What is on the table this week:

That is the package. What it really is, in the language of medicine:

The madness in one number

One indicator sums up the whole disease.

€212,795. That is what the State pays to get one kilogram of nitrogen out of a Natura 2000 area via the Lbv buy-out scheme.

That same kilogram in concentrate feed costs the farmer €1.50.

The societal damage of that kilo, highest estimate: €8.80.

So we spend €212,795 to prevent €8.80 of damage. A ratio of 1 to 24,000. No thinking person can defend such a decision. And yet the policy continues — and is even expanded.

Why? Because the system no longer thinks. It executes. The Council of State said in 2019: nitrogen must come down. The models say: this much per year. The civil servants say: therefore this many farmers gone. Nobody asks any more: does this entire construction actually hold up?

What nature is doing in the meantime

While we are calculating against 2019 targets, reality is moving.

The tree line shifts northward. Mediterranean species settle in Brabant. Scandinavian coniferous forests are shrinking, birds are breeding weeks earlier, insects are shifting their range by hundreds of kilometres per decade.

The habitats for which we are buying out farmers are themselves moving out of their protected areas.

We protect postage stamps of vegetation types the climate no longer offers. We fight for the existence of species in places where they no longer want to be. And we do it by buying out the farmers who could support them — via nature-inclusive farming, circular farming, soil carbon.

That is not policy. That is an autoimmune reaction to a reality the body no longer perceives.

Two scenarios

There are exactly two paths for the coming ten years. One is the package of Friday 26 June. The other is what a healthy leadership would do.

Scenario A — The cabinet package

The system carries the auto-immune disease through to the end.

• 5,000 to 8,000 livestock farms disappear
• Agricultural value shrinks by 40 to 60% over ten years
• Barns move en masse abroad — livestock numbers rise there
• Global nitrogen emissions remain equal or rise
• State cost: €25 to €106 billion
• Permit deadlock remains a problem (PBL: nitrogen remains a pressure factor)
• Nature does not recover sufficiently — desiccation and acidification remain untouched
• Climate shift is not taken into account

A patient growing weaker under ever heavier medication. A country attacking its own productive cells to protect habitats that will soon no longer be there.

Scenario B — The other way

Three principles. No more attacks on the productive tissue.

One. Tax what you want to reduce, rather than chasing away what you need. ESB research points the way: a nitrogen excise of €2.20 to €8.80 per kilo on concentrate feed and fertiliser. Do not expropriate whole farms — a targeted incentive that allows farmers to choose extensification, circular farming or continuation. Revenue: €1 to €3 billion per year. For the State a net revenue instead of a net expense.

Two. Stop zoning and buy-out. Terminate Lbv and Lbv-plus immediately. Withdraw the 500- and 1,000-metre zones. Replace the legal basis (KDW as legal norm) with an area-based objective that moves with climate shift. The cabinet is already working on replacing KDW with per-sector emission targets — that is an opening that must now be radically filled in.

Three. Accept that habitats shift. Natura 2000 dates from 1992. The Habitats Directive assumes static areas. But habitats move with the climate. The Nature Plan that the Netherlands must submit to Brussels on 1 September 2026 can anchor this new principle: protect moving habitat, not immutable postage stamps of outdated vegetation.

The living proof that it is possible

In Friesland a cooperative of farmers works under the name Agricycling. They process urban residual streams into compost and thereby replace fertiliser.

One cooperative. A handful of farmers. Scalable to all of the Netherlands. But it does not fit the cabinet package — because it requires farmers who stay, and the package is built on the idea that farmers must go.

What science has known for a long time

The most painful thing about this situation: there is no scientific debate any more.

• ESB (16 June 2026): buy-out does not work, taxation and auctions do
• Professor Erisman (Second Chamber, 2026): 25% national reduction suffices, provided it is targeted — not the 42-46% the cabinet demands
• PBL (Nieuwe Oogst, 21 May 2026): nitrogen reduction alone does not lead to nature recovery — desiccation and acidification are equally large pressure factors
• Agricycling Friesland: circular agriculture delivers concrete proof that it can be done differently
• Wageningen UR: buffer strips have a 5 to 10% effect on nitrogen in water, but only after 1-5 years — generic policy does not meet the targets

All the same signal. And the leadership ignores it all. Not out of ill will. Because it cannot recognise the sick.

What must be done now

The end of self-deception

The cabinet package of Friday 26 June will be presented as "balanced", "scientifically grounded" and "necessary". It will be supported by GroenLinks-PvdA, D66, VVD, CDA, NSC and largely by the employers' organisations and FNV.

It will be presented as the solution.

It is the disease. The anti-immune disease of our government, now entering its most aggressive phase.

And it is precisely at this moment that the inhabitant must say: not this. Not with our names. Not with our votes. Not with our barns, our land, our future.

Until that leadership exists, the responsibility lies with us. With the farmer who does not want to leave, with the DGA who still believes, with the SME owner who sees it coming, with the employee who feels it on his pay slip.

We are the Treg cells. We are the healthy counter-force that can sideline the auto-immune cell line — but only if we activate ourselves.

26 June is coming. The package is coming. It is time to refuse it. And to put the alternative on the table.