‘Hello, knuckleheads, would you like a sausage roll?’ A woman with a large shopping bag full of white balls squeezes through the line of tractors that hermetically closes the driveway of the Boni distribution center in Nijkerk on Tuesday morning. She makes a round of the farmers sitting on white lawn chairs drinking coffee in the shade of their tractor. Farmers from the Nijkerk area have been setting up camp here since Monday. Farm boys now roast hamburgers on a disposable barbecue where the trucks normally drive in and out to load and unload supermarket products.
Farmers across the country blocked distribution centers of supermarkets and wholesalers on Monday and Tuesday. At about twenty distribution centers of supermarket chains and wholesalers, the farmers prevented trucks from leaving. They ended some of those actions in the course of the first day, after calls from mayors and the deployment of the police.
In some places things went wrong when the actions ended. In Sneek, the Mobile Unit took action during a blockade of supermarket chain Poiesz. The police arrested four people. The Mobile Unit also intervened in Zwolle. Activists threw bottles at officers there and destroyed a police shovel. Six people were arrested for public assault.
Thumbs up
Also in Nijkerk it seemed for a long time that the police would intervene on Monday evening. At the beginning of the evening, the mayor announced an emergency ordinance that made this possible, but the farmers did not want to budge. Yet the police kept aloof: instead of intervening, they wanted to persuade the farmers through a conversation to lift the blockade.
Farmer’s son Gijs van Panhuis (16) was one of the people who spent the night on Tuesday in a car under the waving Boni flags. There was very little sleep. ‘At 2 o’clock I lay down and at 4:30 I was awake again.’ Still, he’s talking about it. Later he wants to take over the dairy farm from his parents and his future is uncertain due to the nitrogen plans of the cabinet. The same goes for his friend Luc van Dijk (15), who shows a picture of himself in front of an empty shelf in the supermarket, both thumbs up. ‘Nice is not it? Taken this morning. If necessary, we will stay here for three weeks, until the entire store is empty.’
The farmers alternate. Every so often a farmer leaves his spot in the line with his tractor to milk the cows or feed the cattle. In no time the place is occupied by a new farmer, often with a fresh load of cookies, cold cola or beer.
For the supermarkets, the actions last far too long on Tuesday. Due to the farmers’ blockades, they have suffered ‘tens of millions’ of euros in damage, reports their trade association, the Central Bureau for Food Trade (CBL). Supermarket chain Boni is feeling the consequences of the blockade of their only distribution center. The stock in the 46 stores is slowly running out, especially products such as bananas, bread and milk are hardly available anymore.
Listening ear
Around noon, Mayor Gerard Renkema van Nijkerk makes an appearance at the picnic tables on the distribution site, accompanied by the municipality’s agriculture alderman. Frank Klören, financial director of the Boni, is also present.
“Everyone here has a loan. For years we have invested in sustainability and now there is a noose around our neck’, says a farmer’s wife at the picnic table. Applause breaks out. “What’s there then?” asks another farmer in straw hat, pointing to the slogan on one of the red trucks that has stood motionless in the driveway for two days. “Boni, Always Cheap!” Do something about your prizes, and we can stay alive.’
The mayor and alderman are apparently a bit lost towards the farmers, there is nothing more to offer than a listening ear. They do not ask to leave, a moment later the police arrive with that message.
Elsewhere in the country, almost all blockades will have ended. In Haaksbergen, farmers will stop their blockade of a distribution center of supermarket chain Plus ‘after proper consultation’. In Raalte, the municipality issues an emergency ordinance to get the farmers away. The police is ready at a Lidl distribution center in Almere, but after the police say that an emergency ordinance has been announced, the farmers drive away.
In Nijkerk, all calls from drivers and police initially help nothing. Around 3 pm even a fresh procession of tractors drives onto the site, sent away from elsewhere. Fresh reinforcement with, if it’s up to them, a long breath. However, it turns out to be a final convulsion. When the riot police shows up at the beginning of the evening, the farmers still leave. Not much later, peace has returned around the distribution center. Seated on a hay bale, beer in hand, the two last protest farmers see how the first Boni trucks leave around half past seven.
