The conference of the BoerBurgerBeweging starts and ends on Saturday with a loud tribute to the woman who has to save the farmers. †goat stoan for Caroline”, party chairman Erik Stegink whips up the full Resurrection Church in Nijkerk through his microphone. About 250 members – many white men with broad backs – stand up, clap and cheer for Member of Parliament Caroline van der Plas of the ‘BBB’.
Laughing, Van der Plas (55) receives the ovation on stage. She wears a colorful overcoat and a large necklace with wooden farm animals. “Bee Beau I wasn’t allowed to wear that necklace last night,” she says. “He rattled too much.”
Heap
A day after the launch of the government’s radical nitrogen plan, many farmers are angry and insecure. Before 2030, emissions must be drastically reduced in many areas to preserve nature and comply with European regulations, Minister Christianne van der Wal (Nature and Nitrogen, VVD) has announced. That means less manure, less livestock and therefore fewer farms – halved to 52,000 since the turn of the century.
The supporters of the BoerBurgerBeweging have pinned their hopes on their only representative in The Hague. It’s Van der Plas against Van der Wal, Caroline against Christianne. The basic attitude of the first is always: There is no farmer in the Netherlands who thinks that nothing should be done, but this cabinet plan goes way too far.
/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data87012405-50370f.jpg)
Photo Bram Petraeus
In the nitrogen crisis, the BBB thinks it will score well with its “right-wing social” sound in the Provincial Council elections in March next year, in which the party will participate in all provinces. Government parties VVD and CDA, and an opposition party such as Forum for Democracy, feel the competition, according to Van der Plas.
“You can see that they are trying to push us into a corner. In D66 and CDA circles it is a bit like ‘you have no vision, meaningless, populist’. In the right corner, the Forum corner in particular, they try to link me to ‘the cartel’. I think that’s funny to see. Apparently people are a bit afraid of us.”
Read the report What did Caroline van der Plas’ debut in The Hague look like? ‘I thought: Oh, Caroline, learn something about polity’
The BBB now has over 3,660 members. 160 members have been added since Friday, says secretary and co-founder Henk Vermeer.
‘Stop that’
Van der Plas has condemned the fact that action group Voll Gass drove tractors to the minister’s house on Friday evening to get a story. “Stop that. You do NOT visit people at home. No matter how angry you are,” she tweeted.
Some of her supporters were not happy about this, says Van der Plas prior to the congress, over a cup of coffee with filled biscuit. She received phone calls, text messages and disapproving comments on social media.
“I’m not afraid to distance myself from such an action,” she says. When Farmers Defense Force rang the doorbell of D66 leader Rob Jetten in the evening in 2020 to deliver a ‘healthy food package’, she first thought: fun action. “But I have changed that opinion. They know your address, don’t they. They just suddenly appear on your doorstep. As a politician you have absolutely no idea what kind of people they are.”
Such a protest also does not help and is more likely to work against it, she says. “Now it’s about those farmers standing on the doorstep of Christianne van der Wal. While it should be about the substantive discussion. This diverts a lot of attention. Christianne really doesn’t say: okay, then I’ll withdraw that plan. It doesn’t change anything. It only gives a negative sauce.”
/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data87012402-8d9deb.jpg)
Photo Bram Petraeus
Poor lobby
The farmers’ problem is their poor lobby, says Van der Plas. As a former journalist and communication expert in the agricultural sector, she has been astonished about this for years. Nature and environmental organizations work together effectively for their PR in the ‘Green 11’, including Milieudefensie and Greenpeace, she says. But the farmers are divided into different sectors and it lacks one powerful sound.
“You let everything happen, you have to be proactive yourself,” she has told farmers more than once. Van der Plas sums up: there are interest groups for agriculture and horticulture (LTO), for dairy farmers (NMV), pig farmers (POV), poultry farmers (NVP), arable farmers (NAV) and for young farmers and horticulturists (NAJK). sitting on his own island doing his own thing. Good things. But make it one umbrella lobby organization and put money into it.”
The BoerBurgerBeweging itself is steadily building on its advancement, Van der Plas tells the congress in a long, spontaneous introduction about the founding of the party in 2019. “From motion, to amendment, to initiative memorandum”, she says. “With sober common sense, no weird antics, no strange people bring in.”
After fifteen minutes, chairman Stegink intervenes. Caroline, there is a theme today that many members in the room like to ask a question about: nitrogen.
Paper problem
Most of the members who go to the microphone mainly want to say that they find the cabinet plans absurd. According to them, the nitrogen crisis is a ‘paper problem’ of strict standards that is now turning the whole of the Netherlands upside down. Less grassland means more warming in the Netherlands, and nature has not been helped by it. If the farmers have to leave, the ‘ecosystem’ of employment, landscape management and social bonding in the countryside collapses. The quality of the living environment would be under pressure due to population growth and migration.
Read the report Unprecedented expression of dissatisfaction with the VVD: party votes against its own nitrogen policy
Rabbit keeper Henk Oonk wants to come back to the protest in front of the minister’s house, which Van der Plas has condemned. “I understand that you can’t say everything in The Hague,” he says. “I think deep down in your heart you think otherwise. But that does not matter.”
Will the national protest in The Hague on June 22 get out of hand?, a woman asks. “I wouldn’t know why that would get out of hand,” Van der Plas replies. “What is getting out of hand is the policy in the Netherlands.” So we’re all going to The Hague?, the woman asks the audience. “Jeuuuh!”
“They have not yet given up hope,” says Van der Plas after the GMM in her blue Suzuki.
Cigarettes
The conversation continues in the yard of Alice van Drie in Nijkerk, a farmer’s wife with cows, pigs and chicks who is involved in the public debate about livestock farming. Fourteen farmers, plus two supporters, are seated at the table under the apple trees. Van der Plas takes a seat, joins the conversation and has time to catch up on some cigarettes.
“What really is the plan behind this?” one of the farmers asks her. “It is protected with nature. But that’s a stick to hit with.”
“Ground”, think the others. “It’s just a battle for space,” says Van der Plas.
A hectare of agricultural land costs a ton here in Nijkerk, Van Drie estimates. If farmers stop or are expropriated by the government, it will quickly be worth four times as much as building land, she thinks.
Van der Plas: “And then they will soon build a nice Vinex district with all kinds of tile gardens. How is that for biodiversity?”
“Postage stamps remain green for animals,” says a farmer’s wife. “And then the farmers are blamed that many species are gone.”
There is nothing wrong with nature here at the Gelderse Vallei – a nitrogen hotspot – in their opinion. Yes, it is Staatsbosbeheer that neglects the meadows and ditches. Foxes scare away rabbits, hares, pheasants and squirrels. And there are too many geese – tenfold since the 1970s. „Seven geese flats as much as one cow”, says a farmer’s wife.
“Nature is always changing,” observes one farmer. “Plants come in, plants go down. Otherwise Alice would have been milking dinosaurs here.”
Getting bought out is not an option for many farmers, says Alice herself. Suppose she were to receive 1.5 million euros, then she would still be 1.5 million short to repay all bank loans. “I have been a farmer for twenty-five years. What should I do then? Then, as a returnee, I can sit behind the checkout at the supermarket.”
/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data87012397-64ad60.jpg)
Photo Bram Petraeus
hard action
“What can we do?” a farmer’s wife asks Van der Plas. Tough action: Cut off the food supply to the supermarkets, suggests one farmer. “Then the citizen will only feel, gosh, we might need farmers after all.”
No, I think that’s a very bad idea, says Van der Plas. “If you’re going to deprive citizens of food, you really won’t get them behind you.”
This will be fought out in court, Van der Plas expects. “There is no judge who can say that that plant has disappeared because of that farmer’s emissions.” The BBB tells farmers not to do anything and not to sign anything.
And it is up to politicians to act first, says Van der Plas. The government’s nitrogen plans still have to go through the House of Representatives and the Senate. The provinces still have to make plans before 1 July 2023 to reduce nitrogen. “With the upcoming States elections, Members of Parliament will really not worry about this.”
“Are the suicide rates in the countryside already being monitored?” one of the farmers asks.
“When the need is greatest, Caroline is nearby!” Alice van Drie tweeted afterwards with a photo of the table conversation. Yes, “the bar is set high”, says Van der Plas on the way back in the car. “I often say to people; don’t expect me to solve everything for you within a day. I sometimes fear that.”