What did you eat today?

Did you eat today? Everyone will say yes and have something to eat. All food - conventional, organic or vegetarian - supplied by our farmers. Have you been to the toilet? Everyone says yes. Where has your stool gone? In the sewer. So go away. All products that the farmer supplies to us are eaten by us humans, but we do not give anything back to the farmer. Time and again he loses his nutrients in the products, which he transfers to us humans.

If the farmer does not take measures, his soil will become increasingly poor. He supplements these losses by purchasing fertilizer and animal feed, so as not to impoverish his soil. The organic farmer does not supply fertilizer, but therefore needs more land for his products.

Sri Lanka made the news because there are food shortages because they - mandatory by the government - had switched completely to organic farming.

In the past, when fertilizers and animal feed factories did not exist, the farmer supplemented this loss by cutting the vegetation from fallow soil and making manure from this vegetation as bedding in the deep litter box. After all, the livestock supplies manure, but you can also let vegetation rot and thus also make compost (manure). This is how the esgronden originated in the past and because of this sod, the moors and sparse pieces of nature. The farmer now has fertilizer and no longer does this. The result is that now that the vegetation is no longer processed into compost, the nature authorities have to maintain it themselves. That is much too precious for them, so this does not happen. Result: the heath disappears and becomes forest. The nature authorities explain that the many vegetation is due to nitrogen. There are simply cutbacks on the maintenance of the nature reserves.

They have to sit down with the farmers again and say: how are we going to solve this together. For a fee, the farmers can sod the natural grounds again, just like in the past. This vegetation can again serve as manure and replace a large part of the fertilizer. You will be amazed how beautifully the heather will bloom again if this is done.

The nature authorities explain that their cows do not emit ammonia. This is of course nonsense. Many animals that walk in the nature reserves are in the stables of farmers in the winter and these emissions are added to the farmers. The other animals, which remain outside in the winter, have no emissions, according to the nature authorities, because the urine and droppings come down separately in the nature reserve. They forget to mention that this manure leaches into the groundwater, because plants do not absorb manure in the autumn and winter. After all, plants do not grow in autumn and winter. For this reason, farmers are not allowed to spread manure in the autumn and winter. This long period of manure storage does produce ammonia. Fortunately, there are more and more solutions to solve this problem. When the government gives the green light to these innovations, the nitrogen problem, which arose from agriculture, will be a thing of the past.

A much bigger problem, which no one thinks about, is the fact that important nutrients such as potassium and phosphate will be used up within a few decades. When these growth substances for plants are used up, the farmers' yields will decrease considerably. The consequences are obvious: a considerable increase in the world population, a sharp decrease in food production and the farmers driven away from the most suitable land for agriculture. Prime Minister M. Rutte, Minister Ch. van der Wal and Minister H. Staghouwer, I invite you to exchange ideas.

Jaap Major
Low Zuthem

Boerenbusiness

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