The Agricultural Collective is distancing itself from the threatening message that action group Farmers Defense Force (FDF) had placed on its own website on Wednesday. That message was a reason for the government to stop consultation with the sector. FDF spokesmen released a statement at midnight offering apologies for the “wrong words.”
The FDF thus refers to phrases such as: “Anyone who betrays the sector will know that” and “The whole of the Netherlands will know how and by whom the farmers are sold and traded”.
The action group pointed the arrows at “the meat bosses, dairy bobos, feed farmers and bankers”, who “would come to Schouten in the coming days to betray the sector like a Judas”.
The statement came unannounced and turned out not to be in line with the other twelve lobby groups of the Agricultural Collective. Agriculture minister Carola Schouten took the words high, “because it is not about me, but about people who have nothing to do with the negotiations”. The minister wanted to give the FDF time to distance himself from the words and then look further.
FDF continues to participate in the negotiations
For the time being, the FDF will continue to participate in the negotiations, writes chairman Mark van den Oever. “Good agreements have been made to continue.”
Earlier the FDF already planned to put pressure on the conversation on Wednesday by coming to The Hague with hundreds of tractors. That action was canceled on Friday because on 20 February interest groups from the agricultural sector will present their own calculations of the nitrogen emission figures of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).
New actions from the action group are expected to the calculations of the Mesdag Zuivelfonds and Stichting Stikstofclaim. The FDF expects that they will turn out in favor of the farmers.
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