Politics opens the discussion
Is a neighborhood contract a rescue for a feed-manure contract?
The neighborhood contract is not a replacement for the feed-manure contract. Although the Land-relatedness Committee emphasizes this, CDA, ChristenUnie and the SGP do not share this opinion. They see opportunities to still use the feed-manure contract and the Kringloopwijzer also receives political support. And what about the bottleneck scheme and young stock in the phosphate rights system?
The binding advice of the Soil-relatedness Committee stimulates the discussion about feed-manure contracts through the proposed neighborhood contracts. This while Ton Loman, President of the Commission, emphasized that the advice stays away from the phosphate distribution. Yet this gives the CDA and the ChristenUnie new ammunition to put the extraction of regional animal feed (via such contracts) on the agenda of agriculture minister Carola Schouten.
Is the Recycling Guide coming back?
Schouten announced in December that the feed-manure contract no alternative would be for land. The argument for this was that the contract does not provide an incentive to increase the land positive among the dairy farms. As a result, she did not want to include the contract in the 'Responsible growth of dairy farming' system.
D66 goes a step further and asks Schouten how the cycle pointer can best be adapted, so that it fits in well with the vision of the Land-relatedness Committee. An intermediate step still has to be taken for this, and that is to give the Kringloopwijzer another chance. "This is because the fraud is much smaller than previously thought," according to the CDA and the VVD.
More and more questions
Meanwhile, the phosphate rights system continues to raise questions. For example, various parties are wondering what to do with the rights in the phosphate bank will happen, and what the exemption for young stock from beef farmers will look like. In addition, the parties wonder what measures will be taken for so-called 'dual purpose cows', and which dairy farmers have not yet received a decision.
There is also still a lot of uncertainty about how to deal with the pinches† D66 shows that there are 9 dairy farms that did not yet supply milk on 2 July 2015 and therefore do not fall under the bottleneck scheme. How does one deal with that? There are also concerns about the phosphate monitor. If this shows that production is above the ceiling, this could have consequences for the sector.
Schouten has indicated that he will intervene; the various parties want an explanation about this. In addition, concerns are expressed about a further generic discount if the ceiling is exceeded. In short: there are still many questions and uncertainties.
Herman van den Pol
© DCA Market Intelligence. This market information is subject to copyright. It is not permitted to reproduce, distribute, disseminate or make the content available to third parties for compensation, in any form, without the express written permission of DCA Market Intelligence.
