When the Schoof cabinet took office and a BBB minister for agriculture was chosen, the expectations of the agricultural sector were high. This cabinet would take steps to get agriculture off the nitrogen lock and free companies from the bureaucratically tightened thumbscrews.
Now, more than five months later, disappointment reigns supreme. Ministers stand powerless with their hands in the air and bureaucracy determines what is and is not possible. The day-long debate this week between Minister Wiersma and the Lower House on the NPLG, PAS reporters and numerous related matters spoke volumes in that regard.
Impatience also on the left
Even the left wing of the governing party quartet (VVD, Thom van Campen/NSC, Harm Holman) grew impatient with the minister's lack of decisiveness and administrative power. They too will not be stringing along PAS reporters for another three years, as she announced last week.
Wiersma is not to be accused of a lack of basic knowledge when it comes to agriculture, but according to people who work with her, she does not show herself to be a person who takes the reins in her own hands. In this respect, she seems to be the opposite of her predecessor Van der Wal. Voices from the BBB know that the gnashing of teeth of forewoman Van der Plas can therefore be heard regularly. That was not the intention!
IPO seeks and has lower limit
The search for an arithmetic lower limit for nitrogen deposition (and thus a solution for the PAS reporters) also seems to be completely on the back burner. Yet something strange is at play here. In August, the Interprovincial Consultation (IPO), or the supra-provincial provincial government, presented the results of yet another study into such a lower limit, with expected results. The Stichting Stikstofclaim (SSC) was more successful. It fished out a lower limit that is used in practice from the mandatory preliminary test that companies must go through when applying for a nature permit (this was written about last weekApparently SSC knows the official documents better than the politicians themselves.
According to the provinces themselves, the lower limit is not yet entirely sufficient to grant or deny a permit, because the state of nature must be examined more broadly. This information was enough for the SSC to ask the IPO to stop granting (and denying) the permit.
Politics versus lawyers
An arithmetic lower limit is not the only thing. There is also a threshold value for deposition, below which companies do not have to apply for a permit. And Aerius should actually be removed from the law. The problem is that there is great resistance from government lawyers to the necessary amendments to the law. As if they think that politics does not have the right to do so.
Cow Fund
Today (Friday 6 December) there was also further consultation on the cow buy-up programme in the context of the manure reduction plan. Minister Wiersma was not present, her civil servants were. The plan no longer seems to be that farmers themselves directly contribute to the buy-up, but that the banks, the animal feed companies and dairy (called 'big agro' for the political left) fill a necessary fund for this.
Where is the air healthier?
Incidentally, this week a few more studies were published with which agriculture haters once again hit the farmers in the face. According to the TV program Pointer unhealthy air causes billions in health damage to citizens, mainly caused by agriculture. Unfortunately for Pointer, shortly after publication, an RIVM study was released showing that the air in the densely populated urban areas of the Netherlands is really unhealthy. According to a report The NEC directive also requires ammonia emissions to be further reduced.
Natural land more widely shared
What received less attention was a message from the Ministry of LVVN about the allocation of natural lands. Up until now, the process of purchasing, devaluation and allocation of former agricultural lands to land managers has been conducted via a rather shady route, which only a limited group of civil servants have insight into. The private landowners (estate owners) successfully objected to this course of events and have now reached an agreement with the government and Staatsbosbeheer that they can also share from the pot, from 1 January 2027. We are still waiting for participation from agricultural parties. However, the landowners have a better stick behind the door, because they have successfully initiated a procedure for state aid against the government for the transfer of land to the large land managers.