Manure and phosphate rights are the most urgent interests

There is a fear that he will opt for a generic skimming of perhaps 20% of the phosphate rights in dairy farming or that he will cut generic animal rights. In this way, he thinks he can do something about the legal manure surplus (while according to the data registers, 300.000 hectares of agricultural land are still not fertilized) that he has to remove from the market.

Disproportionate
However, a large generic discount is a difficult one, because it means that Adema runs the risk of being in legal trouble because it saddles companies with a disproportionate burden. The search is for a different approach. To this end, intensive consultations are taking place with the chairmen of the three regional LTO organizations. This is necessary because Sjaak van der Tak is gone and his temporary replacement Dirk Bruins from LTO North really cannot speak for all three regions.

ZLTO mess
Adema may not have much of an issue with Bruins and colleague Rompelberg from the LLTB. The most difficult is the ZLTO. That is where the farmers are most alert and where there is the most pain. In that context, it was inappropriate for Adema to accuse the ZLTO at the end of last year of holding the entire agricultural sector hostage. Adema reportedly wants to make a decision with the LTO leaders in the middle of next week. He must therefore convince Wim Bens in particular.

Adema finds a potty
Adema is not just walking around with the whip. Towards the end of his career, he also tries to make up for an earlier collective mistake. This concerns the so-called eco-regulation in the European Agricultural Policy. At the last minute the minister found a pot of money. He wants to contact the Nitrogen and Rural Area Transition Fund for this. This fund can apparently suffer for a while. The condition is that the European Commission agrees, but that seems to be a formality, because it had already indicated that it did not actually want to punish the farmers for their enthusiastic efforts.
During his visit to the Grüne Woche in Berlin, Adema even presented something completely different, according to journalists who traveled with him. There, the outgoing Christian Union minister even launched the idea of ​​giving the Netherlands special status as a major food producer in the EU, with the associated extra scope. He wants to start a conversation about it in the EU. This either sounds like a late conversion, or as a break from the fixed environment. However, we do not know the man that way. 

Van der Wal wants to settle again
Outgoing colleague and VVD Member of Parliament Christianne van der Wal also made herself heard this week with a number of letters and documents about nitrogen policy. In this, the VVD member shows her well-known side. The policy that has been initiated will be continued with the usual straightforwardness. She does indicate that she sees some room for external netting. Not as has been applied to help Schiphol obtain a Nature Permit, but for livestock farms. The possibility of allowing these companies to settle using only the space used, not the licensed space, is being studied. There is no real solution for the approximately 3.000 PAS reporters, but a total of 127 companies have been helped with a real permit through various goat paths, she reports.

Game with IPO
When it comes to the introduction of a threshold value for nitrogen, as the NSC, among others, wants, the minister does not give in. According to her, such a thing is not possible in the short term, referring, among other things, to work that would be done at the provinces, while they themselves have also asked Van der Wal to hurry up. It seems that the outgoing minister is playing a game here so as not to have to do anything

Now, with the nitrogen dossier, one must always look carefully at what type of reality it concerns: reality as normal people experience it, legal reality, ecological reality, statistical reality or a mix thereof.

Reality outside
Now the fact that just this week a WOO request was widely made public from a shadowy, but very important advisory body to the minister, the Ecological Substantiation Task Group. The documents show that even the experts sometimes no longer seem to know which reality they have to work with. In particular when it comes to the Critical Deposition Value (KDW). Legally or ecologically speaking, a limit value can be set somewhere, but arithmetically many zeros can be placed after the decimal point, they discussed, but what does it say for 'the reality outside', they wondered. However, it did not prevent them from recommending the strictest possible standard and thus continuing to reject any discussion about alternatives or other approaches.

Aerius and Hordijk
Compared to the TEO discussion about the KDW, the State Attorney's position on 'the Aerius calculation instrument' almost reads like a breath of fresh air. The State Attorney fully supports Aerius, but ultimately concludes that it is not the software or the model that has the final say.

What is striking is that the positioning of Aerius as an instrument for using deposition on a local scale no longer reflects the criticism of the Hordijk Commission. He called Aerius unsuitable for this type of exercise.

Torn VVD
In response to Van der Wal's suspected game, something similar seems to have happened this week with the formation process. Without going into the content, it is very striking that the VVD took a position in the Senate this week that it knew would seriously affect the formation. The VVD is therefore quite torn internally in the current situation. In the formation process, the VVD also has the most pain in the area of ​​agriculture. That party would have to do the most to participate.