News phosphate bank
The opening of the phosphate bank is delayed
The opening of the phosphate bank has been postponed. In a letter to parliament, Minister Schouten of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) announces that the opening will not take place until mid-2019 at the earliest.
De phosphate bank must give the group of young land-bound farmers and the group of land-bound dairy farmers the opportunity to grow through an exemption from the phosphate rights. Schouten announced at an earlier stage that the phosphate bank would remain closed until November 1 anyway. Now that has been postponed again to mid-2019.
Handling objections
In a joint motion, Jaco Geurts (CDA) and Helma Lodders (VVD) have requested the minister to only open the phosphate bank after all objections to the (un)allocated phosphate rights have been settled. Schouten is now responding to that call. The minister expects to complete the majority of the objections submitted before the turn of the year.
A number of dairy farmers believe that the burden is disproportionate. In accordance with the decision of the Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal (CBb), Schouten must extensively review these objections, which means that not all objections have been completed before 2019.
Exemption space not in the picture
The space in the phosphate bank depends on the 10% creaming off from the traded (purchase and/or lease) phosphate rights. It is not yet known how many kilograms of phosphate this is. It is expected that the necessary transactions will take place towards the turn of the year, which will increase the creaming pot.
At the same time, it is unknown whether Schouten should allocate additional phosphate rights to the bottlenecks. This makes it risky for Minister Schouten to open the phosphate bank before the scope for exemption has been identified.
Final lease settlement
In the same letter to Parliament, she definitively puts an end to the exemption from creaming (10%) in the case of lease. According to Schouten, this is not possible without a change in the law; Geurts suggested (through a motion) that Article 38 of the Fertilizers Act might provide openings. Schouten then called in the assistance of the state attorney, but that did not yield any other insights.
Click here to read the letter to parliament.
Wouter Job
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