News grazing
More cows in the pasture for longer in 2022
The percentage of dairy farms that let their cows graze in the pasture has remained virtually stable in 2022. The percentage stands at 83,9%. The share of farms with full outdoor grazing increased, however, to 78,1%. This is therefore at the expense of the number of farms with partial grazing.
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Preserving grazing is one of the seven themes of the Sustainable Dairy Chain and the dairy sector's target is for 81,2% of dairy farms to practice grazing. The sector has now been above that for the fifth year.
Full grazing means that cows are outside for six hours a day for at least 120 days. With partial grazing, at least a quarter of the livestock comes outside. The share of farms with full grazing also increased slightly in 2022 and amounted to 78,1% (2021: 77,9%). The share of partial pastures fell further to 5,8% (2021: 6,1%).
More than eighty organizations, including governments, supermarket chains, banks, animal feed suppliers and various social organizations, signed the Grazing Agreement in 2012. With the Grazing Agreement, they want to structurally encourage grazing in order to offer cows as much grazing as possible and to keep the number of dairy farms with grazing at least at the 2012 level (81,2%).
The Grazing Agreement is an initiative of the Sustainable Dairy Chain, a theme group of ZuivelNL in which the Dutch Dairymen Board (DDB), LTO Netherlands, Dutch Agricultural Youth Contact (NAJK), Dutch Dairy Farmers' Union (NMV) and Dutch Dairy Organization (NZO) work together. The Sustainable Dairy Chain is working on making the dairy sector more sustainable.