Denmark’s famous Fjords have been ecologically decimated by intensive pig-farming.
Samuel Schlaefli is a freelance environmental and science journalist based in Switzerland.
Cross-posted from Green European Journal
The sky is grey over the fjord off the harbour town of Vejle on this Wednesday morning. It is mid-December. Seagulls circle over the water with their loud cries. The thermometer shows three degrees Celsius, and an icy wind is blowing. Kaare Manniche Ebert is wearing a fisherman’s overall and is standing up to his waist in still, green-brown seawater. His boots sink into the brownish mud, a mixture of sand and rotten algae. “The seabed here used to be sandy white,” he says.
Manniche Ebert often came to fish at Holtser Hage on the southern shore of Vejle Fjord, where the Baltic Sea stretches 22 kilometres inland. “I used to catch three sea trout an hour. Today, I can wait three days before I have just one on the line.” The eels that once thrived here are practically extinct, and cod have also become rare. However, fishermen have been complaining about a plague of shore crabs for several years now. They can multiply exponentially because the cod no longer eat the crab eggs.
A coffin for the fjord
“I feel like I’ve lost an old friend,” says Manniche Ebert. In April 2024, he organised a funeral for the fjord with Greenpeace. Hundreds responded to the call, and national television and media representatives from outside Denmark witnessed the event. A coffin filled with seawater stood in the pavilion on a meadow right by the fjord; funeral songs were sung, and a priest gave a funeral speech in St. John’s Church in Vejle. “We essentially wanted the funeral to express that we are incredibly sad, but that we haven’t given up hope that politicians will finally intervene,” says Manniche Ebert.
He looks for some seaweed in the water but finds only several scattered clumps. “I’ve never seen the seaweed here in such a terrible state,” says the biologist, who works for the Danish Association for Sport Fishing and has lived in Vejle for 27 years. He fishes a piece of seaweed out of the water with a metal sieve. It is brown and slimy, and only when he rubs the stalk between his fingers can we see the fresh green underneath. “Fedtemøg,” says Manniche Ebert contemptuously under his breath. Danes call “fat muck” the brown algae that has colonised everything in recent years: beaches, stones, the hulls of ships and seaweed. The seaweed is dying because it no longer receives enough light in the turbid water.
Seaweed, and in particular the species Zostera marina, is an important habitat for fish, aquatic snails, crustaceans and microorganisms. If the seaweed dies, so does the local fauna. It also stabilises the seabed and acts as a brake on the waves, thus counteracting coastal erosion. Seaweed also extracts CO2 from the air and stores the carbon generated from it in the seabed along with nitrogen. Yet seaweed stocks along the Danish coast have shrunk by more than two-thirds since the end of the 19th century.
“The ecosystem in Vejle Fjord has collapsed,” says Stiig Markager, Professor of Marine Diversity and Experimental Ecology at Aarhus University. He regularly analyses the data from a national fjord monitoring system set up in the mid-1980s. The researchers take water samples up to 50 times a year and measure the content of micro-nutrients, oxygen levels, temperature, and salt concentration. Of a total of 109 water catchment areas in Denmark, only five are currently in good ecological condition, he says. Markager attributes the collapse of the Vejle Fjord to various factors, including the decline in seaweed, the widespread lack of oxygen in the water, and the destruction of the kelp forests which are home to crabs, mussels, and fish. “So many elements of a functioning ecosystem simply no longer exist.”
A landscape without nature
Markager brings up a drone image on his screen to explain the cause of the death of the fjords. It shows a farm along the Limfjord, approximately 130 kilometres northwest of Vejle. The farm is surrounded by hundreds of hectares of brown, ploughed farmland where grain is grown to feed livestock. The fields extend right up to the fjord. A straightened river is now funnelled into a concrete channel which runs through the fields and ends at the fjord. “I call it a landscape of greed,” says Markager. “Every square metre is being exploited; nature has been pushed out of this landscape.”
He explains that nitrogen and phosphorus from slurry and synthetic fertilisers, which cannot be absorbed by the plants, are washed into the channel or directly into the fjord with rainfall. He is particularly worried about the proximity of the fields to the water. “Over greater distances, the nitrates are able to soak down deep into the soil and are converted into harmless nitrogen by microorganisms.” According to Markager, these buffer zones along the coasts should be a minimum of 500 metres wide. “It’s now beyond any doubt that the greatest burden on the fjords is an excess of nutrients from agriculture. Nitrates are the main problem.”
If you drive through Denmark along vast, uniform fields, you may be surprised to see no animals anywhere. You could easily think that cereals and vegetables for domestic consumption are grown here. That is, until you realise that this is merely the hinterland that supplies the extended farms where intensive pig farming is carried out, away from the public gaze. Sixty per cent of Denmark’s land is dedicated to agriculture – the highest proportion in Europe. Over 75 per cent of this land is used to produce feed, primarily to fatten pigs. Roughly 10,000 piglets are born in Denmark every day and fattened from one to 100 kilogrammes in six months. The country has 11.5 million swine: Almost two for every inhabitant – the highest rate in the EU.
Pig fattening has a long history in Denmark and has been optimised and turned into a global industry over many decades. No country in Europe today produces more meat per capita. Ninety per cent of that is exported, either in the form of piglets or butchered meat, primarily to EU countries, but also to China. Over the past decades, a diminishing number of people and farms “produced” an increasing number of animals – and thus a higher quantity of dung ended up on the fields. The pig population has only been declining slightly for the last few years.
One of these farmers is Lotte Skade. Standing in her pigsty, she watches as a dozen newborn piglets suckle on the teats of a mother sow. The sow is lying on the ground, crammed into a metal grid, a “farrowing crate” in which the animal can only lie down or stand up. This is the case for roughly 30 sows in this barn. They stay here with their young for just under a month and are then returned to the enclosures with the non-pregnant sows, where they have a little more freedom of movement. There, they are inseminated again.
As Skade says, each sow gives birth to an average of 18 piglets two to three times a year. She fattens them up to a weight of 30 kilogrammes and sells them to farms that finish fattening the animals. When they reach the slaughter weight of approximately 100 kilogrammes, they are collected by Danish Crown, a meat processor with 24,000 employees in 27 countries. Skade sells 26,000 animals a year, assisted by just seven employees from Ukraine.
“The metal grid is installed to prevent the mother from crushing the babies,” she says. But looking at the cramped sows, she agrees: “Yes, it’s obvious that they don’t have enough space.” She would love to give the animals more freedom to move around, but she says she simply can’t afford it since the cost pressure is too high. “We’ve set up a system to produce cheap meat and have compromised animal welfare to achieve it,” says Skade. The veterinarian and agronomist acquired half of her father’s farm in 2022 and now runs it with him. She recently found an invoice issued by her grandfather. Back then, he received the same price for his meat as they do today. The increase in productivity was used to offset inflation and to keep meat prices low.
Skade’s farm is located outside Kolding, a seaport 80 kilometres north of the German border. It comprises several long stables, three large feed silos, and four huge slurry tanks. The animals produce 8,000-9,000 cubic metres of dung and urine every year. The dung is channelled directly into the slurry tanks through gaps in the barn floor and pipes. The farm has 180 hectares of land, which is principally used to dispose of the vast volumes of slurry. Skade grows wheat, oats, and rapeseed on the land and uses the grain to feed the pigs. She also buys in soya, and a truck arrives with a five-tonne load every eight weeks. Denmark is the sixth-largest importer of soya in the EU. The imported nutrients end up as slurry on the fields and as nitrates and phosphates in the fjords.
Skade indicates a field of grain that is frozen and covered by the early January frost. The field borders a stream that is connected to a moor and an area of protected woodland. A distance of only two metres between the field and the stream is required by law. However, she admits that nitrates are leached from the field into the water, notably during periods of intensive and prolonged rainfall, which have become more frequent in recent years. Even now, small frozen pools of water are visible in many places in the fields as the water can no longer soak away. Skade is convinced this is a consequence of climate change. “We also want the maximum amount of nutrients to remain in the field to nourish the plants and not end up in the stream.”
Unrestrained government backing
Ninety-seven per cent of the Baltic Sea has a greatly increased concentration of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds. Like in the rest of Europe, the nitrogen problem is nothing new in Denmark. Images of Danish fishermen retrieving tonnes of dead lobsters in their nets sparked nationwide outrage when they were published in 1986. The animals had died from a lack of oxygen. The excess nitrogen released into the environment by Danish agriculture at that time amounted to around 500,000 tonnes per year: seven times as much as at the beginning of the century.
In response to the public outcry, the Danish government adopted the first water action plan in 1987. As a result, sewage treatment plants were refurbished and technologically upgraded, primarily to retain phosphates from detergents and toilets. The use of fertiliser was also regulated, and farmers were required to plant “catch crops” – winter rye or cabbage varieties, for example – which absorb excess nitrogen from the soil. The strategy was successful: Between 1990 and 2001, nitrogen leakage into water was reduced by 42 per cent, and phosphorus pollution by as much as 90 per cent. However, the numbers have remained largely constant since then.
This was due to a change of government in 2001, when a centre-right coalition government overtook the Social Democrats. The conservative Venstre – Danish for “Left” – was now in power. Venstre was originally a progressive party of small farmers. However, it has since become a mouthpiece for the agro-industrial sector and is closely linked to the powerful Landbrug & Fødevarer, Denmark’s largest farmers’ association with over 600 employees and 20,000 members. The government proceeded to ease regulations on the spreading of slurry, making compliance with environmental regulations and nitrate limits largely based on “voluntary measures”. In 2015, Denmark relaxed regulations on minimum distances from rivers and coasts and reduced monitoring on farms – all in the name of Danish “competitiveness”.
Copenhagen joined the EU Water Framework Directive in 2003 and had therefore already committed to reducing nitrogen pollution in the sea by a third by 2027. The agro-industrial lobby under Landbrug & Fødevarer managed to cast doubt on the government’s expert studies twice in a row and obtained a second opinion from external experts. However, these scientists came to practically the same conclusion as their Danish colleagues. The data was clear: either farmers had to reduce the use of nitrogen in agriculture by a third, or a third of the land would have to be removed from agriculture entirely.
Fake figures, defamed researchers
The nitrogen regulations even led to a political scandal in 2016. Denmark’s then-prime minister and president of Venstre, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, reached a deal with Landbrug & Fødevarer. The association supported his policy, and in exchange, Rasmussen relaxed the fertiliser regulations. However, the then-minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, Eva Kjer Hansen, falsified pollution figures to make it look like Denmark was complying with EU regulations. However, the newspaper Berlingske revealed the scandal based on calculations made by Stiig Markager. The ecologist had to testify to parliament, and the minister was forced to resign. Markager has been a thorn in the side of the agricultural lobby since then.
When he publicly revealed that, based on the latest calculations, nitrogen levels in the fjords had increased further between 2010 and 2017, Bæredygtigt Landbrug (Sustainable Agriculture – a radical splinter group of Landbrug & Fødevarer) accused Markager of “damaging the reputation of Danish farmers”. The group denied the scientific facts and invented alternative explanations for the destruction of the fjords. Markager won in court but was still defamed by the agricultural lobby. Most recently, the vice president of Landbrug & Fødevarer publicly branded the ecologist as sindsforvirret (“crazy”). “Denmark has been ruled by the farmers and their political wing over the last 25 years,” says the research scientist.
Such attacks against scientists are above all an expression of frustration, claims pig farmer Lotte Skade. “We have reduced nitrogen emissions in agriculture by almost half since the 1990s, and yet we continue to receive criticism.” Slurry is now spread in a more targeted manner via hoses, its quantities are adapted to the needs of plants, and additives are used that enable the vegetation to absorb the nitrogen more effectively. “All of this costs money.” She believes that she is now paying for the sins of her grandparents. Moreover, most farmers can’t understand why the problems in the fjords are so critical today, when a much lower amount of nitrogen is being used than in the past.
The collapse of the fjords has not been caused by excess nitrogen alone. The water in Denmark’s coastal waters has also become two degrees warmer over the past 40 years because of climate change. These waters bind lower volumes of oxygen, creating “dead zones” and causing toxins to be released from sediments. These are ideal growth conditions for algae, which kill seaweed and in turn decrease the seabed’s ability to bind nitrogen. Trawlers off the coasts are also destroying the flora and fauna near the seabed and are overfishing the fragile ecosystem.
No farmer protests in Denmark
In early 2024, farmers in many European countries drove tractors in front of parliament buildings and set fire to hay bales along motorways. But in Denmark, everything was quiet. “An uprising would have been political suicide for Denmark’s farmers,” says Christian Fromberg, Campaign Manager for Agriculture at Greenpeace Denmark. “They have frittered away all support from the public in recent years.”
In fact, Venstre suffered its worst result since 1988 in the 2022 parliamentary elections, when the party lost 20 seats. A great deal has happened since then: in November 2024, the Green Tripartite Agreement was adopted between the Danish government, trade unions, industry associations, the Danish Society for Nature Conservation (an independent nature conservation organisation with 135,000 members), and the agro-industrial sector lobby, Landbrug & Fødevarer. The agreement particularly aims to restore the destroyed fjord ecosystems. In August, a new ministry was created specifically for this purpose.
As part of the deal, buffers will be created by converting over 15 per cent of agricultural land into wetlands, forests, and moors by 2045 to ensure that lower volumes of nutrients from the fields enter the fjords. Consequently, nitrogen emissions are expected to be reduced by almost 14,000 tonnes annually. The government is also making 5.76 billion euros available for land purchase and transformation. Moreover, 250,000 hectares of woods will be reforested, and six new national parks will be created. Denmark is also the first country in the world to introduce a CO2 tax for agriculture. From 2030, farmers will be required to pay 16 euros per tonne of CO2 equivalent after tax deductions, and the proceeds will be reinvested in climate protection and green initiatives in agriculture.
Despite the ambitions set out in the agreement, Christian Fromberg takes a critical view. He says that the deal is dominated by the interests of the agro-industrial sector and that the CO2 tax is too low to have an effect. According to Fromberg, even the conversion of agricultural land is not enough to protect the fjords effectively. Moreover, he argues, the government is focusing on technical solutions without intending to change the structures of agriculture dedicated to pig fattening. “Many measures are voluntary just as they were in the past,” says Fromberg. “So, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the 2030 agreement had to be renegotiated owing to a lack of progress.”
A social media storm
Kaare Manniche Ebert’s commitment has also contributed significantly to the change in the political mood – and ultimately to the tripartite agreement. In the summer of 2021, the Association for Sport Fishing launched a campaign on social media and requested its more than 20,000 members to send photos of algae blooms in their fjords. Images were sent from all over Denmark showing a brownish-green, slimy carpet floating on water. The media picked up the story, and in August 2022 Manniche Ebert was invited on to Genstart, one of Denmark’s most popular podcasts. Many listeners were moved to action, among whom were two journalists from the daily newspaper Berlingske. They contacted the biologist and angler and spent several months producing underwater videos in the fjords: images of lifeless deserts and swamps on the seabed, corals and fields of seaweed covered in rotting brown algae.
“The videos were a turning point,” says Manniche Ebert. “For the first time, the Danish population could see the miserable condition of the fjords with their own eyes.” The Association for Sport Fishing and individual research scientists were, for a long time, the only ones who were desperately trying to alert the politicians. But now, a civil society coalition of fishermen, animal rights activists, hunters, environmental organisations, the climate movement, NGOs, local authorities, and researchers quickly formed to demonstrate against the destruction of the fjords. This was unusual in Denmark, which generally favours consensus and harmony.
The movement called for a demonstration on 16 November 2024, this time in Copenhagen. While the government under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen negotiated a new agricultural agreement with representatives from agriculture, industry, and the largest environmental protection organisation, protesters made it clear that they would only accept the agreement if it guaranteed effective protection for the fjords.
When Manniche Ebert was standing waist-deep in the murky waters of Vejle Fjord approximately a month later, angered by the ever-present “Fedtemøg”, he didn’t believe that the new agreement would be enough to revitalise his fjord. He used the analogy of a boxer: “A boxer can take a series of punches, but at some point he’s finished and then crashes to the ground.” The Vejle Fjord lost any resilience long ago. Experts had told him that, even with a significant reduction in nitrogen pollution, it would take at least 30 years for the ecosystem to recover.
The environmental movement is the only thing that gives Manniche Ebert hope: “For the first time, we have a strong civil society in Denmark that is campaigning to protect the fjords.”
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