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 encapsulates the entire disease.

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

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

The social cost of that kilogram, highest estimate: €8.80.

We are therefore spending €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 extended.

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

What nature is doing in the meantime

While we calculate against 2019 targets, reality moves.

The tree line shifts northwards. Mediterranean species are establishing themselves in Brabant. Scandinavian coniferous forests are shrinking, birds breed weeks earlier, insects are shifting their distribution by hundreds of kilometres per decade.

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

We are protecting postage stamps of vegetation types that the climate no longer supports. We are fighting for the existence of species in places where they no longer want to be. And we are doing this by buying away the farmers who could support them — through nature-inclusive farming, circular agriculture, soil carbon.

That is not policy. That is an auto-immune reaction to a reality the body no longer perceives.

Two scenarios

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

Scenario A — The cabinet package

The system carries the anti-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 relocate en masse abroad — livestock numbers grow there
• Global nitrogen emissions remain the same or rise
• State costs: €25 to €106 billion
• Permit lock remains a problem (PBL: nitrogen remains a pressure factor)
• Nature recovers insufficiently — desiccation and acidification remain untouched
• Climate shift is not factored in

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

Scenario B — The other way

Three principles. No more attacks on productive tissue.

One. Tax what you want to reduce, instead of expelling what you need. ESB research points the way: a nitrogen excise of €2.20 to €8.80 per kilogram on animal feed and artificial fertiliser. No complete dispossession of 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 cost.

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

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 shifting habitat, not unchanging postage stamps of outdated vegetation.

The living proof that it is possible

In Friesland, a farmers' cooperative called Agricycling is at work. They process urban residual streams into compost and thereby replace artificial fertiliser.

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

What science has long known

The most painful aspect of this situation: there is no longer any scientific debate.

• ESB (16 June 2026): buy-out does not work, taxation and auctioning do
• Professor Erisman (House of Representatives, 2026): a national 25% 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 provides concrete proof that things 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 malice. Because it cannot recognise the disease.

What must happen now

The end of self-deception

The cabinet package of Friday 26 June will be presented as "balanced", "scientifically founded" 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 precisely at that moment the citizen must say: not this. Not in our names. Not with our votes. Not with our barns, our land, our future.

Until that exists, the responsibility lies with us. With the farmer who does not want to leave, with the owner-director who still believes, with the SME owner who sees it coming, with the employee who feels it on their payslip.

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

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