Candidate more important than CDA program

On Friday 30 October, the CDA presented its election program. What is the agricultural paragraph in the program worth? 

For middle parties that have a good chance of participating in government, such as the CDA, you can read the election program as a list of spearheads that sometimes form part of the coalition negotiations later on. One of those spearheads is, for example, the return of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Manure policy target requirements
The returned post of Minister of Agriculture was filled by Carola Schouten of the ChristenUnie. She appeared to have a preference for the vision of circular agriculture of D66 member Tjeerd de Groot. Without a CDA minister on the returned ministry, very little came of the agricultural paragraph in the 2017 election program of the CDA. In fact, a period of unprecedented peasant protests followed.

That explains the praise for the agricultural sector, with which the agricultural section of the CDA begins this year. It is highly doubtful whether the Ministry of Agriculture, together with a CDA minister in the new government to be formed, will organize the fertilizer policy with target rather than means regulations. That is stated in the election program, but so far the government of which the CDA is a part has seen the prevention of manure fraud as a priority in the implementation of the manure policy. Target regulations offer no guarantees, means regulations do.

Economic dilemmas
The plea for a better revenue model and fair pricing in the election program is not new. That was already the case in 2017. Hein Schumacher, CEO of FrieslandCampina, contributed to the agricultural section of the CDA for the coming elections. The same person who commissioned Wageningen University to study the structural development of dairy farming. As far as is known, the outcome of this, the ongoing increase in the scale of dairy farming, is a given for FrieslandCampina. That is the economic reality.

It is not clear how the CDA wants to combine a better revenue model with the laws of the international free market. How you simultaneously implement the Climate Agreement and maintain the size of the agro-business complex (from farm to fork) in the Netherlands is also not enough. There are differing views on this within the CDA itself. It is not for nothing that the CDA vision from 2019 was whistled back at the party congress. This view states that agricultural exports are less important than the income of the farmer.

Regional Representation
The CDA's plea to reform the electoral system into a system of regional representation could make all the difference this year. Like no other party, the CDA has developed the tradition that representatives from the region are elected by preferential votes in the House of Representatives. That happened with Annie Schreijer-Pierik, with Jaco Geurts and with rising star Pieter Omzigt, and the same could now happen again with the candidates from the dairy farm Eline Vedder (ranked 23rd) and Cees de Jong (ranked 35).

If they are not given the opportunity to properly represent the interests of their electorate, such as dairy farmer Maurits von Martels, preferential votes lead to frustration among voters and elected officials. An electoral system of regional representation not only better safeguards the balance between urban and rural areas, but also provides more clarity in advance about the candidates and their portfolios. Someone who is high on the candidacy list has more to say about the portfolios than candidates much lower on the candidacy list.

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