Irritated Schouten sticks to her position

Minister Carola Schouten of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality maintains her position that she sees no room for the bottlenecks in the phosphate rights system. She does talk to them. 

In the general consultation 'Manure policy' and 'Irregularities Identification and Registration (I&R)' from Thursday 13 December, a tired and somewhat irritated Schouten could be seen. The tenor of the debate was that the agricultural spokespersons of the various parties agree that the phosphate rights system does not deserve a beauty prize.

That is why they want to look for solutions for dairy farmers who are in danger of going under. However, Minister Schouten does not want to deviate from the line she took earlier.

Innovative from the Knel
With a group of about 50 dairy farmers, Innovative from de Knel occupied a large part of the stand. They accuse Schouten of having allocated too many phosphate rights. When asked how this is possible, a repetition of the arguments from the letter to Parliament of December 7† "It is partly due to the objections submitted, partly to the fact that the data from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) turned out to be not accurate enough, and partly to the fact that something was distributed to the troublemakers."

Schouten promised to enter into discussions with RVO.nl, Statistics Netherlands and Innovative from de Knel to go over the reference date, the phosphate rights allocated and the production of phosphate. Schouten clearly indicated that the phosphate bank can therefore not open for the time being: "There should not be any more rights on the market. The phosphate bank is therefore not a solution for the bottlenecks."

Pigs and Poultry
The ceiling for pig phosphate will not be lowered either. Schouten is very firm about this: "Through the warm remediation rights will be withdrawn from the market and the number of pigs will fall as a result. However, the ceiling will not be formally lowered." This ceiling has been laid down in the sixth Nitrates Directive action program and will soon be enshrined in law. Schouten therefore has no intention of making any changes now.

In the poultry sector, ducks are removed from the phosphate reduction count. "Formally, these do not fall under the 'poultry' category, but under the 'other' category," she reports. However, CBS did include ducks in phosphate production for poultry.

Monitor self-cleaners 
A fixed milk production of 7.500 kilos per cow is used for self-dairies. Now that one of the largest dairy farms in the Netherlands has announced that it will become a self-dairy dairy, the question has been raised whether this will not be an escape route for the phosphate rights. The minister indicated that he would monitor this closely and intervene if necessary.

The conclusion?
Schouten sticks to the line she has started. It means that there is no room for the bottlenecks and for the continuation of various new generic measures. The evening did not bring new hope for the participants of Innovative from the Knel.

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