Should I include or not include nitrogen emissions from transport, mobile equipment and manure storage? Is it necessary to fill in the ‘establishment date’ of the animal house? Do I also have to take into account the ‘building impact’ more than three kilometers away from a Natura 2000 site? What should I actually enter as the height of my house, the ridge or the height of the house doors?
Since Monday, intensive livestock farmers can use a complex online calculation tool – Aerius Check – to check whether they are peak loaders. The tool makes a model calculation of how much nitrogen from a livestock farmer ends up in vulnerable nature areas within a radius of 25 kilometres. Only livestock farmers whose nitrogen load exceeds a certain threshold value are eligible for the ‘wildly attractive’ offer from Minister Christianne van der Wal (Nature and Nitrogen, VVD), a compensation of 120 percent of the value of their farm.
Not every farmer expected to have to make a calculation themselves to find out whether they are a peak loader. Many farmers thought they could log in to a government portal and see immediately whether they are peak loaders. Filling in the calculation tool is far from easy: farmers stumble over words such as ‘deposition load’ and ‘situation result’. Consultancy firms, professionals who apply for environmental permits for farmers and are also now called in by livestock farmers, do not always find a solution either.
The fact that many livestock farmers sign up for the buy-out scheme is important for the success of the government’s approach. By buying out the livestock farmers with the heaviest nitrogen load on vulnerable nature – or by relocating vulnerable nature or reducing emissions through innovations – a first major step must be made with nature restoration.
The cabinet is using a carrot and a stick: in addition to the offer of 120 percent of the company value, the cabinet is also working on an agricultural agreement. This should ensure that farmers who want to continue can earn a good living if they work more sustainably. Negotiations about this threatened to collapse last week, but farmers’ interest organization LTO is still at the table after hours of talks with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and five ministers.
Read also: The Cabinet will be happy if one in five peak payers allows themselves to be bought out
Farmers who do not want to cooperate voluntarily are faced with ‘coercive instruments’, such as forced buy-outs or the pricing of nitrogen. The cabinet’s approach came under pressure last week too: the new coalition agreement of the province of Gelderland, where more than half of the peak loaders are located, states that the province will not cooperate in forced buy-outs – a support in the back for farmers who don’t want to stop.
Nevertheless, last week thousands of farmers were busy with the question: am I a peak loader? In three days, Aerius Check was completed more than ten thousand times. But farmers, according to the conversations that NRC this week with dozens of major slanderers, were sometimes left confused: did I fill in my details correctly? Others dropped out: too complicated.
Stumbling block
To help farmers and their advisers use the calculation tool properly, BIJ12 – the partnership of the Dutch provinces – organized the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality and RIVM on Thursday morning a digital workshop. About sixty people watch a demonstration and ask questions to the team of experts via chat. After the workshop, farmers without experience with Aerius Check should also be able to make a calculation “within half an hour, or rather fifteen minutes, ten minutes”.
A major stumbling block appears to be the information that the farmers have to enter in Aerius Check. This is extremely detailed: the exact location of the barn must be drawn on a digital map, the exact height of the barn buildings, the average number of animals over a year, the right type of air washers or barn system, whether and how much the cows go outside: it all affects the amount of nitrogen that is emitted, and how much of it ultimately ends up in a Natura 2000 area, according to calculation models by RIVM. Many farmers will have to take construction drawings and administration to be able to fill in the data.
Read also: From hexagon to peak loader, this is how the government calculates nitrogen
The answers from the team of experts are correspondingly complex on Thursday morning: for the buy-out scheme, only the ‘barn emissions’ are relevant – only the emissions from the livestock, and not those from manure on the land or agricultural machinery. The construction date of a barn is not used for the calculation, but it can be useful to fill in in advance, the experts answer. The amount of any subsidy that can be obtained depends on this – the older the stable is, the less is reimbursed. And what is “building influence”? “In short: building influence must be included if a building is dominant in relation to its surroundings,” an RIVM employee replies in the chat. For further information, please refer to the Aerius handbook.
Gerrit van den Top quickly finished the calculation tool. The dairy farmer from Kootwijkerbroek would like to know whether he is a peak loader, but he refused the complicated fill-in exercise. “I am not going to fill in my data myself, they will look it up,” he says. For fear of not entering the correct numbers, dairy farmer Leendert van Staalduinen stopped filling in. “They are talking about a deposition load, what should I imagine? And then calculations are made that I don’t know if they are correct.” He didn’t want to know if he was a peak loader. He would rather not sell his company.
‘Quick scan’ leads to unrest
The Ministry of Agriculture understands that Aerius Check is not user-friendly, says a spokesperson. Before launching, the calculation tool was ‘extensively tested’ with livestock farmers and agricultural advisers and was grafted onto users who more often use Aerius, RIVM’s nitrogen calculation model that is part of many permit processes. The user research led, among other things, to the preparation of additional manuals, says the spokesperson.
A simpler version of the calculation tool was killed. A ‘quick scan’ that, after a few simple questions, could give an initial indication of whether a farmer was a peak loader, turned out to give unreliable results, as a result of which many more farmers would be told that they might be peak loaders. It would lead to “too much unrest and uncertainty”.
According to the ministry, there is no other option than to have livestock farmers fill in their data themselves, because the ministry does not have “up-to-date, company-specific information”. “With a little help”, most farmers can also use Aerius Check. Sufficient support is said to be available in the form of manuals and farmers can contact the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) with questions.
Implications
However, the lack of confidence in the government and the lack of understanding about the need to redesign large parts of the rural area for nature restoration cannot be dispelled in a workshop or a telephone line. The Dutch Poultry Farmers’ Union cried its members this week to be ‘cautious’ when filling out Aerius Check. “By using the system, it would be quite possible that companies would place themselves on a list of which the consequences are not yet known.” These are claims that the ministry strongly denies, including during the workshop on Thursday morning: there are no consequences to completing the calculation tool. “The system is completely anonymous,” says a policy officer from the Ministry of Agriculture to those present. “I can’t emphasize it enough.”
Peak taxers who choose eggs for their money and want to cooperate realize that they are only at the beginning of a long process: they have questions about the calculation of the appraised value of their company, about demolition fees, what they can still do after buying out, and that too nitrogen emissions and the final settlement with the tax authorities.
Many large detractors seem to be waiting and say they will fill in the calculation tool ‘surely once’. Much remains unclear. The content of alternative subsidies for reducing nitrogen emissions, for example for reducing livestock, investing in nitrogen-reducing techniques or relocating companies, is also unknown. “Not all arrangements of the approach have been completed yet,” says the Ministry of Agriculture. “We will add to this information in the coming months. In the meantime, entrepreneurs can think about their options and future prospects.”
With the cooperation of Cato Brinkhof
A version of this article also appeared in the June 17, 2023 newspaper.