Cono Kaasmakers and its members have achieved the highest percentage of grazing since the start of the national measurements. About 9 out of 10 farmers let their cows graze outside in the meadow.
In 2002, the cooperative was the first to start rewarding its dairy farmers extra for grazing. Since then, a lot of knowledge about grazing has been obtained and shared through the sustainability program Caring Dairy. This led to a stable and nationally high percentage of 92% full grazing. Cono is one of the few who does not work with partial grazing. The figure therefore consists of full grazing.
New entrants
In 2016 grazing raised to a spearhead even more† “The efforts of our livestock farmers and the efforts of experts led to the highest grazing rate of all dairy cooperatives in the Netherlands in 2017, according to official measurements. This year, another 8 Cono dairy farms have started grazing seriously; which brings our total percentage to 94%”, says general manager Wim Betten.
longer outside
In addition, according to him, the Cono cows are outside much longer than the minimum standard in the Netherlands, which is on average 180 days and 12 hours a day. To underline the importance of grazing, Cono has introduced the grazing premium in 2016 doubled to 2 cents per liter of milk. This was then (fully or partly) followed by the other dairy cooperatives in the Netherlands.
Betten thinks the result with grazing is a nice story. “It also fits in the dairy world in this time of sustainability.” He promises to continue his efforts to develop further.
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