The Netherlands’ farming sector looks on the cusp of returning to widescale tractor protests after its farmers were informed that yet another raft of measures aimed at cutting farm nitrogen emissions have been put forward by the Dutch government.

The country's largest farming organisation - the LTO - branded the new course of action "incomprehensible and disproportionate" that will have "painful" impacts on farms, as tractors blocked motorways close to Rotterdam last week.

The Netherlands has been a major battleground for farm policy over recent years, as various ministers and governments sought to introduce restrictions on livestock farming as the country wrangles with the fallout of missed environmental targets.

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In addition to the new proposals, a surprise decision by local authorities in North Brabant to revoke the farm permits of five poultry farmers operating in the region has further unsettled the country’s farm sector after a period of relative truce between farmers and government.

Nitrogen issues

The Dutch nitrogen reforms were initially triggered by a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling in 2018 and have been escalated up the successive government agendas by further court rulings.

The rulings centre on the impact of nitrogen deposition on EU-designated nature sites, with farming stated as the source of much of these emissions in the Netherlands.

It was this Dutch ECJ case that has resulted in Ireland having to undertake the onerous and yet-to-be-completed process of conducting an appropriate assessment on the nitrates derogation.

Recent farmers’ party decline

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal in Dublin Castle last week, former BBB (Dutch farmers’ party) president and current member of the Netherlands’ house of representatives Caroline van der Plas signalled that the new proposals are seen as overly restrictive by farmers and that they look set to re-ignite widescale protest.

“Well, it has been a little bit more quiet on the farmers’ front. Partly it had to do with the BBB and us entering the coalition and delivering a minister for agriculture,” van der Plas commented on the situation over the past 12 months.

“It was still a problem that we were working to resolve for farmers, but then we got a new left-wing government and the protests are starting again.”

Van der Plas said that farmers are frustrated by the scrapping of the country’s nitrates derogation, but that they remain hopeful that a future government could look to revisit the blanket organic nitrogen limit of 170kg/ha applicable across the Netherlands from 2025.

“Never say never,” she said of the prospects of another Dutch derogation.

“It is very costly to send away organic manure and then they have to buy very expensive chemical fertiliser, so nobody understands why the Dutch government is not working to get the derogation back.”

Van der Plas acknowledged that the farmers’ party had faced a rocky election last year, which it faced into as a coalition partner.

“People see now that we are not part of the coalition anymore and we do not have the agriculture minister anymore.

“People start to see now that things got bad over the last few months, so we hope to build up trust and that people will vote for us again in the next elections,” she explained.