Angry farmers drive tractors in several Flemish towns on Wednesday | the interior

Concretely, you will be driving the tractors on the small ring roads around Roeselare, Ghent, Tenen, Gilles and Haslet around 2pm. Street closures are not intended, but traffic disruptions are to be expected. About 2,000 tractors have been registered for the campaign, says Vanessa Sain, a Boerenbond spokeswoman. “If you know that the tractor is about 10 meters long, that means it is 20 kilometers long.” The final figure for the number of participants will not be known until Wednesday.

The reason for this measure is the lack of a nitrogen framework by the Flemish government after the nitrogen ruling on 25 February. This creates a lot of uncertainty among Flemish farmers. According to Boerenbond, the future of thousands of businesses is at stake, because without a new framework people remain in the dark about permits. It appears that “business models and future plans have been disrupted overnight (according to the judgment), business developments are impossible, and even settlement of licenses that expire in the short term has not been possible.” The events take place under the slogan #givefarmersfuture.

Borenbund denounced that the Flemish government promised to quickly end the uncertainty with a new, final nitrogen framework, but has been quiet since May. No further clarity is expected before the end of the year. The interest group says it is ready to help find solutions in this complex file, but at the same time stresses that the agricultural sector alone cannot solve the problem. Our local food producers already operate to the highest standards of environmental and animal welfare in the world.

Another action is planned by European farmers in Brussels on December 13. They are taking to the streets for a different reason: the European Green Deal.