Drivers who serve their own policies with long teeth automatically reap disgust

As long as the VVD and CDA do not combine nitrogen policy with a driven vision of the future, the resistance will not diminish.

Neither Mark Rutte nor Wopke Hoekstra can be surprised by the massiveness of the farmers’ protest that unfolded on Wednesday. After all, since the start of the actions in 2019, politicians have been prepared for anything. It is an unpleasant setback, however, that the resistance now extends far into their own parties. There is also very little support for the nitrogen policy as it has now been mapped out by VVD minister Van der Wal among council members, members of parliament and local departments.

That makes you think. Because while the most radical farmers’ leaders also excluded themselves from the debate on Wednesday with completely exaggerated accusations, most VVD and CDA directors are people who do understand that politicians sometimes have to take hard decisions, but now lack the persuasiveness to make decisions. to be able to take care of these.

That problem is created at the top of the political chain. Because although the VVD and CDA have now resigned themselves to the legal reality that forces them to clean up the livestock, they have not yet managed to turn this into a promotional story in any way. You never hear Hoeksta or Rutte say that this nitrogen decision is the result of twenty years of lax agricultural policy. Twenty years in which the loud call for reflection on the nature of Dutch livestock farming has been ignored by successive cabinets, even after the major outbreaks of swine fever, salmonella, mad cow disease, foot and mouth disease and Q fever.

Twenty years in which all reports have been ignored that nitrogen emissions have crossed all legal boundaries for far too long. But above all, twenty years in which, for example, nothing was done with the rosy plan for the future that the Wijffels Committee presented in 2001, in which everything revolved around the farmer who would henceforth compete on quality instead of a low price, who would be amply rewarded for sustainable landscape manager, who would let his chickens forage and his pigs to root.

In short, a coherent vision of agriculture in the Netherlands has been lacking for far too long: where is there space and under what conditions? So we have arrived at the patchwork and the panicky measures that must now be devised to prevent the country from stagnating. And as long as VVD and CDA do not continue to do so with a driven vision of the future, but with long teeth, the resistance will not diminish.