The boss of FrieslandCampina gave a very stupid interview in this newspaper. From my ivory strip in this newspaper it is easy to measure such a person. If I also feel genuine anger, then I kick it up a notch and ram a malicious piece out of it. The question is whether Hein Schumacher, as that boss is called, deserves such an approach. He says such silly things that you wonder if he’s got them all figured out. That deserves compassion rather than the knot.
Like so many men (open this newspaper), Heintje does not realize that times have changed. You can get mad at that and say it’s a godsend that someone who runs a multi-billion dollar company that represents thousands of dairy farmers, who are responsible for much of our nitrogen problem, is still proposing old solutions to new problems, but that’s about it. we don’t care. Heintje honestly thinks he is doing a good job. He doesn’t know any better.
The interview starts right away. The guessing journalists want to conduct a thought experiment with our Hein: what if we halve the livestock and double the milk price? Fun, sensible and not very surprising for those who keep up with the discussion about emissions and livestock. The pressure of the milk industry on our nature is immense and the farmers earn too little. One and one is two. Surely the solution cannot be more scaling up and a further race to the bottom? Strangely enough, Hein doesn’t understand it. He’s never thought about it. In a slight panic he begins to ask questions in return: Why? What? How? Heintje gets lost and that is pathetic.
He puts on yet another grey-turned record. Technological solutions will reduce emissions! Hasn’t that been promised for years, without any success? And of course three quarters of our production is for export, because we operate in a European agricultural system. But what about the 30 percent of exports outside Europe? Why, for example, is so much milk powder going to Nigeria? Hein: ‘If we didn’t do that, you should take a look at the geopolitical consequences.’ My awake colleagues understand him immediately: ‘You mean people would come this way with hunger?’ ‘Naturally.’ Oh, Heintje, do you really have to Playing Infantino and using the fear of refugees as an argument to flood the African market with powdered milk?
The pity of Hein is that he can only think in a fixed pattern: more and more efficiently. Suppose, he says, that we continue breeding African cows in the same way as Dutch cows, so that they also produce ten thousand liters of milk per year, instead of three thousand, then that would solve many environmental problems. Then you have to kill them after five years: ‘Ultimately, a cow is an economic asset. That should pay off. If you let a cow give milk for 25 years, she would become increasingly inefficient. Then you get a gigantic CO2 problem.’ The biggest CO2 problem is of course caused by using food that is suitable for human consumption as animal feed. But Hein can’t get his head around that.
The house populist goes in search of Dutch people every week who have managed to play the people in an excellent way.