Green European Journal: A political conflict over nitrogen emissions and the future of farming in the Netherlands played a decisive role in the Dutch provincial elections in March 2023. Could you give us some background here?

Jeroen Candel: The nitrogen crisis is linked to a longer process of agricultural intensification in the Netherlands. Over the years, the country has grown into a major food producer in the EU and is the second-largest exporter of agricultural products in the world. Consequently, the Netherlands has seen rising nitrogen emissions from agriculture, which has contributed to the depletion of its nature reserves. The crisis spiralled when a 2019 Council of State decision struck down the Dutch government’s nitrogen action programme (PAS).1 Under the PAS system, construction projects and other economic activities were allowed to pollute nature reserves with nitrogen on the condition that this was offset by future reductions in deposition levels and by restoration measures. The ruling required nitrogen levels to be reduced before additional polluting activities could be permitted. This effectively froze all building permit applications, leading to economic paralysis: farmers are unable to expand their farms, big tech companies to build data centres, the government to construct new highways, and people to build new homes.

In the meantime, the Dutch courts have repeatedly ruled against proposals that merely adjust the permit system. Drastic measures are needed from the government to ensure the Netherlands complies with EU law, but the political landscape has made this very difficult. While most parties agree that nitrogen pollution must be reduced, they disagree on how this should be done, and at what pace. At the same time, there is insufficient recognition from political parties that the nitrogen crisis is also connected to the implementation of climate goals and the country’s broader food system crisis.

These drastic steps you mention – would they involve shutting down or buying out certain farms?

Yes, especially the so-called peak emitters that put a lot of pressure on nature – either because of their size or because they’re geographically very close to nature reserves. Different options are on the table, such as closing farms or moving them to parts of the country where there are fewer nitrogen-sensitive areas, and trying to reduce pressures through innovation. It’s now up to the provinces to develop strategies for achieving the targets that the government has set.

The Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging) was the big winner of the recent provincial elections. This new force will have quite a lot of power at the provincial level. Who are they and who do they represent?

The BoerBurgerBeweging, or BBB, is rooted in the agricultural sector. Caroline van der Plas – formerly a journalist covering the pig sector – founded the BBB in 2019 with help from various agri-food industry stakeholders out of frustration about the nitrogen crisis and the proposed (non-existent) government response.

BBB has close ties with the livestock feed and other agricultural input industries and uses an agricultural marketing company to advertise its policies and create its campaigns.

Over time, the party has successfully broadened its agenda to speak to the growing urban-rural cleavages previously ignored by the other political parties. Even though farmers make up a very small percentage of the electorate, BBB won around 20 per cent of the vote. The party gained significant support in the countryside, where frustration is strongest over the closure of schools, public transport options, and hospital infrastructure due to austerity measures. But it also attracted urban voters who previously supported the more extreme, right-wing populist parties – which lost out considerably. The BBB has connected various groups who currently feel underrepresented in the Dutch political system or are disillusioned by the parties that have traditionally represented them, such as the Christian Democrats.

Arguably, the world is hitting the limits to growth. Has the Netherlands – a small, highly developed, and densely populated country – hit them first?

I would agree with that statement. The Netherlands is an extreme case; it has the highest livestock density in the EU. Even if it reduced its livestock numbers by 30 per cent, as the current government intends to do, it would still end up with the same livestock density as the Belgian region of Flanders, which also has a nitrogen crisis on its hands.

The Dutch government still believes it can decouple economic growth or further economic development from environmental impacts and resource use. But environmental indicators – biodiversity decline, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions – demonstrate that it has not been very successful in doing so. There’s a very strong tendency by techno-optimists to invent end-of-pipe solutions, such as more innovative stable management, rather than looking at some of the root causes of this crisis of ecological poverty. The current state of the agricultural sector clearly shows that the functioning of the economic system is the source of multiple and interconnected crises.

Why didn’t the Dutch government and political parties make preparations for an agricultural transition they knew needed to happen?

We’ve known for decades that nitrogen is a problem for both biodiversity and the climate. It’s the same with greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector and peatland degradation. Yet the government enabled farmers to expand their businesses and increase livestock numbers. Now it’s telling them to do the opposite. Farmers are understandably angered by the inconsistent directives and poor planning.

The environmental permitting system was deliberately designed to prevent the slowing down of economic development and also to delay effective environmental action. But with this approach, the government has unwittingly created public resistance to the latter. Countries such as Denmark or France may have their own issues, but their governments have been promoting organic agriculture or agroecology and sustainable consumption for years. The Dutch government decided to do otherwise.

Is food particularly tricky because its symbolism is tied up with identity? You have the caricature of granola-eating lefties telling meat-eating “real” people to change their diets.

Identity certainly plays a role. In a neoliberal country like the Netherlands, market regulation is taboo and can feel like an interference in individual choices. Food plays an important role in people’s lives and livelihoods, which makes it a challenging domain for the government. This explains their reluctance to go beyond simply providing consumer information.

Farmers are understandably angered by the inconsistent directives and poor planning.

Compared to other countries in Europe, Dutch food policy tends to not look too far into the future; it is reactive. It is also more consensus-oriented and neoliberal. The government bargains with industry and relies on self-regulation. By contrast, French food and agriculture policy is more anticipatory and favours more coercive measures – although it must be said that this approach doesn’t always work.

More effective measures would involve taxing or simply banning certain products or regulating food environments. In the UK, for instance, the Tories imposed sugar taxes on sodas and regulated the amount of salt in products, justifying it in public health terms and particularly as a response to rising obesity. I mentioned the example of Denmark earlier, with its organic agricultural policy. And New Zealand is now introducing a system of emissions taxes for its huge dairy sector.

How do you assess the EU plans to support the green transition in agriculture?

Farm to Fork is one of the more salient strategies of the European Green Deal. It’s a first step towards a more comprehensive reintegrated food policy at the EU level. At the moment, however, the Farm to Fork strategy, which aims for coherence across all sectors and policies, exists in parallel with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The Commission has been unsuccessful in aligning the two policies, so major inconsistencies remain. This is mainly because the current CAP was put forward in 2018, before the new Commission came into office in 2019 and proposed its Green Deal the following year.

What is also difficult with Farm to Fork is that, although agricultural policy is one of the most Europeanised policy domains, it largely relies on the national level. Apart from labelling, anything related to consumption – such as fiscal interventions, education, or spatial planning to change food environments – is still within the remit of member states. While the Commission has put the food system transition relatively high on its agenda, most of the member states have not.

The incoherence between the CAP and Farm to Fork and the recognition that these challenges are all related has only resonated in a relatively limited number of member states. The Netherlands has so far failed to develop a more integrated food policy. In that sense, the new sustainable food system initiative that the Commission is likely to propose in 2023 will be an exciting development; it will probably include some reporting requirements and may ask member states to develop national food strategies. Consumption has been one of the main weaknesses of the Farm to Fork strategy. If you look at the targets, they are quite specific on the farming side regarding pesticide and fertiliser reduction, for example. But on the consumption side, they are very generic.

What are the key lessons to learn from the Dutch case?

We need to be thinking about how we will evolve. The fact that food policy is even on the agenda is a positive step, but the approach remains very technocratic. At the same time, society is interested in adopting sustainable practices. The question is, how are we going to organise new forms of participation by food system actors to increase not only the quality and effectiveness of our food policies but also their legitimacy? This is crucial in fostering behavioural change at the scale that is needed.

The key lessons for transition management are to anticipate; to adopt a systemic agenda; to recognise that challenges are interconnected, and to address their root causes, rather than come up with short-term solutions. These are rather abstract and generic recommendations, but I think the Dutch government has clearly failed on all these aspects.

Do you think forces similar to the Farmer-Citizen Movement will become a part of European politics more generally?

Yes. Political scientists have long predicted that the ecological transition will become one of the new political cleavages. An increasing number of political groups and scientists argue that our current capitalist system is running its course and call for radical economic system change. What will come in its place remains to be seen. There are certainly vested interests in keeping things as they are and using politics to accomplish this.

Green parties’ food policies are built around approaches such as agroecology. But, in the Netherlands at least, it seems that farmers aren’t convinced, and green politics are far less popular in the countryside than in urban areas. How can a green-minded party win them over?

Green parties tend not to do too well with farmers. If you argue in favour of systemic overhaul, it’s not going to go down well with the people who would have to radically transform businesses they feel genuinely proud of and land they are deeply attached to.

What the Greens in the Netherlands are doing – also through cooperation with the Labour Party (PvdA) – will be essential to a successful ecological transition that avoids a populist backlash and deepening polarisation. My conviction is that the transition can only work if it’s combined with a radical redistribution of financial resources. Many political scientists suggest that people only accept large-scale change if they feel that it’s fair. We live in a time where a small percentage of society profits from economic growth while the welfare state and public infrastructure are deteriorating. This has eroded public support for the ecological transition. A green future would also need to include expanded public services and more generous social safety nets. This could serve to convince a large part of the electorate, including rural residents and particularly farmers. It may well be challenging to persuade farmers who don’t embrace progressive farming ideas to switch to sustainable farming. But for society at large, this has to be the strategy to follow.