Agriculture: “Better a slow but good nitrogen agreement than the other way around”
De Groene Kring, the largest umbrella youth organization in the Flemish agricultural and horticultural sector, hopes that a good agreement will still be reached. They will go to Brussels on Friday anyway.
Pieter Faes, Groene Kring: “We have had to wait so long for an agreement, it has been so long now. We have almost become used to it. But we prefer it to take a long time but to be a good agreement, rather bad agreement that has been approved where we have no future at all.”
Pieter Faes is 26, worked for a year on a dairy farm in the United States, and together with his parents runs an arable and dairy farm with 350 cows in Keiem. “The nitrogen agreement is stuck. There is no progress because CD&V does not agree with certain conditions. What has the NV-A decided then? She has now put all our subsidies, the CAP, the common agricultural policy on hold. But the reason for this is to increase the pressure on the Flemish government to get that nitrogen agreement through.”
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And so Faes cannot invest in a battery to store the solar energy, a windmill or extra solar panels. “That is very frustrating. Above all, it all has to do with the environment and climate. I want to invest in the environment and climate and a party that is in favor of the climate will not succeed. It’s all very twofold.”
The farmers also believe that they are treated much more severely than the industry, which also emits nitrogen. On Friday, various agricultural organizations will travel to Brussels with tractors to campaign for the future of young farmers