More than 1,000 farmers with around 200 tractors demonstrated outside Denmark's parliament Tuesday to protest against planned legislation regulating the use of fertilisers and arable land, an AFP journalist reported.
"We get the feeling that our profession is being destroyed ... that there's no longer any understanding or support for maintaining agriculture in Denmark," Lene Otte, a 63-year-old farmer who travelled to Copenhagen from southern Denmark for the protest, told AFP.
Despite its small size, Denmark is a major exporter of dairy and pork. Scientists have warned that nitrogen from agriculture is harming plants and animals.
The bill is backed by a majority of the political class but has sparked deep divisions within the Liberal Party, traditionally close to the agricultural sector, with five of its 18 MPs announcing they would reject the party line and vote against it in parliament on Thursday.
The aim of the bill is to regulate fertiliser runoff and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and forestry.
If adopted, farmers starting in 2027 would receive an emissions quota based on the reduction in nitrogen emissions needed in their watershed.
The government announced at the last minute that it was granting a one-year exemption from that to vegetable producers.
Under the bill, farmers would also have to convert part of their land into natural areas.
According to the Danish Association for Organic Agriculture, under the proposal, every time a farmer cultivates one hectare of vegetables, he or she would have to leave between two and six hectares of land bare.
"This fertilisation law is a further tightening of some extremely ambitious targets, and the only way we can respond is by sacrificing a large part of the profession," lamented Niels Mikkelsen, president of the Sustainable Agriculture association, co-organiser of the demonstration.
The bill is part of a "green tripartite" initiative, which will introduce a carbon tax on livestock as of 2030, a world first.
According to the Danish statistics agency, 61 percent of Denmark's land area is currently under cultivation, making it the country with the highest share of cultivated land, alongside Bangladesh.
Around 17 percent of mainland Denmark's area is affected by water deoxygenation, which leads to the disappearance of marine fauna and flora, according to the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.
Researchers estimate that an annual reduction of 14,800 tonnes of nitrogen, or about one-third of overall emissions from nitrogen, would be needed to restore good water quality.