News Research CBS
The Netherlands has more dairy goats again
The dairy goat herd in the Netherlands has grown again this year. Research by Statistics Netherlands shows that the amount of dairy goats has increased by 4% compared to 2019, mainly because dairy goat farms are expanding. Most dairy goats can be found in North Brabant and Gelderland.
The Netherlands has more than 476.000 dairy goats this year, which is 20.000 more than in 2019, according to a survey by Statistics Netherlands. This increase is therefore mainly caused by an increase in scale, despite the goat farming stop that many provinces have now introduced. Where at the beginning of this century there were only 40 farms with more than 500 dairy goats, there will be significantly more in 2020 with 323 farms, more than half of the total 569 farms with dairy goats. The farms have an average of 837 goats, an increase of 55 animals compared to last year.
Goatstop
On 7 July 2017, Noord-Brabant was the first province to institute a goat stop. This is because of possible health risks for local residents. Since that time, several provinces followed, including Gelderland only a good month later than North Brabant. The goat stop means that in the provinces concerned no more expansion is allowed on existing farms, no new farms may be started and it is also not allowed to switch to goat farming. Only the permits granted before the stop are not revoked.
The sharp increase in goats is therefore somewhat special. Unfortunately, the figures from Statistics Netherlands do not show how many dairy goat farms there were in our country last year. It is known that most companies are located in North Brabant and Gelderland. More than half of the total number of goats is kept in these provinces. Noord-Brabant has 115 companies with more than 141.000 goats (30%) and Gelderland has 110 companies with more than 117.000 goats (25%).
less organic
While the number of goats on conventional farms is increasing, the number of goats and farms on the organic side is decreasing. The number of organic goats decreased by 1,4% to approximately 41.500 animals and the number of farms went from 74 to 71. Of the total dairy goat herd, 8,7% is organic, which is proportionally more than in dairy farming, for example, where 'only' 2,5% of the animals are kept organically.
Jorine Cosse
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