The tiny country of the Netherlands is one of the biggest exporters of cheese in the world. Today, dairy employs 45,000 people, and the famous Gouda cheese earns the country $1.2 billion. Milk and cheese farmers are so important, they’re even credited with helping shape the country’s landscape. But now Dutch dairy is at the center of a debate over nitrogen emissions. While the gas is common in the air we breathe, too much of it can kill native plants and animals. And because of what they eat, the Netherlands’ 1.6 million dairy cows create a lot of a nitrogen-based gas. Facing a court order to cut emissions, the government has proposed a plan to buy out and close dairy farms. But with a new majority in parliament, no one’s sure what will happen next. What does all this uncertainty mean for farmers? And what does it mean for nature that doesn’t have time to wait
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:01 Every wheel of Dutch cheese starts in a vat
00:04 filled with millions of tiny curds.
00:06 But I'm just checking if the curd is a bit equally divided.
00:11 The Netherlands produces nearly
00:18 a billion kilos of cheese a year.
00:20 More than half of it is gouda, or gouda,
00:24 as it's pronounced here.
00:28 Frank Coptain is a seventh-generation dairy farmer.
00:31 While most cheese is made in big factories
00:34 with pasteurized milk, he makes a rare kind of gouda,
00:37 using raw milk.
00:39 But now, farmers fear their cheesy tradition
00:41 could be at risk.
00:43 The Netherlands could close hundreds of dairy farms
00:47 to curb nitrogen emissions.
00:50 In 2017, the tiny country emitted more per hectare
00:53 than any other European nation,
00:56 and about half of it comes from agriculture,
00:58 especially animals pee and poop.
01:02 Cows are not potty-trained, so they poop everywhere.
01:06 These emissions threaten native forests and wildlife.
01:09 But critics say the country's emissions cuts
01:11 unfairly target livestock farmers.
01:14 So how do Dutch farmers get stuck
01:22 in a decades-old climate policy,
01:24 and what does this mean for the rest of the world?
01:27 Frank's family has been making cheese
01:38 in the town of Zoetservalde for over 150 years.
01:42 Every day, he starts by warming over 600 gallons of milk,
01:47 pumped in from the milking barn.
01:52 The milk floating in now is like 37 degrees,
01:56 just the body temperature of a cow.
01:58 For every batch of cheese, he adds rennet,
02:02 enzymes that make the proteins in the milk
02:04 clump together into solid curds,
02:06 leaving behind the liquid whey.
02:08 Rennet is like a pair of scissors
02:13 cutting through the milk.
02:16 After 30 minutes, a giant curd has formed.
02:22 It should break open like that.
02:25 Looks good.
02:28 This machine starts cutting it into pieces.
02:33 And we cut it real small
02:36 in order to have very little moisture in the cheese,
02:39 in order to make a cheese which can age for years.
02:43 Frank's parents taught him how to make cheese
02:46 when he was 22 years old.
02:48 My brother and I are the seventh generation
02:50 of Kaptein Producing Cheese and Milking Cows.
02:54 And, well, there will be at least seven generations
02:57 of cows walking on this farm as well.
02:59 He took over the family business
03:04 with his brother in January of 2022.
03:07 I think 50% of Dutch people has a great-grandfather
03:11 who's been a farmer.
03:14 Farmers shaped the landscape in the Netherlands.
03:17 In the 13th century,
03:19 nearly a fifth of what is now the Netherlands
03:21 was underwater.
03:22 Over the centuries, the Dutch built dikes
03:25 to hold back the sea.
03:27 Farmers drained large portions of the reclaimed land
03:29 to plant crops.
03:31 But one of the only things that would grow
03:32 on the wet soil was grass.
03:35 So raising cattle for meat, milk, and cheese
03:38 became big business.
03:40 The dairy industry eventually became a symbol
03:43 of the Netherlands, as much as tulips and windmills.
03:46 Milk and cows graced Dutch masterpieces
03:49 by Vermeer and Van Gogh.
03:51 By the 20th century, the Netherlands was producing
03:53 so much cheese, it was a valuable export.
03:56 Today, almost all Dutch dairy farms
04:00 sell their milk to big factories that pasteurize it
04:03 and use machines to make cheese on a large scale.
04:06 But Frank only works with raw milk.
04:12 Just 4% of Dutch dairy farms make gouda in-house
04:16 like he does.
04:16 We still produce it on the way like my great-grandfather did.
04:20 And I don't know if it's extra good, but I like it.
04:23 And what machines do at factories,
04:25 he still prefers doing by hand,
04:27 like checking the consistency of the curds himself.
04:30 Oh, it's just a warm way.
04:34 It's like almost 30 degrees.
04:37 And the curd is real soft now.
04:44 And now the curd over here is just like this deep
04:47 under the whey, and over there, there's no curd anymore.
04:51 But I'm just checking if the curd is a bit
04:54 equally divided, equally spread.
04:59 He can start draining out some of that liquid whey,
05:04 but nothing goes to waste.
05:06 He skims the fat to make butter
05:10 and feeds the whey to his pigs.
05:12 Pigs are already happy with just whey.
05:14 And I like butter on my sandwich in the morning.
05:19 He slices the leftover curd into sections
05:27 large enough for a wheel of cheese.
05:29 He gauges the right amount by feel.
05:32 Meanwhile, Frank's employee, Savannah,
05:36 prepares the old buckets,
05:38 most of which were Frank's grandfather's.
05:40 There are only a handful of farmers in the Netherlands
05:43 who still use wooden buckets.
05:45 Frank drifts a cloth below the surface
05:49 and piles the curds on top.
05:51 The cloth will help the last bit of whey drain out.
05:56 They repeat the process for 12 wheels of cheese.
06:01 There's a lot of whey in, so I think about 25, 30 kilograms,
06:09 something like that.
06:11 And it's goji.
06:12 These presses squeeze out the remaining liquid.
06:17 All this cheese comes from the milk
06:25 of Frank's 200 female cows.
06:28 The Netherlands has nearly 1.6 million of them,
06:32 and they produce lots of nitrogen
06:34 because of what they eat.
06:36 Fertilizer-grown grass in the summer
06:38 and imported grain and soy year-round.
06:41 Their pea is full of nitrogen, too,
06:44 and when it mixes with their poop,
06:46 it creates a gas called ammonia.
06:48 The plumes of ammonia drop down onto nature reserves
06:53 and acidify the soil.
06:55 Some nitrogen-loving plants like grass take over,
06:58 while other native plants can't absorb proper nutrients.
07:02 From there, it's a domino effect.
07:04 Many native plants grow weak or have no nutrients.
07:07 They can't survive for a week or die out.
07:10 Snails can't get enough nutrients to build their shells.
07:14 The birds that eat the snails can't develop eggs,
07:16 or their chicks are born with frail bones.
07:18 Inside one of the Netherlands' largest national parks,
07:23 rangers like Annemieke Visser-Vindering
07:26 say oak and pine trees are dying out.
07:29 They're all sick.
07:30 There's not one that I would say,
07:33 very, very fit or very, a healthy tree.
07:37 You can say that the trees are starving.
07:40 It's not getting all the nutrients that it needs
07:42 to be a very healthy, full-growing oak tree that it can be.
07:47 Environmentalists say 14 habitats in the country
07:50 are on the brink of collapse.
07:52 The dairy sector is one of the drivers
07:55 of biodiversity loss in the Netherlands.
07:58 Back in 1992, what is now the European Union
08:01 adopted a law known as the Habitats Directive,
08:04 requiring countries to designate
08:06 nature areas for conservation.
08:09 In order to comply, the Netherlands introduced policies
08:12 to cut nitrogen on these protected lands.
08:15 Back then, Dutch farms had one of the highest
08:18 ammonia emission rates in Europe.
08:20 By 2019, the industry had cut its emissions
08:23 by almost two-thirds.
08:25 Covered manure storage,
08:26 like below this slatted floor, has helped.
08:30 If it stays sealed underground for enough time,
08:32 the ammonia won't evaporate as much.
08:35 Everywhere we are standing,
08:36 there's two meters deep basement full of manure and pee.
08:40 But these efforts alone weren't enough.
08:44 The farms releasing the most ammonia
08:48 sat near those protected nature reserves.
08:51 The nation's highest court said
08:53 the Netherlands needed to do more.
08:54 The government scrambled to comply.
08:58 Some lawmakers suggested cutting the number of animals
09:01 in the country in half.
09:02 Farmers were outraged.
09:08 They protested for weeks, dumping manure on streets
09:11 and blocking roads with tractors.
09:13 By early 2023, the government lowered the goal
09:27 to a 50% cut.
09:29 But by then, a pro-farmer political party
09:32 named the Farmer Citizen Movement
09:34 had swept provincial elections.
09:36 Rick Luders is a party leader in this area.
09:41 - We have a nitrogen law, which is rigid
09:44 and is fully focused on dairy farming.
09:47 And we want that this law is gone.
09:50 - Soon after, the government announced
09:53 a $1.6 billion plan to buy out
09:56 and close up to 3,000 high-emitting farms
09:59 near nature reserves.
10:00 A farmer can voluntarily take the buyout
10:03 and possibly get more than their farm is worth.
10:06 But for Frank, selling his seven-generation farm
10:14 isn't an option.
10:16 He says his cows are like family.
10:19 - This is Gina.
10:19 She's the highest ranking,
10:21 and she's the leader of the herd.
10:23 She just bosses other cows away with her head, mainly.
10:27 So when she wants to drink and there's another cow, boink,
10:31 move aside, I'm Gina, here I am, and I want a drink.
10:35 - He even got married on this farm,
10:37 surrounded by his cows.
10:38 And it's tradition in his family
10:41 to name cows after relatives.
10:44 - And I named the cow after my daughter as well.
10:47 - Frank and his brother milk the cows twice a day.
10:53 - First we clean the teeth,
10:54 starting at left front, right front,
10:57 front, right, rear, and left rear.
10:59 And then we connect the milking claw.
11:06 There's a little bit of vacuum underneath,
11:10 so it sucks the milk away.
11:13 - Frank gets about eight gallons of milk a day
11:15 from each cow.
11:16 What he can milk in 15 minutes
11:19 would have taken his grandfather an entire day.
11:22 (upbeat music)
11:25 New technology helped dairy and livestock farms consolidate,
11:30 beginning in the mid 20th century.
11:33 - Little farmers, teasemakers, they quit.
11:35 And the bigger ones, they grow bigger.
11:40 - To this day, between 70 and 80% of the country's dairy
11:44 is sent abroad, mainly to other European countries.
11:48 - That's all in the region of between, let's say,
11:51 London, Paris, and Berlin, within an area of 800 kilometers.
11:54 In the USA, you would call that a local product.
11:57 - The Netherlands is also the EU's largest exporter of meat.
12:02 It trades about $9 billion worth of pork, beef,
12:05 and poultry internationally every year.
12:07 And it does it all on land not much bigger
12:10 than the US state of Maryland.
12:11 For much of the world, the Netherlands became a roadmap
12:15 for how to farm efficiently at scale.
12:19 But environmentalists like Natasha Orlemans
12:21 from the World Wildlife Fund see it differently.
12:23 - I see the Netherlands as an example
12:26 of where everything went wrong.
12:28 Exporting the meat and dairy
12:30 and having the huge amount of manure here in the Netherlands
12:35 causing all these environmental and societal problems.
12:38 - The farmers we spoke to said saving the environment
12:42 should go hand in hand with preserving
12:44 their centuries-old traditions.
12:47 (metal clanging)
12:49 Traditions like flipping the cheese.
12:51 - In the first 24 hours of the cheese,
12:53 we turn it like six times.
12:55 - Flipping ensures both sides of the wheel will be round,
13:02 like the curve of the bucket.
13:04 - See it already turning yellow.
13:05 So it's a good sign.
13:08 - Then he moves the cheese wheels into a salty brine.
13:13 - The salt bath is mainly for making a crust
13:17 around the cheese.
13:18 A little bit of salt will get deeper into the cheese
13:21 for a little bit of taste.
13:22 - Frank ages his specialty gouda for up to 10 years
13:27 at a consistent 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
13:30 - This is one is from 2013, so 10 years old now.
13:34 And still looking shiny.
13:39 Still looking young.
13:41 - Here he stores hundreds of wheels,
13:43 over $100,000 worth of cheese.
13:46 - Every day we turn them,
13:48 put an extra layer of coating on top of it.
13:51 - That liquid plastic coating seals in the moisture.
13:55 - And of course to keep mold away.
13:59 You hear it when I lift it, it gets stuck on the shell.
14:06 So that's why you flip it as well.
14:10 - As it ages, friendly bacteria build up amino acids,
14:14 these crystals.
14:15 - It's where the flavor of the cheese comes from.
14:18 - Frank can tell it's aging well from the sound.
14:23 - It's nice flat in here.
14:24 You hear it?
14:27 - Frank is one of over 45,000 people
14:29 working in the Dutch dairy industry.
14:32 - If you just take out half of the farmers
14:34 and half of the jobs and half of the income,
14:38 where do these people going to work?
14:40 - They go to the cities probably.
14:41 And the whole villages at the countryside
14:46 will become ghost cities, I think.
14:50 - Within 10 or 15 years,
14:52 I'm worried who's going to produce our food
14:55 and where is it coming from?
14:58 - Many farmers now face a tough decision.
15:03 Take the buyout, decrease their herds,
15:07 move their farms or make pricey upgrades
15:10 to try to cut nitrogen emissions.
15:13 But not everyone can afford costly innovations.
15:16 Many farmers are working on narrow margins
15:18 or are already in debt.
15:20 - Farmers don't get a loan from the bank
15:25 because they say, "Oh, we don't know
15:27 "if you can still farm after this,
15:29 "due to these regulations."
15:31 - Plus, farmers don't even know yet
15:32 if innovations could actually save their farm from closure.
15:36 (dramatic music)
15:38 Researchers at Wageningen University are hoping they can.
15:41 - This is not a commercial dairy farm.
15:44 It's a research center.
15:46 - That's Kies de Koning.
15:48 He runs the university's dairy campus.
15:50 His team is testing different iterations
15:54 of the slatted floor Frank has.
15:57 - We can run twiles where we separate
15:59 the urine and the solids.
16:01 - They're also studying the effect
16:03 of robotic scrapers and poop vacuums.
16:06 By quickly moving waste into closed storage,
16:08 vacuums reduce methane and ammonia loss.
16:11 But Kies estimates one like this could cost over $20,000,
16:15 and a farm of 120 cows would need two.
16:19 Kies says changing cows' diets is a cheaper option.
16:22 - So, can we feed cows in such a way
16:24 that we have less ammonia emission
16:27 or less nitrogen losses?
16:28 - His team feeds the cows different combinations of food.
16:33 Then they use these troughs to test
16:35 how much the animals eat and their emissions.
16:38 - The electronic ID system is identified
16:41 so we know exactly which cow is in the box.
16:45 - So if innovations can't help,
16:50 farmers still have the option of the buyout.
16:53 As of November 2023, nearly 1,000 livestock farms
16:57 had registered for it.
16:58 Almost a quarter were dairy farms.
17:02 But the government won't pay them out for a while.
17:05 - It will take at least another six months to a year
17:07 before that is finalized.
17:11 - That same month, a new right-wing party, PVV,
17:15 won the most seats in the country's parliamentary elections.
17:18 Geert Wilders, the party's leader,
17:20 spoke at farmer protests earlier in the year.
17:23 - They are killing our farmers
17:26 for some idiotic leftist liberal
17:28 so-called nitrogen problem in the Netherlands.
17:32 - The party has signaled it wants to stop government spending
17:34 on initiatives to curb nitrogen,
17:36 including the fund for the buyout plan.
17:39 Rick hopes the PVV will form a coalition
17:42 with other pro-farmer parties.
17:44 - We can make new laws.
17:46 It's quite simple.
17:47 - But a coalition could take months.
17:49 The World Wildlife Fund says this delay
17:51 will only lead to further deterioration of nature.
17:55 Meanwhile, farmers are in limbo.
17:58 - It's the limbo that paralyzes the agricultural sector
18:01 and that limbo is very dangerous for nature as well
18:04 because it's still suffering.
18:06 It's horrible and I can feel for them.
18:10 - This problem isn't unique to the Netherlands.
18:14 Dairy farmers in Ireland
18:17 might have to decrease the size of their herds
18:20 because of unsafe nitrogen levels in rivers,
18:22 which are causing algae blooms.
18:24 New Zealand has some of the most polluted waterways
18:28 in the world.
18:30 Dairy farming is one of the biggest sources
18:31 of these dangerous nitrate levels in drinking water.
18:35 And in the US state of California,
18:37 agriculture has contributed to hazardous air pollution.
18:40 All of these countries will have to contend
18:45 with the same questions the Netherlands faces today.
18:47 How do we feed ourselves, reserve tradition,
18:52 keep economies running, and protect our planet?
18:56 - I don't see myself as being opposing to farmers.
18:59 I'm opposed to the system the way it is now.
19:02 It's ecologically a disaster
19:04 and it's also not bringing farmers a proper income.
19:06 So basically it's a system that's being broken
19:10 and that system needs to be fixed.
19:12 - Frank seems open to a fix too.
19:15 - If it helps nature or climate, I'll bring it on.
19:19 - Maybe then his family can continue making cheese
19:23 for another seven generations.
19:25 - I hope that dairy farmers have a future in the Netherlands.
19:28 I think we're really connected to the landscape.
19:31 I hope the farms won't grow too big
19:34 so it can be run on a family scale.
19:36 I think that's a beautiful way of living.
19:40 (upbeat music)
19:44 (upbeat music)
19:46 (upbeat music)
19:49 (upbeat music)
19:52 (upbeat music)
19:55 (upbeat music)
19:57 (upbeat music)
20:00 (upbeat music)
20:02 (upbeat music)
20:05 (upbeat music)
20:08 (upbeat music)
20:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]