Not a dairy cow, but a holy cow in the nitrogen file

In last weekend's Algemeen Dagblad, Annemieke van Dongen described how the landscape in the Netherlands will change if livestock farming is not drastically curtailed. De Telegraaf goes into the field with an ecologist to obtain information about the loss of biodiversity that will occur if the Netherlands continues to keep large numbers of cows and pigs. The mainstream media hardly considers the plausible fact that the nitrogen emitted by a livestock farm (ammonia, NH3O) only precipitates to a limited extent in its own neighbourhood. Good indications for this notion are provided by a forgotten monitoring network based on monitoring lichens on oak trees. The trees also indicate that the use of catalytic converters and AdBlue in road traffic increases ammonia emissions in urban areas.

Annemieke van Dongen provides a picture of the future of the Netherlands in 2122. The forests have become overgrown with blackberries and ferns as a result of acidification of the soil. Insect-eating birds will soon be gone, because their food dies and their legs and eggs broke. The heath becomes wild grassland. The open water is dead because of algae that suffocate all other life. The dunes are forested and taken over by privet and sea buckthorn; the insects and birds disappear there too. Geese are everywhere in the Netherlands, because they love the grass that will grow everywhere. People no longer want to go into nature that remains open because of the goose droppings they slip on. The cultivation of fruits has disappeared, because it is too expensive to pollinate the pears and apples by hand because of those disappeared insects.

Whether the image is correct or hyped, I leave it to the judgment of our expert commentators. I quote it because it mainly shows how much the media contribute to the image that the abolition of livestock farming in the Netherlands will lead to a flourishing nature. 

'Heideveld in trouble'
In Telegraaf ecologist Michiel Wallis de Vries (former professor by special appointment of Ecology & Protection of Insects) tells us about what grows and flourishes in the Netherlands and what does not. The herbs disappear, he says, and that makes insects and the birds that eat insects disappear. Robert Ketelaar of Natuurmonumenten also tells a similar story. Due to the acidifying soil, things go wrong and flora disappears, followed by fauna.

According to Ketelaar, the Netherlands still looks beautiful, but only recently it was much more beautiful. De Telegraaf is on the Veluwe with him. "What you see here", says Ketelaar, "is a heathland in trouble. Too much grass and moss, too few flowers and herbs. And I see the effects of a leached soil. Of course it is still beautiful, but this saw dozens of years ago. Tormentil, dog violet and spotted orchid are now scarce. Fewer bloomers means fewer insects, such as bumblebees. And because everything is grazing, you see fewer sand lizards, which in turn means fewer prey for the gray shrike. Too much nitrogen causes eutrophication, because it makes nutrient-poor soil more nutrient-rich. Secondly, it causes acidification, because it leads to faster leaching of minerals. And thirdly, it has a toxic effect. If the pH value of the soil - the lower the value, the more acidic the soil - below 4,5, iron and aluminum are released, which many tree and plant roots cannot tolerate: they rot."

Whoever reads this can only draw one conclusion. Livestock farming has to go, because we don't want to live in a rotting, flower- and insect-free mass of grass, blackberry and goose droppings.

There must be a much smaller and much smaller scale livestock farm that will earn more, says nitrogen expert Jan-Willem Erisman, among others. Opinion makers, editors-in-chief in newspapers and politicians echo him. The question is whether this can be done commercially without allowing the Netherlands to leave the EU and exclude Ukraine from it. The possible conditions under which it can be possible or answers why that will not work have been discussed so often on Foodlog that I will not go into them now. The question is whether the decimation of livestock farming, which Rutte IV now appears to really want to continue, will yield the much hoped-for blooming, insect-rich and deacidified nature.

lichen research
Possibly not. The Netherlands should take this idea seriously. That is the conclusion of 30 years of very systematic research where we eight years ago wrote about for the first time. In September 2014, lichen expert Kok van Herk gave a lecture to farmers who were already doubting whether the basis for nitrogen policy actually follows the best available factual scientific basis. Based on a carefully and professionally managed network with 3.500 measuring points on oak trees throughout the country, he comes to conclusions that require tempering the optimism.

Van Herk can see from the lichens on the trees that the reduction in ammonia emissions through strict air pollution policy in the Netherlands has paid off. In a publication from 2021 he shows that air pollution (NH3) caused by ammonia emissions has clearly decreased since 1999. "Especially in agricultural areas," he concludes surprisingly.
 

Van Herk's conclusions are in line with the reduction that the RIVM also notes. But there is an important difference. Van Herk sees nature around farmers less affected by the ammonia that farmers emit locally than The Hague and the media. He only sees the effects of ammonia in the immediate vicinity of the farm, but not outside it. According to Minister Van der Wal, ammonia-emitting farmers around nature reserves should actually disappear, because they cause damage specifically in their slightly wider environment.

Nitrogen-loving lichens are increasing in urban areas
Van Herk maintains an observation network that covers the Netherlands, in which he measures whether nitrogen-loving and acid-loving lichens grow larger or smaller on the bark of pedunculate oaks. The acid-loving species in particular are sensitive and react quickly to ammonia emissions. Ammonia has basic properties and makes the bark of the oaks less acidic, so that those species become smaller and decrease in number.

From 2015, Van Herk has noticed that the nitrogen-loving species are increasing again. According to him, this indicates a stagnation of the improvement that has started since the late 2021s. However, he does not see this stagnation in nature, but in urban areas. There he also sees that the nitrogen-loving species have increased over the entire period. He writes in his XNUMX publication that that finding is probably the result of "car exhaust fumes (ammonia emissions from catalytic converters and the application of AdBlue)". Not the dairy cow but the holy cow would therefore be the cause of the negatives in the trend towards improvement.

Lighter than air
Ammonia (NH₃) is lighter than air and therefore evaporates quickly. It presumably spreads at high altitudes across country borders with the wind. This is probably why nitrogen emitted at site A has only a short-lived and therefore limited local effect, very close to the site of emission and in the road verge. Ammonia dissipates so quickly that it is plausible that ammonia emissions do not translate into depositions that precipitate around site A and the surrounding nature. If deposition is found, the source must be sought elsewhere.

That thought, with its factual basis from the lichen research, could force the nitrogen dossier to cooperate with other countries in the EU. The large concentrations of nitrogen in the air that satellites can accurately detect with spectroscopy only come down again through rainfall in compounds with water to have their acidifying effect on the ground. But you should bear in mind that these are probably compounds with nitrogen that has been emitted elsewhere. It is quite conceivable that a significant part of this nitrogen comes from traffic and livestock farming elsewhere and from abroad. The wind takes it from A to B and the rain brings it down again. This may explain why, among others, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency equivalent that even enormous emission reductions in the Netherlands have insufficient beneficial effect on nature.

If Van Herk is right, then the Dutch local nitrogen policy aimed at nature in the vicinity of farms is insufficiently effective. It makes sense for nature elsewhere and for nature elsewhere in Europe, especially those in Germany where our wind blows in. Dutch nature will only benefit to a limited extent from this. To put it bluntly: clearing the Gelderse Vallei from farming activities has only a limited improving effect on the Veluwe nature.

Door knocking in France and Belgium
This certainly does not mean that nitrogen reduction is not useful, but it does mean that we should turn to the French and Belgian governments to reduce the harmful deposition on our nature. Via the dominant southwest wind the emissions come to us from over there; ours float on that same wind to Germany. Our southern EU partners must accelerate the removal of fossil vehicles from the roads and do something about their livestock farming if we want to make our nature rich in herbs, flowers and insects.

In this view, nitrogen is a network problem. Your emissions at spot A are someone else's deposition at spot B and your deposition comes from someone else at spot C, so you can only reduce deposition together by lowering emissions everywhere. According to Minister Van der Wal, we have no choice and her proposed strict policy that makes it impossible for farmers around nature reserves must be implemented in order to save nature. But it turns out we do have a choice. Are we going to spend a lot of money with little result or are we asking our neighboring countries to invest heavily as well? After all, it seems plausible that the policy - reduction of emissions - is good, but that the solution is not local but networked must be. That does not mean that emission reductions are nonsense. On the contrary. It does mean, however, that a runner is a dead end in this case, if the goal is to advance natural biodiversity. Minister Van der Wal must especially work hard on a joint approach in the French, Belgian and German regions where that thick Northwest European nitrogen blanket and the periphery (for example the Breton pig farm) from which it is fed.

Developed in the shade
The verdict of the biologist and ecologist Van Herk cannot simply be brushed aside. The factual basis of his systematically conducted fieldwork appears to be stronger, more consistent and longer-lasting than that of the models developed by Wageningen and RIVM. He does not belong to the Hague circuit of policy-supporting ecologists and experts (who can no longer openly doubt the way in which The Hague handles their advice and thoughts because of their involvement, as Jaap van Dissel also had to experience during the heyday of the corona crisis). Even more important is the fact that Van Herk has no ties to the agro-industrial clique of interest structures. His work is paid for from provincial funds and has always been in the shadow of all squabbles.

This article is part of the content collaboration between Boerenbusiness en foodlog.

Dick Veerman

Editor-in-chief of Foodlog.nl

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