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Farmers mad at EU bureaucrats: fertilizer alarm in NRW!

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Dusseldorf – Red alert for farmers in North Rhine-Westphalia: Under pressure from Brussels, there will be new rules on how fertilizer can be used from Thursday. A bureaucratic gift just before Christmas, which caused sheer horror among farmers across the country – and was also an issue in the state parliament on Wednesday.

In the expert committee, Agriculture Minister Silke Gorißen (50, CDU) said that she considered the expansion of the areas to be a “step backwards”, had long been pushing for exceptions, especially for exemplary farmers, and spoke of an “urgent need for action”.

︎ Farmer Erich Gussen (56), Vice President of the Rhenish Agricultural Association, sees it too. He grows wheat, barley and corn on 75 hectares in the Jülich Börde: “There is great indignation among the farmers, which really upsets us!”

The new regulation means that the area on which less fertilizer may be used is drastically increased from the last 165,000 to 500,000 hectares – a third of the usable area!

Gussen explains: “If a wheat field needs 200 kilos of fertilizer for optimal yield, farmers would now be forced to use 40 kilos less. That means a drop in yield and the quality of the wheat will suffer!”

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Source: Asia Times

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