Protest signs can now be seen everywhere on Dutch farmland.

In the polders between Uithoorn and Leimuiden, southwest of Amsterdam, for example, farmers are showing their displeasure with the government's planned environmental measures.

"When the farmer dies, hunger is born," warns one.

"Caution, nitrogen," reads the obviously sarcastic slogan on another sign.

Because the emission of nitrogen compounds is at the center of the dispute over the future of Dutch farms.

An oversized Dutch flag flutters on the corner of a piece of pasture.

Klaus Max Smolka

Editor in Business.

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Many farmers are hanging out the flag of the EU's fifth-largest economy, upside down: blue-white-red from top to bottom.

At sea, this used to be an SOS signal - now farmers use it to emphasize their distress.

In some places, the reversed flag is already considered a general protest against the state.

The "nitrogen crisis" is the latest crisis to characterize an increasingly polarized society - after the Corona measures had heated many tempers shortly before.

The problem, which is always reduced to "nitrogen" in language, is in fact one of nitrogen compounds: nitrogen oxides and ammonia.

The Dutch agricultural sector is mostly about the latter;

The gas with the chemical formula NH3 occurs in excess in extremely intensive agriculture and, after chemical reactions, acidifies soils.

In June, the cabinet headed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte from the right-wing liberal VVD party specified plans to sharply reduce emissions – farmers see their livelihoods threatened, and many actually do.

"I understand the incredibly big concerns"

Since then, the protests of the farmers, who have long felt that they have been treated unfairly, have intensified.

Tractors blocked motorways and country roads, hay bales burned, a small group hit a police car with a hammer and an iron bar.

Farmers gathered in front of the private home of the responsible minister, Christianne van der Wal, the police set up a checkpoint, and demonstrators broke through it during another visit.

It continued last week: Farmers now blocked large warehouses of Albert Heijn and other supermarket chains.

At a protest in Heerenveen, a police officer fired, according to police, because tractor drivers were approaching officers and vehicles.

A 16-year-old farmer's son named Jouke, now well known across the country, was just missed.

In the meantime, the protests have also reached Germany.

Farmers are showing solidarity with their colleagues in the neighboring country, hanging banners from motorway bridges and calling for rallies.

As early as 2019, Dutch farmers had come together en masse with tractors for protest drives - back then it was all about nitrogen - German farmers followed with a major campaign in Bonn.

Less livestock

Rutte is now looking for dialogue with the farmers.

"I understand the incredibly great concerns that farmers have," he said in The Hague, calling on them to accept the government-appointed mediator: VVD veteran Johan Remkes, a former interior minister with a reputation for doing things in deadlock .

Among other things, he served as an “informateur” last year after the election and its complicated outcome: the person who sounds out which parties could form a coalition.

The farmers' representatives are now rejecting Remkes.

The Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products after the United States, according to the statistics agency CBS, although it is only similar in size to North Rhine-Westphalia in terms of area.

The value added up to 105 billion euros last year.

Farmers feel misled because they have been encouraged by politicians and banks to expand farms for years.

Now they are supposed to reduce their livestock, because animal husbandry is largely responsible for the fact that agriculture contributes 85 percent to all ammonia emissions.

The precipitation of emitted nitrogenous compounds affects, among other things, soils, especially in near-natural ecosystems, damages vegetation and reduces biodiversity.

The gas and element nitrogen alone is not harmful;

Emissions of nitrogen compounds in the Netherlands exceed those in other European countries.

In 2019, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the government was doing too little to enforce European nature conservation requirements.

This was aimed at the construction sector, transport and agriculture.

In June, the cabinet came to The Hague with its “nitrogen plan”, according to which agriculture must roughly halve its emissions of nitrogen compounds by the end of the decade.

A detailed "nitrogen map" showed the targets for individual regions: total emissions must be reduced by 12 percent in some places and by around 70 percent in the vicinity of natural areas.

According to government estimates, livestock numbers would have to shrink by a third to a quarter by 2030.

The government wants to allocate extra funds to compensate cattle farmers.

Farmers claim that livestock farming will no longer be practical in regions with particularly high standards.