Agriculture minister Femke Wiersma has come under pressure from her coalition partners to speed up the buyout of farmers to prevent the Netherlands falling foul of European restrictions.

The Netherlands’ exemption from EU limits on manure is due to end in 2026, meaning farmers will be allowed to spread far less animal waste on their own fields.

Wiersma has said she will produce a buyout plan for 2026, but on a far smaller scale than the last government’s €20 billion package. The new cabinet has cut the budget to €5 billion and told provinces to scrap the detailed plans they had drawn up to buy out the heaviest polluters.

Coalition parties NSC and VVD were among those that criticised Wiersma’s plans as vague and inadequate, warning that farmers would face measures from Brussels if they exceed the quotas on manure from 2026.

Harm Holman, NSC’s agriculture spokesman, said the cabinet needed to come up with plans to cut the total number of cattle in the Netherlands urgently. “If we don’t do things rigorously differently, we will descend into total chaos,” he said.

Holman said the only other option available was to ask the EU for a new exemption, but added: “I have yet to see a convincing answer from the minister as to how we can convince Brussels of the need for a new derogation.”

“Not painless”

Wiersma, who was appointed to the cabinet by the farmers’ party BBB, acknowledged that her voluntary buyout scheme would cause difficulties for some farmers. “The task at hand is a big one and it will not be painless,” she said.

The VVD also called for the minister to come up with a backup plan if the cabinet is unable to comply with EU rules via a buyout scheme.

Opposition parties such as the Christian Democrats (CDA) and ChristenUnie (CU), who have a large rural voter base, said Wiersma’s plans were too little, too late.

“The broad [buyout] ruling should have been done long ago,” CDA MP Eline Vedder said. “The new cabinet has simply chucked the funding pot out of the window.”

The opposition also called for young farmers and poultry farmers to be excluded from Wiersma’s plan to cut livestock numbers when farms are sold on.

Farmers would have to reduce the numbers of cattle by 30% for dairy cows, 25% for pigs and 15% for poultry when they sold their farm to a new owner, unless it was passed down through the family.

But the minister advised parliament against passing amendments exempting specific groups from the buyout scheme. “We’re simply not going to make it with exemptions,” Wiersma said.