Heleen Lansink (43) doubts whether she still has to go to village meetings. The dairy farmer from Haaksbergen in Twente sees her environment radicalizing. „I was recently at a local meeting of [belangenvereniging] LTO,” she says, “and there I heard: ‘They only bring in foreigners and we have to do everything.’ I really can’t hear that. But honestly, I didn’t argue with it either. The whole room nodded in agreement. Then you have to be very firm to say: this scares me.”
When Lansink, born in Emmen, married a farmer, she wanted to stay in touch with the rest of society. She organizes farm activities and has a column in an agricultural trade magazine for the Eastern Netherlands, Livestock and Cropin which she is critical of the protests against the government’s plans to reduce nitrogen emissions.
She fully understands that the lack of perspective makes – also for pioneers – despondent. “Do I trust the government? No. But we farmers really need to get moving.” Unlike many farms in the area, her farm does not have an upside-down flag. “That does mean that I have to explain to everyone who comes here why not,” says Lansink.
This Wednesday, the discussion leader in the nitrogen consultation, Johan Remkes, will present his report in response to discussions with farmers’ associations, nature organizations and the business community. It is eagerly anticipated.
Read about Remkes’ long-awaited report: Where are the solutions in the stranded nitrogen consultation?
The camps are often divided geographically. The symbol of ‘dissatisfied and dropped out of the Netherlands’ – the inverted flag – can be seen in abundance in the countryside, less in cities. Only: farmers and rural dwellers who hold a different opinion are also there.
odor nuisance
“I think most people here in the village support the farmers,” says Marieke van Beers (44), pig farmer from Niftrik in Gelderland and active in the local LTO. In her neighborhood it is the citizens who have hung the flags, she says. “But there are also people who think that we have quite a lot of pigs.”
“The opinions in the countryside are more heterogeneous than it seems,” says professor of rural geography Tialda Haartsen at the University of Groningen. “If you have three flags hanging in one street, you think: well, something is going on here. But by no means all farmers or rural residents participate.”
She points to a decision by the District Court of The Hague, which recently ruled in favor of sixteen residents of agricultural companies in Gelderland and Noord-Brabant after complaints about extreme odor nuisance. It is rural residents, not the people in the city, who are inconvenienced.
Haartsen herself comes from a farming family and lives in Het Hogeland, an arable area in the north of Groningen. “Recently I almost had a fight with my father, a retired arable farmer from the Noordoostpolder. I said: ‘The farmers have to change, you saw that coming from miles away.’ But I touched on something fundamental.”
The farmers, including the enormously technologically driven farmers, appeal in their protests to a ‘rural idyll image’, thinks Haartsen. That of the scurrying pigs and a country life where you have space and freedom. “That means that they have got a large part of the rural residents behind them. They now feel that their rural identity is being affected. The village festival, the fair and the tractor pull are sometimes also linked to agriculture. If you confess in your village that you don’t support the farmers, you have to answer. And you are looked at.”
It is difficult if you are in the “grey area” between vandalistic actions and ordinary protest, says pig farmer Van Beers. She often falls silent now because she finds it difficult to talk about this. “You can write that down.”
“If Remkes’ report doesn’t provide any perspective, I’m afraid things will get out of hand. I am not of that.” When farmers discussed in a Facebook group to ‘flatten the Netherlands’, she quickly left. “My father had to go to the hospital. I posted: I hope you don’t block the road.”
Her husband is more of the hard action. “Sometimes we say those things, then it’s okay afterwards.” Van Beers admires how quickly an action group like the Farmers Defense Force has mobilized people. “But all that threat, fuck off. My oldest son says with every action: I want to go there. He thinks it’s wonderful, but doesn’t realize what it’s about.”
Dairy farmer Heleen Lansink thinks that more farmers, especially women farmers, struggle with conversations they have at the kitchen table. “Because men and sons are often closer to the farm, they can no longer reflect.” Women can zoom out a bit, she thinks.
Lansink finds it complicated how she should relate to the rest of her village. “I skipped the last village meeting. I belonged to the previous one too much that I struggled with. But if I never go again, I’ll put myself out.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of October 5, 2022
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