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Farmers Won’t Save the Climate at Their Own Expense

Pushing farms toward a green transition could result in a big backlash.

By Anchal Vohra, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

Farmers gather with their tractors near the headquarters of the the National Institute for Health and Environment (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu), for a protest against the nitrogen policy rules, in Bilthoven, on October 16, 2019.

April 19, 2023, 3:51 PM

It was easy to predict Dutch farmers would be unhappy about a government plan to shut down nearly a third of livestock farms to halve the country’s overall nitrogen emissions by the end of the decade. It was less easy to imagine that they would disrupt the country’s political life. In recent months, farmers have blockaded roads, brought cows to parliament, and dumped manure on streets, literally causing a stink to show their disapproval.

The farmers contend they are not just trying to protect their livelihood but a way of life bequeathed to them by previous generations who tilled the land. Green activists are unmoved. They quote scientific evidence to argue that the agricultural sector, and in particular animal husbandry, needs urgent reforms to halt climate change and preserve the environment.

Current levels of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) on their own can heat the world beyond the 1.5-degree Celsius limit set as a target in the Paris Agreement. The European Union intends to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, but to do so it will have to adopt policies to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, 12 percent of which emanate from mainly meat and dairy production.

The activists in the Netherlands have won the argument in the country’s highest court that nitrogen released in animal manure is harming protected habitats. But the Dutch government, whose job it is to enforce the court’s will, is either unable or unwilling to do so in the face of the farmers’ resistance.

Events in the Dutch country are perhaps a prelude to similar battles expected to take place elsewhere in the world as farmers, already vulnerable to the vagaries of weather and soil health, increasingly come into conflict with climate policy. Environmentalists believe that farmers can’t be protected from a green farming transition, despite their reputation as poorly paid heroes responsible for providing the masses with nutrition. As the Dutch try to reconcile their economic ambitions with their environmental goals, there will be lessons for governments in the rest of Europe and perhaps around the world on how to assuage farmers’ concerns while also addressing climate change and limit harm to biodiversity.

Farming isn’t just central to the Dutch identity but also its economy. After the widespread destruction of World War II, the Netherlands produced greater crop yields per acre than neighboring France and Germany, over time turning into the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world. This industrial boom came at an environmental cost. A country of 17.5 million people, the Netherlands is also home to more than 100 million cattle, sheep, pigs, chicken, and horses strewn about stables releasing huge amounts of nitrogen that is injurious to human health, the climate, and, indirectly, the economy.

Johan Vollenbroek spearheaded the campaign to reduce livestock farms and the concomitant nitrogen pollution. “There are hundreds of thousands of animal stables here that release huge amounts of ammonia, the nitrogen-rich gas released in animal manure,” the pharmacist-turned-activist who runs a nongovernmental organization (NGO) called Mobilization for the Environment (MOB) told FP. “It causes air pollution, seeps into water, and acidifies the soil. As a result people are falling sick, birds are disappearing, and forests are in danger. It is all connected.”

“We have more animals per square meter than anywhere in the world. These animals also eat and shit in our country; that produces a lot of nitrogen,” Max Van Der Sleen, a macroeconomist who is also a member of Vollenbroek’s NGO, told FP. “In the end, that is bad for nature and for human health and has cost the Netherlands nearly 6 billion euros in environmental damages,” he said, citing a study that added the cost of damages to biodiversity, human health, and the climate every year since 2008.

In 2019, the country’s highest court heard a petition by MOB and ruled that permits issued to polluting activities such as livestock farms, construction, and infrastructure were in violation of an EU directive meant to protect areas rich in biodiversity. (Soil in the Netherlands has three times more nitrogen than EU regulations allow.) It said before issuing any future permits that the government must first significantly reduce nitrogen pollution in the 162 protected habitats, or Natura 2000 areas.

But Vollenbroek alleged that nothing has been done in the last four years. To slash nitrogen emissions the government needs to shut down more than 11,000 farms and order over 17,000 farmers to significantly reduce livestock. Instead, Vollenbroek claimed, more farms continue to open. He accused the Netherlands’ prime minister of closing his eyes and deliberately choosing not to act. “In a private meeting, [Mark] Rutte said to me, ‘I am not going to solve this problem; the markets should do it,’” Vollenbroek said. “The main problem is that he is a free-market advocate.”

Shuttering farms is a politically sensitive issue in the Netherlands and has led to the formation of a separate political party called Boer-Burger Beweging (BBB). It won 17 seats in the Senate, or the upper chamber, in recent elections. Experts say the BBB is gaining strength as it encroaches on the conservative vote and is being courted by the far right. They believe its growing numbers in Parliament will make it difficult to clean up the environment of excess nitrogen.

Jeroen Candel, an associate professor of food and agricultural policy at Wageningen University and Research, said the BBB has become the largest party in provinces that play a big role in the government’s nitrogen policy. The provinces need to develop regional plans on “how to alleviate nitrogen deposition,” he told FP.

“The national government has laid down targets in the law. The ‘how’ is largely left to the provinces. These plans could involve buying out farmers, helping them to innovate, or replacing them,” Candel said. The Dutch government has allocated 24 billion euros to pay off the farmers and help them diversify. Some farmers are excited about the prospect but most are reluctant. Furthermore, they believe they are being targeted while other sectors pollute unhindered.

Their sense of disaffection is being tapped into by the far right. Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a former member of far-right party Forum for Democracy, has said that the government is trying to steal the farmers’ land not to cut nitrogen, but to house immigrants.

Farmers are a huge voting community in any country, and governments often tread cautiously when it comes to actions that could make their lives harder. But activists say that while the farmers have become the face of the anti-nitrogen movement in the Netherlands, they are the bottom rung in a long ladder of stakeholders benefiting from the export of dairy and meat products. They say the need is to convince the farmers of the collective benefits of diversifying toward plant-based protein and making them partners on a journey that has the potential to transform agriculture and do their bit to save the planet. The fault lies with the government, which, instead of coming up with a master plan or a holistic vision of the future of agriculture that protects the soil, water, and air—as well as the farmers’ interests—is simply procrastinating.

The European Commission has come up with a farm-to-fork strategy to usher in sustainable food production by preserving “affordability of food while generating fairer economic returns” for the farmers. It is, however, in its nascent stages. Christianne van der Wal, minister for nature and nitrogen policy in the Netherlands, said that there are no easy paths to cleaning the environment of excess nitrogen and farmers’ suffering was unavoidable. In an interview with Politico magazine she said she had been asked by Germany, Spain, Denmark, and other European nations about how she intends to solve the problem. “It’s not possible without pain, for the farmers especially.”

Vollenbroek said, in the end, the farmers, too, benefit from a diverse biodiversity and that the idea is not to render them unemployed but to transition from cattle farming. For now, however, battle lines are drawn between green campaigners like him and the farmers, with neither side ready to give in. “I could do two things: Leave it, go for holidays, go to Mallorca. I have good pension; I could afford it,” he said. “But I, we, feel we don’t have a choice. Nature will recover in another 10,000 years; it is the future of mankind that is at stake.”