Farmers who stretch their plot boundaries and fertilize or spray a few extra meters. It sounds marginal, but it can be dozens of hectares per municipality, insiders say to NU.nl. In addition, poor control of plots leads to manure fraud, possibly with “millions of kilos” of extra nitrogen and phosphate. “It’s illegal black manure.”
No more manure and pesticides in the last few meters between field and ditch. The buffer strip, which is mandatory from 1 March, should restore the Dutch water quality.
Farmers are not happy about it, because every meter of land is a turnover. That is why there is also the opposite problem: farmers who mow, fertilize, spray or plow a few meters more beyond their plot boundary.
It’s called land grab. “You see it very often,” says roadside researcher Benno te Linde to NU.nl. “Especially in drier areas, where there is no ditch between the field or pasture and the road.”
Lost tens of acres of community land
How big is the problem? Municipalities, provinces and water boards are obliged to protect their land. But because they don’t enforce much, hard figures are also lacking.
However, it can increase considerably, especially on sandy soils, says Raymond Meussen of the Dutch Cultural Landscape Association (VNC). “It is soon about tens of hectares per municipality, which have been creeping into adjacent agricultural plots. Sometimes meters wide verges have disappeared.”
Municipalities often do not dare to face the confrontation, thinks Meussen. “Just spray a meter of roadside. No rooster crowing about it.” He sees it as an enforcement problem for the government. “She is legally obliged to protect her property. It is pure laxity.”
And where municipalities do reclaim verges, this often leads to conflicts. “Brutal farmers sometimes pull the poles out again. It requires quite a bit of intransigence from the civil service.”
Failure to check the land register leads to manure fraud
Then there is another form of land grabbing: cheating in the calculation of areas for manure accounting. That says a municipal employee on the condition of anonymity.
“The competent authority looks at the topographical boundaries instead of the land register. That makes it very susceptible to fraud: you can simply register land that does not belong to you without the owner knowing. This ranges from land belonging to municipalities, water boards and ProRail to playgrounds to it.”
The official concerned estimates that millions of kilos of extra nitrogen and phosphate end up in the environment on an annual basis due to the overcalculation of agricultural plots in the Netherlands. “It’s illegal black manure.”
Number of wild plants halved in ten years
The consequences are mainly for nature. Since grassland has been heavily fertilized and fields sprayed, field flowers such as cornflower and poppy and meadow flowers such as meadow crown and margriet have largely disappeared from farmland.
The last refuge for the hundreds of wild herbs that existed in the farmland are therefore the remaining edges in the landscape, such as roadsides. They are therefore also very important for bees and butterflies, for example.
Those refuges are under great pressure, says Te Linde. Walking along roadsides, he and a colleague have been repeating a plant inventory in the Achterhoek from 2011 for over a year. “The results are alarming. The plant species of nutrient-poor soils have more than halved in just ten years.”
Nevertheless, recovery of wild plants in roadsides is possible, says Te Linde. Then municipalities and provinces must regain control, remove clippings and certainly not fertilize. The concentration of nitrogen can then slowly start to drop again, a condition for the return of flowering wild herbs.
Catch crop, biodiversity and linesman: the hedge
But much more biodiversity restoration is possible along field margins, says Kenneth Rijsdijk of the Institute for Biodiversity at the University of Amsterdam. Then hedges should return. He wrote one last year book over.
In less than a century, the Netherlands lost hundreds of thousands of kilometers of these ancient partitions of fields and grasslands. The call for recovery is growing. Hedges are bursting with life, and in seven years at least 5 percent of the landscape must again consist of ‘green veins’.
Hedges may also lend a hand in solving the nitrogen crisis, says Rijsdijk. Because of their deep roots, they are an ideal catch crop to absorb nitrogen before it enters ditches or groundwater.
“For example, hedges can prevent the flow of nitrate-rich water. In addition, research shows that hedges break the wind, so that ammonia from manure precipitates faster.”
Hed doesn’t have to be a loss for farmers
For farmers, the return of the hedge as a plot boundary does not have to be a loss, VNC director Jaap Dirkmaat previously told NU.nl. Farmers in pilot projects are now being compensated for the costs. “In the future there should be a plus, so that farmers earn money from hedges.”
The last advantage is that a hedge is more solid in the ground than a row of posts: perhaps the ideal linesman in the battle for the field edge. At least if the land register is properly consulted before planting.
