Dutch farms are feeling the squeeze from EU rules and need to make sweeping changes to the farm system – could a huge producer like the US follow suit?
Ingrid de Sain is one of thousands of dairy farmers in the Netherlands who says she sometimes lies awake at night. Since a court ruling in 2019 which found the Dutch were breaking European environmental law, her farm of 100 cows in north Holland has been illegal.
Like the other 2,500-plus farmers whose environmental permission was suddenly invalid, she wants a future where she can earn a living and farm legally again.
