Cows or houses? We don’t have to choose between them, Piet Adema (57) wrote in an opinion piece last year The Telegraph. That is a caricature in the political debate, which may generate votes, but divides the Netherlands even more.
“Do you count?” wrote Adema, then chairman of the housing association WoningBouwersNL, and since Monday the new Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (ChristenUnie).
One million new-build homes fit on more than 1 percent of the agricultural land, so you don’t have to halve the livestock. The message from Adema and co-author Sjaak van der Tak of LTO-Nederland: “Builders and farmers stand side by side and not against each other.”
Now Adema will be responsible for tackling nitrogen, water, climate and the conversion of the countryside, together with Minister Christianne van der Wal (Nature and Nitrogen, VVD). Thousands of farmers will have to stop or move, the rest will have to work more sustainably. With angry and concerned farmers, Adema must continue to consult and find a solution.
A “great task”, Adema said on Monday up to seven times when he spoke briefly to the media at the Lange Voorhout in The Hague.
With ten years of work experience in construction, Adema can be seen by critics as an extension of that sector. His resume is in reality very broad, stretching from politics and public administration to business. Adema became deputy in Friesland in 2007 and later acted as mayor in Achtkarspelen (Friesland), Tynaarlo and Borger-Odoorn (both Drenthe). He was chairman of the sector association Schoonmakend Nederland and a board member of employers’ associations MKB-Nederland and VNO-NCW.
party chairman
From 2013 to 2021, Adema was also party chairman of the ChristenUnie, just like his current colleague Van der Wal was from her party, the VVD. And just like Van der Wal, Adema wanted to renew his own party at the time. He asked, among other things, the scientific office of the ChristenUnie to draw up a Statement of Principles (2018), which the members have embraced. “Abuse of animals and loss of biodiversity are distressing,” it says.
ChristenUnie leader Gert-Jan Segers has made an “insistent appeal” to Adema to become the new agriculture minister. His predecessor Henk Staghouwer did not consider himself the right person for it and resigned on 5 September. Adema has taken “plenty of time” to think about it himself and with his wife and family, he said Monday afternoon. Because he lives far away in Friesland and because tractor protests or worse are to be expected.
It has not often been so impatiently awaited a new Minister of Agriculture, the department with the smallest budget of the national government this year. “Day 23 without a new Minister of Agriculture,” GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver tweeted at the end of last week.
The question was who within the ChristenUnie wanted to take on this difficult task. Many names were mentioned, including that of acting minister of agriculture Carola Schouten, but the appointment of Adema remained secret until the very end.
Also read: The resignation of Minister Staghouwer delays the already complex nitrogen dossier of the cabinet
There was also a hurry, because ‘independent discussion leader’ Johan Remkes will present his findings on the approach to the nitrogen crisis this Wednesday. It would have been embarrassing for the ChristenUnie and the cabinet if an acting minister such as Schouten had had to receive this advice.
Remkes has had many talks with parties in the agricultural sector and nature and environmental organizations in order to smoothen the deadlocked consultations. So Adema doesn’t start from scratch, but can build on Remkes’ work. One of his first assignments will be to give farmers a concrete ‘future perspective’ in the radical change to sustainable agriculture. It is precisely on this point that his predecessor Staghouwer has failed in the past six months.
Adema is “a practical and pragmatic manager”, according to Jacco Vonhof, chairman of MKB-Nederland. In the cleaning industry, Adema, as employer’s chairman, had to restore calm in that sector. Adema managed to keep parties at the table and, despite harsh criticism, “not become sour”, says Vonhof. This last characteristic can come in handy as Minister of Agriculture.
Integer
Jet Linssen, who negotiated on behalf of the FNV trade union at the time, calls Adema a “pleasant” and “honest man”. “Don’t cheat him,” she says. “I’ve never experienced it myself, but then he gets angry. Then he is a stiff-headed Frisian.”
Like most ministers, Adema is known as a hard worker who is always busy. “It was crazy as a deputy,” he said a few years ago in the Newspaper of the North. “Then I neglected my family. I blame myself for that. There is now a better balance. Be at home more often. The tendency remains to impose too much on myself.”