Veal farmer Wim Brouwer sits on his terrace, an “emergency” red flag flying outside and his laptop open on a page revealing he is one of the Netherlands’ peak polluters, due to the nitrogen excreted each year by his 1,360 calves.
His business sits in one of the most intensively farmed parts of Europe’s most intensively farmed country, a huge exporter with more than 110 million livestock, including cattle, chickens and pigs.
Nitrogen compound emissions are a big matter in this small, packed country, becoming the dominant political issue over the course of a four-year crisis. Among other impacts, the crisis has hampered crucial housebuilding, because builders need nitrogen permits from a limited supply to cover construction emissions. The crisis has polarised social opinion, spurring the rise of a new rural populist movement and mobilising environmentalists who are desperately concerned about the state of wild habitats.
Several kilometres from Barneveld lie the EU-protected nature reserves of the Veluwe, where biodiversity is threatened. Brouwer’s emissions are nine times the threshold cited in a Dutch policy, green-lighted by the EU, to offer about 3,000 “peak polluter” livestock farmers voluntary buy-outs from a €975m (£835m) pot.
“This morning I did the calculation for ‘120% of my farm’s value’, what the nature minister called a wildly attractive ruling,” Brouwer said. “There’s nothing wildly attractive for me. You couldn’t even rebuild the farm for this amount. But when a business fills out the form and finds out it is a peak polluter, it’s a death sentence.”
Brouwer says his farm is carbon neutral, but he fears being a peak polluter means credit lines drying up. As chairman of the local LTO farmers’ union branch, he feels strongly for others. “Every 14 days, a farmer in the Netherlands brings an end to their life. If a healthy career lasts for 40 years, we’ve spent 10% of ours living in uncertainty.”
A series of supreme court rulings in cases brought by environmentalists have brought the Netherlands to a standstill over pollution. Nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from transport, and ammonia from farming, are negatively affecting EU-protected nature reserves, in breach of EU law. Speeds are limited on motorways and desperately needed housebuilding is on pause. A 2020 commission recommended reducing nitrogen-based pollution by 50% by 2030 and a follow-up report proposed asking 500 to 600 peak polluters – mostly livestock farmers – to shut within a year.
“This has been a problem for more than 50 years – that’s the real problem,” said Wim de Vries, professor of environmental systems analysis at Wageningen University.
“It’s a disturbance of the whole nutrient balance: too much nitrogen, soil acidification, a lack of calcium, magnesium, potassium. Because of that, you get an impact on soil microorganisms and earthworms. Certain plants outcompete the others so diversity decreases. Insects and butterflies that live on those plants are reduced, and then birds.
“Why are we so strict in Belgium and in the Netherlands? Because we are already exceeding the critical loads.”
After months of protests from farmers, the first closures will be voluntary, Christianne van der Wal, the nature minister, said earlier this month. “The government is fully committed to this voluntary approach and hopes that many of the businesses that qualify will participate …the government wants to prevent mandatory measures.”
Forced buyouts are happening already in Belgium but they are proving to be politically unpalatable in the Netherlands. The Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB), a new centre-right party surfing a wave of rural anger at environmental policies, recently won key regional elections while parties in the governing coalition have lost support. Public trust in politics is low.
Farmers’ union the LTO has said it is withdrawing from negotiations for an agriculture agreement on future environmental obligations and governmental support. It said there was not enough clarity about nitrogen-based emissions or how farmers will compete with foreign products without the same pollution requirements. This landbouwakkoord is intended to run in parallel with the buyouts to offer “perspective” to Dutch farmers, but agreement is proving difficult.
Environmentalists have welcomed the scheme, which opens on 3 July and will also offer smaller-scale farmers funds from a €500m pot to stop or reduce their impact. “The start of the scheme provides the first step necessary for nature recovery by halting nitrogen reduction, while at the same time providing farmers the opportunity to end their activities in a sound and dignified manner,” Eveline Meltzer, spokesperson for WWF Netherlands, said.
“When enough farmers feel this choice is fit for them, because for instance they don’t have a successor, this puts less pressure on remaining farms.”
Louise Manning, professor of sustainable agri-food systems at Lincoln University said that as international agreements affect farms, businesses and rural communities globally, governments should not lose sight of “social contracts such as food security, resilient societies and a just transition”.
De Vries advocates building a sustainable farming sector, adding that while ammonia may have more local impact than NO2 , nobody is talking about driving less or banning cars.
Metres from Brouwer’s farm are woods and a small waterway clogged with algae – a sign, say environmentalists, of excess nitrogen or phosphate. Two foresters, standing by their van nearby, believe farmers are not the only malefactors. “Who’s to say,” said one, “that it isn’t the road?”
