[clmul]

The Netherlands simply has too many farm animals and overfertilization has been a problem for decades. This is especially visible on this map from 2011 [1]. The overfertilization will lead to biodiversity loss, as plants that prefer nutrient poor soils will be outcompeted by plants that can harness the excess nitrogen and/or that prefer acidic soils [2]. Due to EU regulation and court orders only recently did this become a real mess, where building projects couldn't even continue because of the limits on nitrogen emissions.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_Global_Fertil...

[2] https://www.wur.nl/en/Dossiers/file/Nitrogen.htm

[sfvisser]

Why is that “simply”? Why should we care more about biodiversity than construction and farming? I think really nothing is simple about this trade off.

[clmul]

Even with the proposed reduction in the amount of farm animals the Netherlands will still produce more than enough meat and milk to meet domestic demand, and the reason that construction can't continue is precisely the excess nitrogen emissions produced and the physical space consumed by by the farms. The country simply isn't large enough to not make this tradeoff. And if you don't care about the biodiversity, sooner or later you'll find out that you can't continue with agriculture at all because there are no pollinators left.