The farmers’ advocacy groups that represent conventional, non-organic agriculture will only talk further if the cabinet first makes firm commitments. They informed Remkes on Tuesday afternoon.
Firstly, the farmers want the government to remove the indicator for nitrogen precipitation, the so-called critical deposition value (kdw), from the law as a standard for granting permits. This is one of the demands that CDA party leader Hoekstra recently made in his controversial report AD-interview showed understanding. That CDA sound is in flagrant contradiction with the cabinet position that Hoekstra is expected to endorse as minister. The coalition’s formal stance so far has been that this farmer’s demand is non-negotiable. Prime Minister Rutte said last week that abandoning the kdw as a nitrogen standard would undermine the legal sustainability of the permit granting.
Farmers don’t want 2030 as a target year
The farmers also demand that the cabinet renounce 2030 as the target year for halving nitrogen emissions. They want more time to lower their ammonia emissions. Also on this point Hoekstra showed in the AD concept; according to him, 2030 is ‘not sacred’ for the CDA. The year 2030 is stated in the coalition agreement. That would have to be broken open if the cabinet wants to comply with this demand from the farmers. The previous cabinet had 2035 as a target year and that last year is also stated in the law. But this coalition agreed during the formation that the new target year 2030 will be incorporated into law as soon as possible. That should happen early next year, but the CDA seems to want to call this agreement just like the farmers.
The last two conditions that farmers, including the largest agricultural organization LTO Nederland, set for the cabinet are that the so-called PAS detectors are quickly legalized and that the intended nitrogen reduction may be achieved primarily through technical innovation instead of shrinking the livestock.
PAS reporters are livestock farmers who expanded their business in the period 2015-2019 on the basis of regulations that have since been suspended by the court. As a result, those business expansions have become illegal retroactively. The cabinet has promised to legalize these business expansions, but that is not going fast enough in the farmers’ opinion. To make the approximately 3600 PAS detectors legal, nitrogen space is first needed, which is scarce.
Technical measures
It is difficult to allow more innovation, because this also jeopardizes the legal sustainability of nitrogen policy. Reducing livestock numbers is a legally tough measure that undeniably leads to a reduction in ammonia emissions. The environmental yield is less certain from technical measures such as lowering the protein content in animal feed and diluting slurry with water. Practice has shown that technical solutions do not always deliver the yield that is promised on paper, for example due to installation errors, or because farmers do not adhere to the manual. The government can only guarantee the yield of technical measures if livestock sheds are filled with fraud-resistant measuring equipment and an extensive control and enforcement system is set up.
Remkes has once again invited all farmers’ organizations that were invited for the first meeting on 5 August to the conference table. On behalf of conventional agriculture, these are, in addition to LTO Nederland, the four major sector unions for arable farming and poultry, pig and dairy farming. The action groups Dutch Dairymen Board, Agractie and Farmers Defense Force have also been invited again. These eight met in Nijkerk on Monday evening to determine whether they would accept the invitation. The answer is therefore a unequivocal ‘no’ as long as the cabinet does not put any butter in the fish.
Messenger Van der Tak
At the beginning of August, LTO chairman Sjaak van der Tak still went to the Remkes meeting as a kind of messenger on behalf of the others, but even that is not an option now. Van der Tak has also rejected Remkes’ invitation in the meantime. Delegates from organic and alternative agriculture probably want to sit down at the table, but they only represent a few percent of Dutch agriculture. On behalf of the cabinet, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister Henk Staghouwer (Agriculture) and Christianne van der Wal (Nature and Nitrogen) would be present at the consultation. Now that most farmers are absent, Remkes will probably have to cancel the meeting.