“A very wise decision”. This is how leader Mark van den Oever of farmers’ action group Farmers Defense Force (FDF) calls the decision of the LTO to pull the plug on the consultations about the agricultural agreement.
Together with the members, Van den Oever says that they have exerted ‘gigantic pressure’ on LTO to move the interest group in this direction. “The agricultural agreement should have provided perspective and restoration of confidence, but was instead full of a lot of extra regulations for farmers. Signing that would have been the downfall for the sector,” says the farmer from Sint Hubert.
Now that LTO has withdrawn, Van den Oever expects Minister of Agriculture Piet Adema to resign. If this does not happen and the cabinet does enforce things on farmers, he can guarantee something. “That they will encounter the FDF in a way they have not seen before.”
‘Bad feeling’
Agriculture minister Piet Adema calls the fact that farmers’ organization LTO Netherlands has stopped negotiating an agricultural agreement ‘extremely disappointing’. What exactly it means for the agricultural agreement will become apparent later this week. According to the minister, the agreement was ‘almost ready’.
Adema did not want to say what the points were on which the consultations for LTO (the Agriculture and Horticulture Organization) collapsed. “LTO did not dare to jump”, the minister concluded alone. Adema has a ‘bad feeling’ about it, and speaks of a ‘very big missed opportunity’. LTO foreman Sjaak van der Tak said afterwards that confidence was not there, without going into further detail about what it was specifically about.
Perspective
The agricultural agreement is important to the cabinet because the farming sector has to change considerably in the coming years. Earlier, Adema had said that an agreement without LTO makes little sense. The other parties will meet at the ‘main table’ on Wednesday. Then we need to look at what it means to run away from LTO.
Adema said he was very disappointed ‘because we had come a long way’. After the consultation between the cabinet and LTO, he emphasized to the press several times that the agreement was almost finished. He spoke of ‘the last dots on the i’ and a ’95 percent version’ of the text. He is ‘convinced’ that this agreement could offer farmers prospects.
Debate
The idea that an agricultural agreement had to be drawn up came from Johan Remkes. He gave the cabinet advice on how to get out of the nitrogen crisis and the agricultural agreement was part of that: the agreement had to state what the perspectives look like for farmers after all the reforms that the cabinet has in mind. The intention was that an agreement would be reached in February, but that deadline was repeatedly postponed.
The cabinet has always said that it will come up with laws and regulations itself if it is not possible to reach an agricultural agreement. The ministers involved will discuss this in the near future, say ministers Adema, Christianne Van der Wal (Nature and Nitrogen) and Rob Jetten (Climate), among others. The House of Representatives has already indicated that it wants a debate on the agricultural agreement before the summer recess.