‘Food has become unbelievably cheap,’ says Dutch farm minister

The government is setting aside hundreds of millions of euros for experiments to reduce the impact of farming on the environment, agriculture minister Carola Schouten told the AD on Monday.

‘In the last decade the aim was to produce enough food to feed everyone,’ she said. ‘My new adage is to produce food with as little impact as possible on nature, the environment and the climate.’

A more sustainable approach to farming will raise prices, the minister said. ‘In the 1970s we used to spend 20% of our income on food but that has now gone down to 10% to 12%,’ she told the paper. ‘Food has become incredibly cheap.’

Research published by the national statistics agency CBS on Monday shows that food prices have risen 14.5% over the past ten years, with the cost of fruit and vegetables going up the most.

Households are now paying around 10% of their income on food, with 25% spent on fish and meat and 22% on fruit and veg.

Animal welfare

Currently farmers carry the financial cost of improvements to animal welfare and demands for better food, but if standards are to be further improved, they should earn more, Schouten said.

Supermarkets should pay a fair price for produce and there needs to be a complaints commission where farmers can go if they feel they are not properly paid, she said.

Farmers in five areas will be allowed to deviate from the current rules to see if alternatives can be found. Farmers in the Peel region, which straddles Limburg and Noord-Brabant, will be allowed to use more manure on their land, in an effort to cut the use of artificial fertilisers.

The minister also wants to sanction experiments with alternative sources of animal feed, such as insects and seaweed, but needs the green light from Brussels first.

Ten farms will also experiment with using technology to determine how best to improve the quality of grass and how to protect animals that live in areas used for mowing.