News milk supply
Dutch milk supply improves slightly
Dutch milk supply has seasonally decreased over February 2022 compared to the previous month, which is an annual pattern. Nevertheless, the backlog has decreased slightly compared to February 2021. Another striking finding is that the delivered liters again contain slightly lower contents.
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The Dutch milk supply in February amounts to 1.065.435 tons, which is a decrease of 1,5% compared to February 2021. In January, the milk supply was still 2,7% behind compared to January 2021. The average fat percentage in milk, meanwhile, continued to decline, reaching 4,51%. A year ago it was 4,6%, and in January it was 4,53%.
Fat production lags more behind
Total fat production in February amounted to 48.058 tons, which is almost 3,5% less than a year earlier. In January, fat production was still 3,9% behind last year. This is evident from figures from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).
It indicates that Dutch dairy farming is still struggling to take full advantage of the higher fat and protein prices. Not much can be done about the quality of the roughage, but extra feeding was apparently not an option, or did not help. Milk supply remains structurally lower than in previous years.
Compared to a number of neighboring countries, the Netherlands is still doing reasonably well. In Germany, the backlog in milk supply at the end of February was about 1,6%, in France still more than 2%.