The cut hair of Piet Adema, the new Minister of Agriculture, blows away before he can show them to the reporter of EditionNL. He turns his right ear to the camera. “Is this what? If I had had a mirror, it would have been neater.”
The Binnenhof, Friday afternoon. Piet Adema (57) from Friesland, former chairman of the ChristenUnie, comes from his first meeting of the Council of Ministers. What he has already accomplished that week: coffee with Mark Rutte, an ‘acquaintance with the press’, the swearing in at the palace, TV interviews about Johan Remkes’ nitrogen report, a conversation with protesting farmers, two debates in the Second Room. And all that, he says several times during those days, with an average of three hours of sleep a night. Even the week before. Then he had to decide whether he wanted to succeed Henk Staghouwer – for whom the politics of The Hague had been too difficult. “Piet”, I hear from an employee, “looked like a mountain.”
EditionNL wanted to know what Adema thought of Justice Minister Dilan Yesligöz, who had cut a lock on TV to support the women in Iran. Adema had immediately tackled EditieNL’s scissors. That morning, just before the cabinet meeting, Jaïr Ferwerda van Jinek had taken an ‘agricultural quiz’ with him. Did he know how many cows there were in the Netherlands? No. How many pigs? No idea. chickens? Adema laughed and shook his head. “How can you reduce the herd,” said Ferwerda, “if you don’t even know how many cattle there are now?”
On Monday morning, very early, Adema had gone to Rutte with a few sentences on his telephone from the CU Information Department. No one was supposed to know he was going to be a minister yet, and if he bumped into journalists, he could say, “Good morning, you’re up early!” And: “If you want to know whether I am an intended minister.. That ‘intended’ already contains that I can’t say anything about it now.” For his press interview, he had practiced phrases containing ‘calmness’, ‘clarity’ and ‘certainty’ – for the farmers. During the TV appearances after Remkes, he seems most at ease in front of Omrop Fryslân’s camera. “I think in Frisian,” he says later.
At Adema’s first debate, about manure, I hear from a reporter from The farm that in the seven months that he was minister, Staghouwer never spoke as well as Adema already did. He is not satisfied himself. He was nervous and, he thinks, was curt to Laura Bromet of GroenLinks. In the break he had her his excuse offered. “The second debate went much better.” He heard from other ministers that things were going well for someone just starting out. “So they look.”
Friday afternoon, when he is on his way home after the Council of Ministers, I ask him on the phone how many cows there are in the Netherlands. “3.8 million.” pigs? “11.5.” Chickens: “Nearly a hundred million.” And I’m forgetting something, he says: “630,000 goats, 850,000 sheep.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of October 11, 2022