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Where do most farmers send their cows to pasture?
Now that spring is approaching, the start of the grazing season is just around the corner for many dairy farms. The number of municipalities in which dairy farms send all dairy cows to pasture is increasing every year. In 2017, dairy farms in 43 municipalities performed full pasture grazing.
The above shows from a ranking that the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has drawn up from the Agricultural Census of 2018. A few years earlier, 29 municipalities had a score of 100% for resident dairy cows that walked in the meadow. In 2017, 78% of the more than 16.800 dairy farms in the Netherlands were grazing. As a result, 68% of the more than 1,62 million dairy cows were out on pasture in the spring and summer of 2017.
Koggenland
The municipality with the most dairy farms and dairy cows with 100% grazing is Koggenland (North Holland). The 79 dairy farms in the municipal boundaries sent all 2017 dairy cows to pasture there in 6.539. Koggenland is followed at an appropriate distance by Wormerland in North Holland and Leerdam in Utrecht.
In addition, there are a handful of municipalities where only 1 dairy farm has to graze completely in order to achieve a score of 100%. These include Alkmaar, Lansingerland, Middelburg, Texel and Leiderdorp. A whole row of municipalities in the tail of the ranking only house a few farms with dairy cows and are therefore not included in this overview for privacy reasons.
Click here to view the ranking, and check where your municipality is.
View the statement of the CBS here.
Eric the Thrush
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