Tractor protest in Copenhagen: Farmers against the new fertilizer law

It is Tuesday morning in central Copenhagen. In front of Christiansborg Palace, a demonstrator hands out carrots, calling them among the last truly Danish ones the country may see. Farmers gather around him to protest a new fertilizer law. The palace, home to Parliament and once a royal residence, towers over the crowd. The weather is unusually mild. People stand in T-shirts beneath a grey sky threatening rain.

Farmers in green caps reading “Fired by the state” watch a live broadcast of the debate while listening to speakers from Bæredygtigt Landbrug (Sustainable Agriculture), the protest’s organiser. Roughly 1,000 farmers and 300 tractors have come to Christiansborg. Convoys dominate Danish media and Facebook feeds. One broadcaster suggested the law could make the 2020 mink scandal, which brought down ministers, look almost trivial.

At stake are Denmark’s environmental reputation and the livelihood of an already-squeezed sector. The law caps fertilizer use per field, addressing estimates that agriculture causes roughly 70 percent of the country’s nitrogen pollution. Farmers argue it could eliminate half of Danish farms. Bæredygtigt Landbrug’s Bjarke Bjerg dismissed the research as model-based; Landbrug & Fødevarer’s Søren Søndergaard called it “catastrophic.”

DTU’s Karen Timmermann disagreed, saying “models without data are not science.”

The bill passed its third reading on Thursday, largely unchanged, as expected.