Remkes’ tone is ‘nice’, but he does not take away the anger and mistrust

Her three children, aged eight, six and two years old, have been moved to other places, time for farmer Alien van Zijtveld (30) to hear directly via laptop how Johan Remkes thinks things should go further with the kitchen. the farmers in the Netherlands. “I don’t have great expectations,” says Van Zijtveld. Together with her husband Pieter (31) she owns a dairy farm in Rouveen, Overijssel, with over a hundred cows.

Also read: Remkes expects ‘legal bumps’ in stopping major nitrogen polluters

Remkes’ tone initially appeals to Van Zijtveld, secretary of Agractie, a somewhat moderate action group that fights for the interests of farmers in times of nitrogen policy. “Great”, she sighs when Remkes speaks from The Hague about a country in which there is room for farmers, “including young farmers”.

But when Remkes is finished with his explanation, disappointment dominates. Especially about his advice to persuade farmers who live close to European protected natural areas to ‘change their business practices’, to entice them to move or to voluntarily stop and, if that fails, to expropriate them. “Stopping is terrible if you, as a farmer, don’t choose it yourself. It’s a life’s work.” And a different business? “How are we supposed to do that? We are here on peat soil. We grow grass for our cows, we can’t suddenly start growing maize or something like that.”

big loach

Alien van Zijtveld does not know whether her company will have to deal with government measures. The cows are more than one and a half kilometers away from Olde Maten and Veerslootslanden, a Natura 2000 area where, according to the description, especially unfertilized blue grasslands are worth protecting, as well as the large loach. “Never heard of it,” she laughs. She also does not know whether her dairy farms are among the ‘peak taxers’ that emit too much nitrogen near nature areas, according to the government. “When are you a peak loader? That cannot be determined. Moreover, you can never say that the nitrogen of your company has made that one piece of nature less valuable.”

She is satisfied with Remkes’s opinion that the critical deposition value, the limit of what a nature reserve can store in too much nitrogen, should not be declared sacred and that the state of nature itself should primarily be looked at. Van Zijtveld: “It often turns out that it is not about nitrogen, but about water or soil.” She is also satisfied with Remkes’ criticism of the government’s actions in recent years. “The problem is not nitrogen, the problem is an unreliable government,” she says. “Look how many farmers don’t like it anymore.”

She lists a number of measures that have made life almost impossible for farmers; especially the system of phosphate rights that was introduced a few years ago for farmers who just before had been allowed to increase the number of cows, has caused a lot of misery. “Many farmers are the victims of failing government policies. The policy is lousy, it flies from left to right. I was driving the tractor with my six-year-old daughter recently. She steered too far to the left and then too much back to the right and so she swam across the land. Until I said: find a place in the distance, a tree for example, and send to that tree. She straightened up in one go. It is the same with government. What is missing is a solid plan with a clear goal for agriculture.”

In the Netherlands it is about much more than nitrogen, she is convinced of that. “What if the Netherlands will soon have solved this nitrogen problem? Then there are other problems.” With the quality of water, for example, or too much manure. Earlier this year, the Van Zijtveld family took over the company from her in-laws and is now expanding. They still do not have enough land to spread the manure from all their cows.

Also read: Here I have to explain why I don’t have an inverted flag waving‘

Buy out peak loaders

Her phone calls, chairman Bart Kemp wants to discuss a reaction to Remkes’ plans. That is mixed: he calls the plans for buying out peak loaders “fire-hazardous” but he is satisfied that Remkes signals that the government is “making big mistakes”. After the telephone consultation, Van Zijtveld shows her cows, and also the purchase of two milking robots, which has made manual milking of the cows unnecessary three times a day. What she “misses,” she says, is clear government. “We have expanded our business. Because we want to make money. Our company is heavily funded and we want to pay off. But will we get the chance? I do not think so. Soon we will have climbed a big mountain, we will be at the top, and then, plop, another measure will come and you will be down. Then you can start again.”

A movie with a song about a country that is proud of farmers plays on her phone. Launched Wednesday. “This song is about how you can work together for a beautiful country. A song about how you want to leave a country to your children.”