Dutch farms emit too much nitrogen. As targets slip, ecosystems suffer, and EU green goals hang in the balance. Can food production and nature conservation coexist in Europe?
The Netherlands is the second world exporter for agricultural products and ground zero for Europe’s nitrogen crisis. Here, nitrogen deposited onto every acre of farmed land remains three times the EU average. Still, the government has postponed halving nitrogen emissions by 5 years, to 2035. A decision that defies national and European laws which aim at near-zero nitrate pollution by 2050. Intensive farming is among the main causes.
In the Netherlands, there are 620 head of livestock for every 100 residents. All these animals, concentrated in a relatively small area, produce meat, cheese, milk, but also enormous quantities of a by-product that’s increasingly difficult to manage: manure.
Italian filming Euronews reporter Monica Pinna travels to the Netherlands to produce a reportage about this urgent Dutch issue and portrays and interviews farmer Nanda van den Pol, activist and representative of the organisation Mobilisation for the Environment Max van der Sleen and she interviews Professor of Environmental Sustainability at the Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences Jan Willem Erisman.
Activities: advice, research, setup, planning, accompanying filming, filming and driving.
This reportage is published on the Featurez video page.