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Liquid manure spreading in Lower Saxony (archive photo): "It's not like there will be a fertilizer ban"
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Julian Stratenschulte / dpa
Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir sees no reason in Germany for farmer protests to be as radical as those in the Netherlands.
The starting positions in the two countries are not comparable, said the Green politician of the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung".
Farmers in the Netherlands should reduce their emissions by up to 95 percent, while in Germany there are more moderate restrictions on fertilization.
“It's not like there will be a ban on fertilizers.
The farmers can continue to fertilize, but in such a way that we come down from the excessive nitrate pollution overall.« Germany has exceeded the nitrate limit values set by the European Community for as long as they have existed.
In the Netherlands, farmers have been protesting against planned measures to reduce nitrogen emissions for weeks.
Nationwide, according to the Dutch government's plan, it should be reduced by an average of 50 percent by 2030, and by more than 70 percent in nature reserves.
According to government calculations, the conditions could mean the end for around 30 percent of livestock farmers.
In protest, farmers blocked several motorways with tractors, for example, so that there were several hundred kilometers of traffic jams.
In Germany, at the beginning of July, the Federal Council, in a struggle with the EU Commission for stronger groundwater protection in Germany, decided on stricter limit values for the application of fertilizers and at the same time expanded the areas covered by the regulation.
This is the aim of new federal government guidelines for designating “red areas” contaminated with nitrate.
Responding to criticism from farmers that the designation of the affected areas was based on a too coarse-meshed network, Özdemir said that he now had to implement things that had been neglected in the past.
»This also includes getting the federal states to expand a denser measuring network.«
mik/dpa-AFX