Dutch government plans to drastically cut livestock numbers
Dutch farmers are continuing to protest over the government’s plans to cut emissions, which will see more than half of livestock farmers having to give up or drastically slim down their businesses.
Recently, farmers in the Netherlands have blockaded food distribution centres and major roads with hundreds of tractors, as well as having gathered outside regional assemblies and ministers’ homes, in protest of governmental plans to cut ammonia, nitrogen oxides and nitrous oxide emissions.
The wider Dutch community is also showing its support for the faming sector, by hanging the Dutch flag upside down along roads, bridges and buildings within the Netherlands. While the Polish government and Donald Trump have also stood in support of Dutch farmers.
The latest protests come as authorities announced a radical plan to reduce intensive farming, with a 30 to 50% reduction in livestock numbers across the Netherlands, in a bid to meet environmental targets by 2030.
Rudi Buis, a spokesman for the Dutch agriculture ministry, said to the BBC: “It’s necessary to improve the nature, for our health, for clean air, water, soil and also for the agriculture because we need biodiversity…if we want some economic activity in the future, we also have to improve our nature.”
By Meghan Taylor / Pig World
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