This is one of the greatest Dutch achievements.
They're the world's largest exporter of plants,
the second largest of cheese.
And in Europe,
they're the biggest exporter of meat and vegetables.
All together,
this makes them the second largest
agricultural exporter in the world,
after the United States.
But while using just 0.5% of their farmland.
But that might soon change.
The system of our agricultural sector is bankrupt.
Far-reaching plans that affect the entire sector.
There is great unrest in the countryside.
The Netherlands is in emergency mode,
thousands of construction projects are canceled,
and farmers are no longer allowed to grow their business.
Because there isn’t just too much
but there is far too much nitrogen pollution
The downside of being the world's most efficient farmers
in Europe's most densely populated country
is that the emissions of nitrogen and ammonia
are also higher than anywhere else on the continent.
This cloud of pollution was ignored for decades,
but in 2019, the Council of State ruled that this was illegal.
The country went into lockdown
at politicians quickly laid the blame on farmers.
But are they really the ones at fault?
How did the Dutch pull off their incredible agricultural success?
And is it really necessary to drastically shrink this industry?
This is Dutch agriculture with Hindsight.
I've been working on hindsight for about one and a half years,
and my goal is to combine storytelling with the news
to create videos
that provide some context to the world that we live in.
I always publish all of my scripts with all of the sources,
and I'm constantly trying to increase my awareness of my own biases.
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I'm going to be on holiday.
I'm going to be visiting my family who live all over the world,
and that means that I'm not going to be publishing every single week.
If you want to support me making these videos more frequently
and with higher quality.
I recently opened a Patreon page
where you can support me with a donation for as little
as $2 per month.
I'll put up a link in the description
and in the pinned comment in case you want to check it out.
And now let's go back to the video.
Little over half of the Netherlands is farmland,
and this sector employs nearly 200,000 people.
The worth of agricultural exports
is increasing,
partly due to higher prices,
and a significant percentage is made up of re-exports.
These are products that are imported in the Netherlands,
sometimes processed
and then exported to foreign markets.
The Netherlands has exceptional infrastructure.
Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe
and Schiphol is the busiest airport by aircraft movement,
and the country is located in the delta of two major rivers
and on the trade route from southwest Europe to the UK
and to the Baltics.
The rest of their exports consist of locally produced products,
of which dairy & eggs
horticulture, which includes tulips,
meat and vegetables, are the largest.
It is remarkable
that a small country that is so densely populated can produce
food items at this scale.
But it wasn't always like that.
Dutch farmers in the mid-19th century
were already twice as productive
as farmers in Germany and France.
Much of their land was too wet
and marshy for farming and was drained using windmills.
The soil this exposed was very silty,
and in many places only grass would grow.
So they specialized in racing livestock, producing butter,
milk and cheese.
The Dutch government played a significant part in the sector's growth.
They built canals which made for cheap transport,
and they facilitated access to export markets in London
and later in Germany.
The gains of these exports were often reinvested in technology,
which spread informally between farmers.
One farmer saw his neighbor do something better and would copy that.
But that changed in 1876
when the state founded back a university,
the first national agricultural education.
They also started a program of “wandelleraren,” walking teachers
who work in the field to convince farmers
to adopt the latest technology.
The strategy of the Dutch was
to overproduce, export
and then invest in technology to keep a competitive edge.
But during the world wars,
their preferred export markets closed
and there was a shortage of everything.
A disaster was about to happen.
The Allied forces at landed in Normandy
and they were rapidly gaining terrain.
By September,
they reached the Dutch border
and they dropped tens of thousands of soldiers
deep behind enemy lines.
The operation had some initial successes,
but after two weeks the offensive was brought to a standstill.
The Dutch railways and many Dutch citizens
had cooperated with the allies,
and the Germans wanted to punish them,
so they placed an embargo on food imports.
It was October and unusually cold for the time of the year.
The cold winter made for a poor harvest,
and a lack of fuel and cars
made it difficult to distribute what farmers had.
Food was rationed and a thousand calories per day
in the beginning,
but this was lowered to little over 500 calories by February.
the famine killed over 20,000 people,
and this became known as the hunger winter.
This is where the story of Dutch modern agriculture starts.
The hunger winter changed the Dutch attitude
towards food security.
The message from politicians to farmers was clear.
Scale up and intensify.
But the problem was that the Netherlands was already
a very densely populated country.
In 1950
there were 10 million people, and by 1980 there were 14 million.
There was an increased demand for food
and the available land was shrinking.
The only way that this industry could grow
is if their farmers would become more efficient.
So guess what they did?
They became front runners of greenhouses
and they kept more animals and less space.
Between 1950 and 1980.
The number of cows increased substantially.
A better technology increased the average milk production per cow
from over 4000kg per year to nearly 8000kg per year.
The government stimulated larger farms to absorb smaller ones,
and instead of producing a variety of products
to be highly specialized.
All of this led to the agricultural output to grow with 60% by 1980.
But this increased scale and intensity
also started showing a downside.
In kilometers long convoy
along the A28 they travelled south.
The atmosphere among the farmers was grim.
We are now yet again screwed over.
We've had enough.
There were increasing concerns over particularly the pollution
of fertilizer and manure
and how this was affecting the environment,
the soil and the quality of drinking water.
On top of that,
there was an overproduction of some products like milk.
And this led the Dutch government and the European Union
to place restrictions on the sector.
This was the beginning of a new phase.
The transition to sustainable farming.
We are still amidst this phase and it's
changing the relationship between farmers and the government.
The period from 1880 to 1980
was characterized by modernization and growth.
And the government and the EU helped farmers
grow their business and become wealthier.
But from 1984 and onwards,
the government was factoring in sustainability.
The number of cows in the Netherlands
was cut almost in half over just 14 years.
And the number of people
working in agriculture dropped by over 50% in the 1980s and 90s.
This led to many farmers fear for their livelihood.
The focus shifted over the years,
but the topic of nitrogen pollution
was well known since the early 1990s.
Nitrogen is emitted by almost everything.
The industrial sector, cars,
and aircrafts.
But the agricultural sector is by far the biggest polluter.
This nitrogen resurfaces, amongst other places,
in protected nature reserves.
It helps some plants to grow really fast and outcompete others.
It reduces biodiversity and threatens native flora and fauna.
This was a problem that they had to deal with.
By 2010,
the emissions were substantially lower,
mostly because of sacrifices from the agricultural sector.
But from 2010 and onwards,
the emissions stayed more or less the same.
In 2019 this changed.
The Dutch Council of State ruled
that the Dutch policies about allowing emissions was unlawful.
And this meant that thousands of construction
projects had to be canceled.
The airport couldn't expand.
Roads couldn't be built,
and farmers could equally not invest in growing their business.
This pollution had to be dealt with first.
Shortly after this ruling, this article was published.
D66 wants to halve livestock.
A politician from that party said
about 70% of the harmful nitrogen emissions
in the Netherlands come from agriculture
and intensive livestock farming.
That is enormous.
Meanwhile, the contribution of intensive livestock
farming to the economy is less than 1%.
That balance is completely off.
But farmers disagreed.
The morning of October 1st saw the busiest morning traffic
in the history of the Netherlands.
Farmers were heading to The Hague.
With the stroke of a pen
more than half of the farmers and their animals
will be erased.
Farmers arlready saw thousands of jobs disappear.
A large part of your livestock was sacrificed.
And since 1990,
they had already reduced emissions from ammonia with 65%
nitrogen and with 50% and phosphate with 85%.
We can change. But it shouldn't...
rest entirely on us.
The agricultural sector is responsible
for about half of nitrogen emissions, but many farmers felt
that they were blamed for the entire problem.
And just listen to politicians speak.
With have a serious problem with nitrogen.
This is the Dutch Prime Minister,
In the short term
this means that the Netherlands is now in lockdown.
As a result
road construction
housing construction
large projects
some of which are needed for the energy transition
are delayed or even canceled
So the problem is road construction,
housing construction
and large projects that are needed for the energy transition.
Okay. Continue.
At the same time we also have to make sure
that the agricultural sector
who significantly contributes to emissions
that there is a future for that sector.
You can sense that he's choosing his words carefully,
but he's stressing that the agricultural sector
is primarily responsible.
I’m so sick of it.
Farmers felt that they were blamed for everything.
But this was turning into a crisis
that was emblematic for a growing disconnect between politicians
and the people.
In left wing media
it’s easy to find examples like this.
Why do we actually have livestock farming,
which is trying to make the point
that the country
would look much more beautiful without this sector of the industry
and the offer basis, this unscientific analysis, or this one?
A quarter of the Netherlands is for cows, and there destroying it,
making the argument that livestock farming isn't sensible.
On top of this, in recent years
the government's handling of this transition was often poor.
For example, in 2015,
the end of the milk quota
led many farmers to invest in keeping more cows,
but shortly thereafter,
new phosphate laws forced them
to once again reduce their livestock.
This added to the perception
that their government was against farmers.
I'm very proud of our sector.
We managed to achieve so much already.
We're also willing to do more.
But no.
My knee had more view.
But you can't just say that all farmers have to go
Come on.
Then we can't even talk anymore.
He's actually from the same province as where I am from.
And tomorrow I'm going to visit my family who lives there.
And the characteristic of this landscape
is that you have small pastures,
farms and small specks of forests, and farmers like him
have an important function in maintaining this landscape.
A third of the Netherlands is used by livestock farmers,
and the substantial part is used for raising crops.
Farming is a lifestyle, a culture and a set of values.
It's part of the cultural heritage of the Netherlands,
and a large number of people felt this way.
In 2019, a new political party was formed
called the Farmer Citizen Movement, and in 2023
they became the largest party in every province
during the provincial elections.
They are now part of the coalition
and promised to do things radically different in.
It is important to realize
that the Dutch agricultural sector is very broad
and not the entire industry is affected by these issues.
Public funding for research and development has tripled
since the 1980s,
and the Netherlands is on track to becoming a major food processor.
Dutch farming in greenhouses is magnitudes
better than in other parts of the world,
whereas on a hectare of land in 1950
they could grow 68 metric tonnes of tomatoes.
By 2015 they were able to yield seven times as much.
This is still five times
more than the average yield of an American farmer,
and whereas on a global average,
it requires 213l to grow a kilogram of tomatoes.
The Dutch are using
just 9l, compared to 127l in the United States.
This isn't an outlier.
The same goes for cucumbers, green peppers, and many other crops.
The Dutch are using a fraction of the space,
the fuel and the water to grow their crops,
and this skill will be in high demand in the future.
The world population is expected to grow to 10 billion people in 2050.
The amount of food that is needed for the next four decades
is equal to what all farmers have harvested over the past 8000 years.
The Netherlands is at the forefront of agricultural development,
and several sectors of the industry are currently thriving.
But the future of primarily livestock farmers is much more uncertain.
The number of people working in this sector
has been reducing for decades
as a natural consequence of industrialization,
but this sector doesn't have to end over emissions.
The Dutch can and are trying to tackle this issue with technology,
and many farmers are willing to adapt,
but they just ask to be treated fairly.
The Dutch agricultural success is often credited to two reasons.
Their location and their technology.
But I want to argue that there is a third reason
their ability to adapt.
There's no other way that they could have stayed ahead of anybody else
for so many centuries.
The video here on the left talks
about an important turning point in Dutch history.
The discovery of the then largest gas field in the world.
Consider it for your next watch.