With Belgium's lawmakers enjoying summer recess and the associated civil organisations and lobbying groups also winding down activities, newsrooms around the country are distinctly quieter – a period labelled "cucumber season" in Flemish, denoting the region's agrarian roots and the time to enjoy the fruits of the land.
But the absence of parliamentarians hasn't quelled protest against their policies, with Antwerp being the latest site of manifest farmers' frustration as a procession of hundreds of tractors is today gathering in a show of force against the region's highly divisive nitrogen policy.
It is not the first time tractors have rolled into urban areas, the oversized vehicles making the sector's anger difficult to ignore. Not to be mistaken as docile folk of the fields, Flemish farmers are fighting for their livelihoods against the nitrogen policy that has already come close to breaking the region's government.
To recap, the decisive regulation aims to substantially decrease the region's nitrogen emissions to bring it within EU standards (a 50% reduction is needed over the next seven years). But this won't just be a question of altering practices to clean farming up – the worst offenders are beyond saving and will have to cease activities.
Not only are farmers incensed for their own sakes, the law pits them against the other big polluter: industry. The rift splits the region along key fault lines – rural vs. industrial, heritage vs. modernisation. This clash has led to heated discussion about identity and frames the policy as an insidious master plan to fundamentally alter the social fabric.
Today's protest comes in light of government backing for a new Ineos chemical plant in Antwerp, despite serious reservations about the nitrogen pollution this will create. Farmers view this as preferential treatment that makes concessions to strengthen the region's industrial economy to the detriment of their way of life.
The same dispute has already transformed politics in the Netherlands – could this define Belgium's upcoming elections? Let @Orlando_tbt know.
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2. Tractor protest in Antwerp: Show of force as hundreds of farmers denounce nitrogen policy
Credit: Belga/Kurt Desplenter
Hundreds of tractors are on their way to the parking lot of Spoor Oost in Antwerp as part of a protest action by Farmers Defense Force, a new action group that opposes the agreement of the Flemish government to limit nitrogen emissions. Read more.
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