The Netherlands can contribute much to making agriculture sustainable – nationally and internationally
If the Netherlands wants to make its agriculture and livestock industry sustainable and to ensure that farmers get a fair price for their products, it will also have to look beyond its own borders. The Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural products. We have a great impact because, through our trade relations, we uphold a system of intensive agriculture that destroys ecosystems and undermines local production. Partly due to our trade in agricultural products, the Dutch economy is has a large, and growing, footprint. That should and can be different: the Netherlands is in a good position to lead the required transition in agriculture. Fortunately, the party manifestos for the coming elections offer sufficient opportunities to set that in motion. A new coalition can thus take decisive new steps.
The road to sustainability
Most of the attention in the manifestos goes to achieving sustainability at national level. PvdA, GroenLinks, PvdD, SP, ChristenUnie and D66 want to see agriculture and the livestock industry made completely sustainable and focus on nature-inclusive and circular agriculture. Their manifestos give the government a stimulating and regulatory role in achieving these aims. CDA and VVD lay the emphasis on using technological solutions to make the existing agricultural model sustainable. The government provides a supportive framework, with farmers themselves playing an initiating and leading role.
The parties are in general agreement that farmers should get a fair price for their products, chains should be shorter and products should be marketed and consumed locally. That calls for a radical change of direction, especially in our foreign policy. Dutch banks, companies and agricultural engineers actively promote and support the Dutch agricultural model in all kinds of ways beyond our borders, while that model is the subject of much criticism at home.
Trade and investment agreements
Trade agreements are an important component of the export strategy for our non-sustainable agricultural model. Agreements that the Netherlands and the EU have concluded or will conclude in the future with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America allow large-scale producers to open up new markets, at the expense of small local farmers.
The provisions in these agreements throw up severe obstacles for local food producers. Farmers in Indonesia can only produce rice sustainably if they can use their own local seeds. But that is all too often prevented by international trade agreements that favour giants like Bayer and Syngenta. Women in Guatemala wishing to plant food forests have to compete for water with rapidly expanding palm oil plantations in the hands of foreign multinationals, whose activities are made possible by banks, insurance companies and trade and investment agreements.
But famers in the Netherlands, too, are disadvantaged by these agreements. Dutch growers are coming under pressure from large-scale and cheaply produced green beans from Senegal and Morocco – mainly produced by an originally Dutch company. Cheap, non-sustainably produced roses from Kenya are making it difficult for Dutch greenhouse farmers to grow them sustainably. And there are many more examples. The EU-Mercosur agreement, which has been criticised by a majority in parliament, has increased competition from South American meat and crops produced according to much less stringent sustainability standards and also pose a great threat to the Amazon region.
The Netherlands is part of the solution
Rather than being part of the problem, the Netherlands can be part of the solution. To really get the transition to sustainable agriculture moving, the new coalition will have to discourage the production of non-sustainable products like soya and palm oil by imposing strict sustainability requirements on the import of these bulk goods. In the EU and WTO, it can call for provisions to be included in new trade and investment agreements like the EU-Mercosur agreement imposing import duties on non-sustainable products. Within its own trade agreements, like that with Indonesia, the new government can combat the monopoly of giant seed companies that make it impossible for farmers to use their own seeds.
Practice has shown that food forests and other agro-ecological initiatives within and outside the Netherlands are future-proof and profitable. The new coalition can reward Dutch farmers who also wish to operate sustainably beyond our borders – the front runners who we have to rely on – and where possible encourage this development by giving them financial support instead of continuing to support non-sustainable agricultural companies.
Our science is a potential ally for the new coalition. Wageningen and other universities are breeding the talent and energy to make sustainability the norm. Together with scientists, the Netherlands can invest in expanding agro-ecology and other forms of sustainable and circular agriculture and livestock breeding. That can start with trade missions aimed primarily at exporting these methods instead of our large-scale, twentieth century agricultural model.
What the Netherlands does beyond its borders is of enormous importance for the international sustainable agriculture and food transition. It is up to the new coalition to take on the responsibility that comes with that role, and to give the transition a substantial boost within and outside the Netherlands.
Read more about this subject
-
Dossier
The Netherlands, the world and the elections
Elections are soon to be held in the Netherlands. The political parties are sharpening their knives and have outlined their plans in hefty manifestos. Not surprisingly, they mainly focus on domestic issues. International themes are primarily addressed in terms of opportunities for Dutch companies and threats in areas like health, privacy and competition that we need to protect ourselves against. But if we want to make the Netherlands sustainable, we especially need to look at our footprint beyond our own borders and make every effort to reduce it. In the weeks leading up to the elections, Both ENDS looks at where the parties' manifestos offer opportunities to achieve that.
-
Dossier
Trade agreements
International trade agreements often have far-reaching consequences not only for the economy of a country, but also for people and the environment. It is primarily the most vulnerable groups who suffer most from these agreements.
-
Publication / 27 January 2015
-
Publication / 7 November 2018
-
News / 14 March 2021
Vote for the Climate!
A number of our colleagues at Both ENDS made a lot of noise at various locations around the country today, as part of the national Klimaatalarm (Climate Alarm) campaign. Annelieke Douma gave a short speech in Haarlem on the major role played by the Netherlands in climate change and environmental degradation beyond our borders. She made a number of suggestions that would immediately make Dutch foreign policy a lot more climate-friendly. Below is the text of her speech.
-
Alternative
Rich Forests
Rich Forests promotes a sustainable and future-proof production system and supports, among other things, the transformation of degraded land into food forests. With this, people provide for their livelihood, increase their income and at the same time restore soil and biodiversity.
-
News / 29 June 2020
Global civil society pushes for mandatory environmental and human rights rules in the EU
On 23 July 2020 a global network of NGOs working to strengthen corporate accountability for environmental destruction and human rights abuses, including Both ENDS, published an open letter to European Commission DG Justice Commissioner Reynders. The letter is a response to his recent commitment to propose legislation in 2021 on both corporate due diligence and directors’ duties as part of an initiative on sustainable corporate governance.
-
Blog / 16 June 2020
The political and industrial elites in Indonesia grasp their opportunity
By Daniëlle Hirsch and Michael RiceIn September 2019, the streets of Jakarta were filled with angry demonstrators protesting against the Omnibus Employment Law. The law will ease the rules for mining, make it much more difficult to hold companies liable for criminal acts and severely restrict the power of the national anti-corruption committee. At the moment, such protests are completely impossible in Indonesia because of the COVID-19 crisis and the associated lockdown measures. And Indonesian people already had few other means of exerting influence on decision-making and legislative processes.
-
News / 15 March 2021
How well is the Netherlands progressing in achieving the SDGs?
In 2015, the United Nations instigated the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These seventeen interrelated goals are intended to result, by 2030, in a better, fairer and more sustainable world in which no one is left behind. As a member of the UN, the Netherlands is committed to promote the SDGs and every year Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the central government publish reports on the progress made. The initiators of 'SDG Spotlight Nederland' however believe that there is a need for an annual report on the Netherlands' performance on specific SDGs from a different perspective. Fiona Dragstra and Stefan Schuller of Both ENDS contributed to the report on 2020 and tell us here why they think it is so important.
-
Publication / 12 November 2020
-
Publication / 26 August 2020
-
Blog / 5 May 2020
Freedom
By Daniëlle Hirsch and Karin van BoxtelToday the Netherlands is celebrating freedom. Our freedom goes further than living in peace. We have the freedom to discuss policy to our hearts’ content on, for example, ending the lockdown on television, in the press and on social media. We can do that freely because we know that our rights to freedom of expression are well protected. But how different that is in countries where authoritarian leaders are grasping the crisis as an excuse to throw these rights out with the trash and rule with an iron hand.
-
Publication / 2 December 2014
-
Publication / 29 October 2014
-
Publication / 11 July 2019
-
Event / 6 September 2017
UNCCD COP 2017 - CHINA
From 6-16 september, the 13th Conference of Parties' of the UNCCD (UN Convention to Combat Desertification) took place, this time in Ordos, China. The UNCCD is the global convention of the United Nations on combating desertification and drought. Every country in the world has signed this convention. Canada withdrew in 2012, but in 2016 - under the Trudeau administration - started a process to re-enter the convention. Both ENDS is a member of Drynet, a network of local organisations and communities in dry regions searching for ways to use land in a sustainable manner.
-
Blog / 14 April 2020
Stop WTO talks until everyone can take full part in them again
By Burghard Ilge and Daniëlle HirschThe World Trade Organization (WTO) is often seen as an institution in crisis, powerless and no longer relevant, and especially after US president Donald Trump decided in 2019 to pull the plug on one of the WTO’s most important bodies (the one dealing with trade disputes). Now, more than 150 civil society organisations, networks and interest groups from around the world have signed an urgent letter to WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo, because they are seriously concerned about the state of affairs within the organization.
-
News / 18 June 2019
Open letter from more than 340 organisations: EU must stop negotiating treaty with South American countries.
Today, more than 340 organisations from both South America and Europe, including Both ENDS, have sent a joint open letter to European Union leaders calling for the EU to cease negotiations on the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement. The organisations and their constituencies are seriously concerned about increasing violations of indigenous human rights and damage to nature and the environment in Brazil.
-
Dossier
The merits of community-based restoration
Globally, the area that is suffering desertification and land degradation is ever expanding. Unsustainable and often large-scale agricultural practices, including the copious use of pesticides and fertilisers, are a major driver of land degradation, aprocess that is further exacerbated by climate change, causing more erratic rainfall patterns, longer periods of drought and unpredictable growing seasons. This is very problematic not only for the hundreds of millions of people who directly depend on land and water for their livelihoods, but also for life on earth as a whole. It is clear that this process must be stopped and reversed, better sooner than later. But how to go about it?
-
News / 14 June 2019
Both ENDS partner TUK presents symbolic tree to Dutch minister Schouten
Last Thursday June 13, Rahmawati Retno Winarni of TUK, an Indonesian partner organisation of Both ENDS, presented a symbolic tree and an appeal to the Dutch Minister of Agriculture Carola Schouten, also on behalf of 10 NGOs. The joint NGOs are pushing the EU, including the Dutch government, for strict EU legislation to prevent the destruction of forests and ecosystems and to protect human rights.