Background Nitrogen mood
Agricultural agreement: and the elephant gave birth to a mouse
The consultations on a broad Agricultural Agreement are increasingly taking on the characteristics of an elephant birth. It takes an extremely long time and is difficult. And if a viable fruit emerges at all, it seems to be only the proverbial mouse that finally brought the big trunked four-legged friend into the world.
In letter to members on the Agricultural Agreement which LTO chairman Sjaak van der Tak and his official right-hand man Hans van den Heuvel wrote this week, look back on the process of the many months so far. Van der Tak praises everyone for their input, but has no concrete points to report that all the talk has produced.
Hope for period after May 8
And although according to Van der Tak nitrogen is not negotiated in agricultural consultations, it does have everything to do with it, he says. At the start of the consultation process, he denied this. It is therefore not for nothing that he makes the possible signing of an agreement partly dependent on a solution to the PAS reporting problem. Nothing has changed in that after all these months, but the need is pressing. Van der Tak hopes that from 8 May something will move for the better in the government. He still wants an agreement. He does not clarify what his hopes are based on.
Adjustment of nitrogen registration system
Now the cabinet has last Wednesday an adjustment of the nitrogen registration system (SSRS) discussed. According to the concise explanation, the purpose of this is to make it easier to move the available nitrogen space. This could therefore lead to the beginning of a solution for the PAS reporting problem. In any case, this group is reported as the intended beneficiary, together with the housing sector. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality does not want to provide any further explanation about this yet, because a letter has to be sent to the House of Representatives first, but the impression is that Minister Van der Wal is finally allowed to do something or will move on this point. The question is: how?
Where does that nitrogen come from?
It is therefore important to know how much nitrogen space is now available behind the various partitions in the registration system and where that space comes from. A suggestion that is circulating is that Van der Wal can fill the new registration system with the nitrogen gain from 50.000 hectares of buffer strips, and then distribute this space to PAS detectors. Perhaps more clarity will come soon. A solution to the PAS reporting problem has long been a carrot that the agricultural sector has been chasing.
LTO as an agricultural garnish
In the letter to the members, Van der Tak is wisely silent about the fact that LTO-Nederland is gradually becoming almost the only agricultural member organization involved in discussions about an agreement to be reached. Although there are still the NAJK and the Biohuis, the NAJK does not have its own member companies and is more or less the youth department of LTO. At least that's how they are sometimes seen. The Biohuis represents at most a few hundred farmer members. For that reason it was dropping out of the Dutch Dairy Farmers Union probably a bitter pill for the LTO chairman. All the more so because he almost made it a personal mission to keep all frogs in the wheelbarrow, as is said in the corridors. The pain of a possible agricultural agreement will mainly be suffered in dairy farming and it is better to be held partly responsible for that than completely alone. Then LTO threatens to become the agricultural garnish in a broad nature agreement.
Smaller financier instead of bank
The breaking point for the NMV was the endless waiting for a solution for the PAS detectors, plus the state's attitude regarding the critical deposition value. A solution becomes all the more urgent for the group of PAS detectors. This is because, in addition to permits, they are increasingly being compromised with financing. Under the Basel-4 agreements, the large banks are already allowed to finance less and less on agricultural land and are also increasingly seeing a risk in (possible) licensing problems. It is therefore not for nothing that smaller financiers, who often work with investors' money and who are not bothered by the Basel-4 rules, are springing up like mushrooms. Financing does become a bit more expensive, but if the choice is between something or nothing, the outcome is obvious.
bureaucratic monsters
Meanwhile, the cabinet, plus other parties who view the world through the same lens, see all kinds of new, serious threats to agriculture looming from Brussels. Including due to climate and nature rules. When one bureaucratic monster has just been defeated, another one emerges. The question arises whether it is all equally acute and real. The fact that the reports on nature areas mainly bring bad news is ingrained in the format that the implementing organization BIJ12 of the provinces provides for this. Many other nature studies also suffer from one-sided observations. And when it comes to signals from, for example, the European Commission, it is clear that not everything happens spontaneously there, as SGP MEP Bert Jan Ruissen confirmed. Sinkevicius, now infamous nitrogen letter, saw the light of day after a request from minister Van der Wal, he was told.
Klaas van der Horst
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