The coming weeks are crucial for solving the manure problem in the Netherlands. There is an increasing manure surplus for the years 2024 to 2026 and that requires painful interventions. These can be partly mitigated through technical adjustments, such as no longer taxing livestock farming twice for gaseous losses from manure, reducing fertilization-free zones and creating sufficient space through Renure, in which manure is processed into a fertilizer substitute.
But painful choices still loom, such as a major intervention in intensive livestock farming. That seems to only concern pigs and chickens, but the fate of 465.000 dairy cows and 3,5 billion kilos of milk are also at stake, calculates John Spithoven, advisor to Stichting Stikstofclaim and a recognized authority on the manure dossier.
Minister Femke Wiersma of LVVN is trying to navigate the dossier as best she can, but is confronted with all kinds of obstacles, such as coalition partners who threaten to thwart her plans (Holman amendment), academic disputes about the gaseous losses and an impasse in the Brussels Nitrate Committee about the preconditions of Renure.
Increasing task
The task is now huge. This year, the surplus is calculated at 33 million kilos of nitrogen. The disposal costs of this are calculated at €30 per cubic meter at €250 million. If this cannot be disposed of, 250.000 dairy cows will have to go. Next year, the surplus will increase to 60 million kilos of nitrogen, good for €600 million in disposal costs (disposal will become more expensive) and almost 470.000 dairy cows. In 2026, the minister calculates the surplus at 78 million kilos of nitrogen, but then there may be a new derogation.
Economical CDM
The livestock industry hoped that a significant portion of this surplus could be eliminated by a substantial correction of the gaseous losses. However, there is a major initial problem. The minister's manure advisory committee, the CDM, sees only room for a modest adjustment, partly due to previously adopted positions, and proposes to set these losses at 14%. This amounts to 5 million kilos of additional placement space on land.
The advice of the commission is however at the lower end of the bandwidth. The upper end is 24%. If a middle position were to be taken, which other experts advocate, so 19%, this would offer a lot more space, because every percent more is good for 2,5 million kilos of nitrogen. The middle is therefore good for 12,5 million kilos less surplus.
Van der Plas and Holman
Narrower buffer strips and more exports could together yield a profit of 1,7 million kilos, it has been calculated. Buying up companies also helps, as does skimming off production rights during trading. But that is where the problem lies. Minister Wiersma wants to skim off more from intensive livestock farming than her party leader Caroline van der Plas wants. That is where the real pain lies. NSC member Harm Holman rubs salt in the wound even more with an amendment that aims to clean up even more manure production in intensive livestock farming. It might largely solve the manure problem, but it could also make the coalition explode. Holman knows very well where the pain lies and is looking for support for his amendment outside the coalition.
Quarter milk production
And Holman's plan is not without pain for the non-land-based dairy farming sector, because if he gets his way, a generic discount of 3,4 million kilos of phosphate rights is in the air. In the worst case, 3,5 billion kilos of milk, or a quarter of milk production, could be lost due to a series of setbacks.
This scenario has all the hallmarks of a pressure cooker for both government and agriculture. If no solution is found this week, it will be a crisis in the coalition again.
Divided Nitrate Committee
And then there is Renure, presented by former Minister of Agriculture Piet Adema as the solution for the manure surplus. Since he announced that it had received European approval, there has been an impasse in the European Nitrate Committee. This group has been told by the old European Commission that the old rules need to be relaxed, but the representatives of the member states cannot agree on how these new rules should be worked out. Thirteen member states are opposed by thirteen others and a few abstentions. Formally, the Nitrate Committee is a technical-scientific advisory committee, but the reports mention a political discussion that does not progress.