Analysis Manure
Manure shrinkage plan a tough job for livestock farming
While Minister Femke Wiersma is trying to reach an agreement on the manure surplus at a political level - and to get the joint animal sectors under a ceiling agreed with Brussels - the dairy farming parties in particular are working in parallel on their own plan to give substance to the desired manure reduction. It is proving to be a tough job.
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Choose the subscription that suits youA meeting on Monday between the sector parties (G7, NZO, ZuivelNL) ended without a concrete result. The parties could not reach agreement on the content of one of the most difficult parts of the plan to temporarily remove 2,7 million kilos of phosphate (also presented as 7,2 million kilos of nitrogen) from the manure production from the market. Should phosphate rights be bought up for this, or temporarily cancelled, or should 60.000 dairy cows disappear from the scene for three years.
Neither option can provide the desired certainty, because there are also a large number of unused phosphate rights hanging over the market. There is therefore a risk that 'air' will be bought up. And how much buying up is needed to provide certainty: €100 million or €300 million?
Financing problem
In addition, there is another problem: the financing of the withdrawal of production from the market. The government cannot simply take this on, because then it is state aid. So at the very least co-financing is needed. In the phosphate reduction plan of 2018, this could easily be arranged via ZuivelNL, but this time it will not be so easy.
Mandate required
Both the Dutch Dairy Farmers Union and the Dutch Dairymen Board will request a mandate from their members. This makes the outcome uncertain. LTO dairy farming is not expected to explicitly request a mandate. This is not the practice at LTO, but LTO dairy farming alone cannot do anything within ZuivelNL.
Excluded from participation
Another point of friction is that approximately 1 billion kilos of milk in the Netherlands falls outside the reach of ZuivelNL. This concerns a large part of organic milk, but also milk from other non-affiliated organizations and farmers. They do not pay in advance for the manure reduction plans.
The voluntary, temporary withdrawal of dairy cattle from production is only the final part of a whole series of measures to ensure that the Netherlands falls below the manure production ceiling.
The dairy industry should also reduce the average crude protein content in concentrates by 3 grams per kilo. That would save a total of more than 8 million kilos of nitrogen. But how can binding agreements be made about this now that Nevedi, the umbrella organization of Dutch animal feed manufacturers, is has lost two of its largest members. Agrifirm and ForFarmers have, each for their own reasons, said goodbye to the club.
Other necessary measures include: buying up and terminating companies, more manure processing and an additional correction of manure production for gaseous losses and skimming off phosphate and animal rights when trading.
Agreements on that last point can also cause quite a few problems. The pig and poultry farming sector feels unfairly targeted for this. Every component on which no joint agreements can be made results in a higher residual task, or more voluntary production restriction.
The sector will have to cut its own flesh in any case, otherwise an inevitable generic shrinkage will remain, unless Minister Wiersma manages to get something like a temporary transitional derogation from the European Commission before then. For that she will have to be able to do business quickly with the new European Commissioner for the Environment, Jessika Roswall. Her candidacy will first be discussed in the European Parliament next month.