Former deputy prime minister Johan Remkes says he plans to follow the advice from the government's mediator to meet the nitrogen demands of the European Union (EU), which wants to phase out the use of nitrogen, calling it a "pollutant."

In response, Farmers Defence Force leader Mark Van den Oever says he and others will take to the streets in opposition to the new standards, which unfairly dubs nitrogen as something harmful when it is really just a common fertilizing agent that plants use to grow and thrive.

The Dutch government's claim is that nitrogen is harming sensitive environmental areas located close to heavy nitrogen emitters. Those farms, officials say, must be relocated away from the protected locales.

Van den Oever argues that this claim is "completely wrong," and that nitrogen was never considered a pollutant until very recently when suddenly it started taking the blame for "global warming."