As a farmer, I cannot ignore the nitrogen debate in my first column. However, I just want to talk briefly about the content, and then about the protagonists. The content is actually crystal clear. We have had a large nitrogen surplus in the Netherlands for decades. Despite the fact that politicians (ie CDA, VVD and also PvdA) refused to do anything about this for as many decades, the agricultural sector has managed to almost halve that surplus. The farmers have succeeded in this by significantly scaling down the amount of fertilizer, especially in dairy farming .
However, the surplus is so high that this halving is by no means sufficient. This is due to the enormous amounts of nitrogen that arrive in the port of Rotterdam with the concentrates each year. The scientific reports and measurement data are clear about this. Only people with a preference for alternative realities want to question that again and again.
We can also be brief about the solution to the nitrogen problem. The excess nitrogen that enters the atmosphere or groundwater via manure is exactly the amount that enters Rotterdam every year. The best remedy is therefore to reintroduce land-relatedness in all agricultural sectors. And by land-bound I don’t mean that a company has enough space to put all cows, pigs and chickens next to each other in the meadow, but that it has enough land to produce all the necessary feed itself.
For dairy farming, this would mean a maximum stocking density of 1.5 units of large livestock per hectare. Details can be discussed, such as the use of residual products from the food industry, but broadly speaking, this is the only effective approach to the nitrogen problem.
protagonists
But let’s look at the key players in the nitrogen debate. The most important is LTO Netherlands. LTO, with headquarters in The Hague and Brussels, has always had a powerful lobby in politics, which ensured, among other things, that CDA and VVD kept the cabinets in check for a long time. That time now seems to have passed and LTO has now lost its grip, especially on the VVD. The VVD has taken on the nitrogen dossier itself and Minister Christianne van der Wal (Agriculture) has absolutely resolved to solve the problem.
The CDA still does not seem to want to let go of LTO completely, witness the statements of party leader Wopke Hoekstra in the AD. Or as party chairman Pieter Heerma put it this week in the House of Representatives: ‘If reversed flags are flying everywhere from Limburg to Groningen, the CDA can no longer support tackling the nitrogen problem.’ The LTO lobby is still effective at the CDA.
LTO presents itself as the representative of all farmers in the Netherlands. If LTO says something, all farmers say it, that’s what LTO still leads us to believe. In almost all media it is repeated again and again: the farmers are going to protest and the farmers are against the nitrogen approach. Because so little attention is paid to the diversity of the peasantry, it is enlightening to take a closer look at who LTO actually represents.
She herself says that she invariably represents the majority of the farmers and if you ask further questions, the number of 35,000 members usually comes down. However, they are not companies, but partnerships or families that are members, and are therefore counted twice.
Grain of salt
This means that of the 52 thousand agricultural companies that were in the Netherlands in 2021, approximately 18 thousand are members of LTO. But that number should also be taken with a grain of salt, because an unknown number of the nearly 50 thousand farms that stopped farming between 2000 and 2021, too, have remained LTO members. And they remain (sleeping) members, because the LTO membership ultimately yields money. Figures from the Chamber of Commerce show that LTO had 24 million euros in income in 2018, including the contributions from members. According to LTO itself, this provides members with up to 50 million euros in member benefits, in the form of discounts on countless things, from fuel, insurance and legal advice to telephone costs, coffee and even the (Volks) newspaper.
Membership therefore yields more to the farmer than it costs. From an LTO point of view a smart way to retain members, but from a democratic point of view you should question the extent to which LTO represents ‘the farmers’. There is, of course, nothing wrong with the government listening to its ear in the agricultural sector, but it is much broader than the LTO members, and when it comes to decision-making, I advise the government to do so, especially in consultation with the elected House of Representatives.
Tom Saat is a biodynamic farmer in Almere.