Bart Edel, who farms beef cattle a short distance north of Amsterdam, says, “The total load of legislation is too much. I think the Government does not know what laws they make but its often too much. That’s the issue. Farmers do not want to think about it, they want to talk about it. It’s absurd,” he says.

    The Netherlands’ agricultural industry is facing huge problems because of its limitations for expanding farms and how to deal with the huge volumes of animal waste. For example farmers can only spread slurry during certain months of the year and then it has to be injected into the soil. There is speculation that perhaps similar measures would be introduced here but it must be remembered that the Netherlands is a flat country requiring no slurry injection on hills.

    The Netherlands is one of the most populated countries in the world, a small area crammed with people living there and that’s what makes what farmers do, important to the whole country.

    Bart knows the stranglehold which bureaucracy is having on farmers. He is a practising farmer, running a 40 hectare holding on which he has 35 suckler cows, 20 heifers and 50 sheep. His herd is based on purebred Piedmontese cattle, an Italian breed. However his farm is not what most would expect. Part of his farm holding comprises 27 small islands which are inside a nature conservation area for which he gets paid for farming it in an environmentally sensitive way. He uses a specially constructed boat to transport the cattle and the farm machinery across to the islands, just in the same way farmers get access to their islands in Upper and Lower Lough Erne on the traditional cots.

    He was once a dairy farmer, milking morning and evening before going to his work as the Editor of the daily Agrarisch Dagblad newspaper or as a lecturer in journalism studies. It was a high production herd but its size had limitations for the way the dairy industry was going in the country. He was also teaching journalist to those working on newspapers and in T.V. and radio. He now enjoys a more varied work routine combining farming and an agricultural journalist.

    He says luckily the Dutch farmers can turn to a Minister of Agriculture, Cees Veerman, who is also a farmer and understands many of the problems. However only a year into the job, he is still finding his way.

    “We must help him with good ideas,” he says. “He is positive but what he needs are good arguments and ideas to bring it forward.”