"Farming is facing a huge crisis and the dairy sector facing wipe-out. There is a continuous attack on people who are trying to put it right," Mr Collins said.

These plans follow the success of The Farmer Citizen Movement (BoerBurger Beweging, BBB) who came from nowhere to a powerful position in Dutch provincial elections, last month. BBB, led by Dutch-Irish politician Caroline van der Plas, was set up after widespread farmer’s protests began in 2019 against Dutch government plans to halve nitrogen emissions by 2030, which could close 30% of livestock farms.

Dutch model

In 2000, the Dutch made a commitment to sustainable agriculture under the banner ‘Twice as much food using half as many resources.’ 

A report in National Geographic in 2017 stated that since then many farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by as much as 90% as well as almost completely eliminating chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses. Since 2009, Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by up to 60%.

Despite the Netherlands being a small, densely populated country that lacks almost every resource considered essential for large-scale agriculture, it is ranked second as a global exporter of food as measured by value. The number one spot is occupied by the US which has 270 times its landmass.

How is this even possible? At a time of collective permacrises in climate, biodiversity, and food security, shouldn’t we all be trying to do what the Dutch are doing?

The tiny country is a mishmash of intensively cultivated fields combined with banks of greenhouse complexes, some of them covering 175 acres.

But in recent years, while cows, pigs, and sheep generate €105bn in farm exports, they also generate alarming levels of nitrogen emissions from their waste. As emissions hit legal limits — the Dutch government’s drastic solution is to cut livestock numbers by a third, buying out farmers as part of its plan to halve emissions by 2030.

The EU published landmark anti-pollution legislation in 2020 to tackle emissions of nitrogen, sulphur, and other gases.

"By 2050, greenhouse gas emissions in the EU should reach net zero. And economic activity should no longer cause harmful pollution to our air, our water and the wider environment," said EU climate commissioner Frans Timmerman.

"We realise this will have an enormous impact on farmers," Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said. 

"But unfortunately, there’s no choice. We have to bring down nitrogen emissions."

He set aside €24.3bn to help, including money for compulsory purchases. The government is now asking for a 33% cut in the national animal herd and has given provincial governments a year to come up with plans on how to do this.

Food security

Ambitious plans to tackle both climate and biodiversity crises, but what about food security?

This comes back to horticulture.

Climate-controlled farms allow the Dutch to be global leaders in exports of tomatoes, potatoes, and onions. More than a third of all global trade in vegetable seeds originates in the Netherlands.

The brainchild behind these astounding figures is the Wageningen University and Research (WUR), in the agro-tech Food Valley that is applying its innovative approach to agriculture in the Netherlands as well as exporting their ideas around the globe.

Professor Ernst van den Ende, managing director of WUR’s Plant Sciences Group, is a world authority on plant pathology as well as overseeing nine separate business units involved in commercial contract research.

"Only that mix, the science-driven in tandem with the market-driven," he claims, "can meet the challenge that lies ahead."

An Oxfam report in 2022 confirmed that climate change and extreme weather events are fuelling hunger, conflict, and extreme inequality at an unprecedented rate in countries least equipped to cope; including Afghanistan, Haiti, Kenya, Somalia, Niger, Madagascar and Somalia. Oxfam reported that nearly 18 million people were on the brink of starvation.

Scientists working in Food Valley believe they have the solutions.

In terms of drought, van den Ende states that water is not the problem — it is poor soil. The absence of nutrients in the soil can be offset by cultivating plants that act in symbiosis with bacteria to produce their own fertiliser.

Climate-controlled greenhouses that are run on LED lighting with plants rooted not in soil but in fibres spun from basalt and chalk can have enormous yields. Over the past 30 years, the Dutch tomato industry has become the world leader in yield, producing more tomatoes per square mile than anywhere else. Other staple crops also produce high yields, including chillis, green peppers, and cucumbers. 

The heavy reliance on greenhouses allows farmers to closely control growing conditions and use fewer resources like water and fertiliser. Innovations like hydroponic farming — growing plants in nutrient-rich solutions reduces runoff, saving both water and money. Drones are used in potato cultivation on family-run farms to assess the health of individual plants and determine exactly how much water and nutrients are needed. These innovations allow farmers to have yields that are twice the global average.

The Dutch are also global pacesetters in biological pest and disease control. Jan Koppert, a former cucumber farmer, set up Koppert Biological Systems that now employs over 1,300 staff and markets its products in 96 countries across the globe. Innovations included cotton bags of ladybug larvae that mature into voracious consumers of aphids, bottles of predatory mites that are not interested in tomatoes but devour spider mites who are. Or a box of 500 million nematodes that mount deadly assaults on fly larvae that prey on commercial mushrooms.

Are these techniques the answer to the EU Farm to Fork (F2F) targets for 2030 — that include a 50% cut in use of chemical pesticides, a 20% cut in the use of fertilisers, use of antimicrobials for farmed animals to be halved and organically farmed area to reach at least 25%?

A recent report from the Irish Department of Agriculture highlighted that land use to grow cereals would fit into an area slightly bigger than Roscommon, and the land use to grow vegetables would fit into an area three-quarters the size of Dublin while 60% of our land is used for grassland.

Is it not time to reconsider the entire model of intensive agriculture and drainage of peatlands that has aggravated carbon emissions and biodiversity for decades?

The Dutch farmers are protesting but their Government has proven that the two-decade-old rallying cry ‘Twice as much food with half as many resources’ is not just ambitious but entirely possible.

Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor in Cork and former director of human health and nutrition, safefood