After yesterday’s farmers’ protest, the discussion about nitrogen policy continues today in the House of Representatives. Especially all the lack of clarity makes farmers such as Marco Ruijter from Hippolytushoef and Anoek Ursem from Breezand insecure. Their environment has been designated as an area where nitrogen should be reduced by 47%. “Look carefully at what you are doing”, is their advice to the MPs today.
Marco Ruijter, together with his brother and cousin, has a dairy farm on the Bierdijk near Hippolytushoef. The name ‘Ruijter’ has been hanging on the facade for more than 100 years, before that it was already in the family, then still of the Brent Goose branch. Anoek Ursem has a very young company. She started four years ago. Her pigs forage throughout the entire polder around Anna Paulowna.
“It really kept me awake at night,” says the 30-year-old pig farmer about the government’s nitrogen policy, “I now have 29 pigs, I financed the entire company myself. At the moment I also work for an employer, but I want to become independent. Then I have to grow to 60 pigs. But if this policy continues, I can stop.”
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“We have 220 dairy cows and calves. You have to know what the land is like here. You have boulder clay, sand, clay, every piece of land is different,” says Marco Ruijter at his company behind the dike that has to leave the Wadden Sea. to keep. Outside the cows graze slowly in the summer sun and a cool breeze, “and we do a lot with nature here, so I don’t understand why Wieringen is now on the ‘map’ of the government.”
Wieringen and part of the polders around Breezand, the Wieringermeer and on Texel are marked as transition area† Nitrogen emissions there should be reduced by 47%. “First we were allowed to solve the phosphate crisis and now the farmers have to arrange this again”, says Marco Ruijter, “The government should now also look at other sectors. Schiphol… they don’t dare touch that”
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“We receive a lot of orders from the government,” says Anoek Ursem. “For example, we have to switch to electric tractors: ‘Do that otherwise you will have problems later’, they say. But good financing is not behind it. The costs are rising and the debts continue to grow for some. and reliable policy so that we can move forward. Don’t keep coming up with new rules.”
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Marco’s brother went to Stroe yesterday, and then not to the Wieringer version but to the protests in Gelderland. “I am not yet worried about the possible consequences for the company. I think that with that 47% they are aiming high. And my feeling is that the citizens no longer agree that the farmers have to pay for everything. And You can also see that there is protest among the political parties themselves.”
Anoek considered going to the big demonstration yesterday, but chose a different approach. “I didn’t want to sit still so I looked up the media”. Her message to the members of parliament today: “Look carefully at what you are doing, everything is not right, check carefully what is being measured”
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