BBB party leader Caroline van der Plas wants outgoing Agriculture Minister Piet Adema to change course in his approach to the manure crisis. She calls the current manure crisis dire and emphasizes that farmers now have no use for an approach for the coming years. She points out that farmers’ manure cellars are full as a result of European and Dutch rules and bad weather conditions.
BBB wants a different approach to the manure crisis, ‘cows keep pooping’
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‘The manure cellars are full, farmers pay tens of thousands of euros per year to be able to dispose of manure. Thousands of farmers are at risk of going under this year, so something must be done now,” says Van der Plas. Due to European and Dutch regulations, farmers are only allowed to spread manure to a limited extent and the storage facilities are full. And while more and more manure is being added; ‘those cows keep pooping’.
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Store manure
BBB therefore has a number of proposals that the party wants to introduce in the manure debate on Thursday. One of the proposals is to transfer the full manure cellars to large plastic and permit-free manure bags. ‘Brussels has nothing to say about that (…) You are in fact storing the manure, which in itself is not new.’ For example, the farmer empties the manure cellars, but he does not drive it out over the land and he does not have to pay a lot of money for its removal.
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Manure in the harbour
But the BBB wants Adema to look at several things. Can’t the manure be stored in the Port Authority’s silos? ‘But that’s not the only thing. Something also needs to change in the regulations.’ Van der Plas points out that the Netherlands has been classified as a vulnerable area. ‘So even where the water quality is good, there is also a vulnerable area, so farmers are not allowed to use that derogation there either. And then you have to look at where the water quality and wetlands are good. Whether you can change that, so that you don’t ban it generically, but look where it is possible.’
