Van Stralen: 'Not only focus on scaling up'

According to Wiebren van Stralen, milk flows program manager at FrieslandCampina, scaling up alone is no longer an option for dairy farmers in the Netherlands. According to him, the future lies with market-oriented production.

This is what Van Stralen said on Friday 31 January at a symposium, organized by students of Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences in Leeuwarden, which focused on the future of Dutch dairy farming. During the symposium, Van Stralen was one of the speakers to update a group of young dairy farmers about milk processing and valorisation.

"In the past, dairy farmers produced within the milk quota and the 'factory' processed all the milk. It was often unknown who this customer was for." However, times are changing. According to Van Stralen, it will become increasingly important in the future to produce market-oriented. that a dairy farmer produces for a specific market segment, such as organic or On the Way to PlanetProof dairy, he says.

Added value versus milk money
One challenge is how to pay the individual dairy farmer for this in a cooperative like FrieslandCampina, says van Stalen. Since different market segments can be served, the added value is also different. How this should be expressed in the milk money paid to a dairy farmer is a challenging question.

Van Stralen was asked from the audience whether upscaling is still an option in the future. He said: "Because the cost price of commodities such as milk powder and cheese is much higher in the Netherlands than in other large dairy countries, scaling up alone is no longer an option. With the current cost price, the Dutch dairy farming industry will not win the competition on the global market."

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