree is the maximum number of animals farmers are allowed to keep on a pasture. The cabinet would like a standard for the number of animals per hectare. This allows for a reduction in the herd. D66 in particular would like this hard agreement and previously called for the halving of the livestock population, to the dismay of farmers. Farmers’ organizations advocate that farmers themselves can determine how they achieve certain emission reductions, for example by spreading less manure, innovations in stables or by keeping fewer animals.
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Political deadlock continues
Now that the agricultural agreement has been delayed again, a quick solution to the political impasse of the nitrogen problem is no longer in sight. The ruling party CDA has indicated that it wants to break open the coalition agreement on the nitrogen agreements and hopes to start those renegotiations within the coalition before the summer. However, this requires a successful agreement with the agricultural sector and other organizations involved. That has now been postponed again. As a result, the political tension will also hang over the cabinet for an indefinite period of time. CDA leader Wopke Hoekstra wants to get rid of the agreed nitrogen deadline of 2030: the year in which emissions must be halved. Government partner D66 is staunchly against this.
And once Minister Adema and the farmers’ organizations do come to an agreement on the last tricky points, it will be some time before a final and fully-fledged agricultural agreement is reached. The supporters of the organizations involved will first have to agree to it. Subsequently, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency will have to calculate the agreements.