There are many amazing things about this tiny country. It is home to some of the largest companies in the world, like Shell, Phillips and the ING Bank to name a few, and it is listed as one of ten countries with the highest quality of life in the world.
But the reason Holland has been in the news lately, has to do with a crisis the Dutch call the nitrogen crisis. In Dutch they call it the stikstof crisis. Literally ‘stikstof’ means ‘suffocating dust’, a much more appropriate description of what is going on with our environment. They call it a ‘suffocating dust’, not because it suffocates humans, but because it suffocates nature.
Air is primarily made up of nitrogen (79%), so you might wonder what’s wrong with a substance that we all breathe in, all day long? Well, when nitrogen mixes with other elements, it produces so-called reactive nitrogen compounds such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonia (NH3). Nitrogen oxides are released when fossil fuels are burned in traffic, industry and buildings. Ammonia emissions mainly come from agriculture when ammonia is released from both natural manure from livestock and fertilizer. Subsequently, nitrogen deposition occurs: the nitrogen compounds end up from the air in the soil and on the plants.
If you are a gardener, you might recognize this as the Ph balance of your soil. There is then a double impact. First, the nitrogen compounds act as fertilizer for some plants. They are usually the green, fast-growing species. These take over from the species that cannot tolerate nitrogen, which means plant species not only disappear, but in turn pose a threat to the animals that depend on them. Second, nitrogen deposits acidify the soil, something that certainly not all animals and plants can handle well.
To put it bluntly, Holland is dealing with a manure problem. Their livestock is disproportionately large for a country the size of a stamp. They are soiling their own bed. “Approximately 70% of harmful nitrogen emissions come from agriculture and intensive livestock farming, while the contribution of intensive livestock farming to the economy is less than 1%. That ratio does not make sense.” says parliamentarian Tjeerd de Groot. He is proposing to cut the livestock in half (a polite way of saying that half of the animals would be killed outright), and switch to what the Dutch call ‘kringlandbouw’ (circular agriculture).**
Because of its large farming sector on such a small patch of land, Holland has become the largest polluter in the EU. Nitrogen emissions are four times the EU average per capita, with 61% coming from agriculture. Permits to farms and construction sites have been put on hold. That is why angry construction workers and farmers drive hundreds of cranes, trucks and tractors to The Hague to protest what they see as the government’s mishandling of the nitrogen issue. Is being the second largest food exporter in the world cause for celebration if the price you pay is polluting your own air?
Additionally, Holland has more than 160 protected areas that are part of the Natura 2000, a network of protected areas covering Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats, where the nitrogen oxide levels can not exceed a designated amount.
NATURA 2000
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| Natura 2000 areas marked in green |
Compare this to the United States, where 14% of the land area is protected. This is a huge amount of land, considering the size of this country, but relatively speaking the EU is doing a much better job at protecting its assets. America would have to protect 36% of its land mass, if it wanted to be part of the EU. (America has so much open space, that protecting more than the 14% of its land mass America wouldn’t be so far fetched).
The Dutch are used to their high standard of living. If economic growth at all costs is acceptable to most people, let them keep adding mega stalls to factory farms, where cows never see the outdoors, where chickens are stacked sky high in battery cages, where pigs spend their entire pregnancy and gestation period lying in crates, unable to stand up. ***
But if the Dutch opt to protect the environment, the most polluting industries will have to move or be shut down, including large factory farms. Instead of exporting volumes of meat to countries all over the world, the country could use its superior farming technology, (which in turn they owe to the University of Wageningen's research labs), to produce and export clean meat (meat substitutes, plant-based protein products).
What I find most interesting is how these regulations, as sensible as they seem, can cause so much resistance. The construction industry and farmers are fighting them tooth and nail. But there is also a feeling amongst the general population, that the EU regulations are too stringent. Here in the US, many people feel that the regulations don’t go far enough.
Before Trump came on the scene, emissions fell by 5% in America. After Trump gutted the EPA, he had the audacity to falsely claim that America has the cleanest air in the world. In fact, America is number 10 on the list. Let’s hope that the next administration will pick up where America left off and take over with a stone age club in hand, not unlike the one the EU is wielding towards its fellow members. leave comment here
* I wrote this article as a complete outsider and hope that my Dutch readers will forgive me if any of it is incorrect.
** ‘Circular agriculture is not about producing as much as possible for low prices, but producing with the least amount of raw materials and reuse the left-over materials.’ says Aldus Carola Schouten, Dutch Minister of Agriculture.
*** Currently, livestock farming is a cornerstone of the Dutch economy, but not for the country’s own food consumption. Three-quarters of Dutch pigs and a large proportion of beef and dairy are sold abroad.
