Strategic choice in manure important

Animal manure is an important nutrient for plants and soil organisms. In large parts of the world, animal manure is a valuable product. In the Netherlands and several other regions in the European Union (EU), manure is seen as a problem, according to researcher Pieter de Wolf of Wageningen University & Research (WUR).

The core problem is that there is too much manure in these regions: most farms, including dairy farms with a lot of land, have more animal manure than they are allowed to use on their own land. Even the BV Netherlands has too much manure: there is more animal manure available than can be used on all Dutch agricultural land.

Negative price as a fraud incentive
In practice, livestock farmers therefore offer more manure than can be purchased by arable farmers. This leads to a negative price: the livestock farmer pays to dispose of his manure and the arable farmer receives manure for free or with money. This is an incentive for manure fraud: livestock farmers save money if they use more manure on their own land than allowed. The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, among others, therefore suspects that illegal fertilizer use is an important cause of persistent water quality problems.

It is also good to report that the Dutch manure surplus is mainly caused by stricter fertilization standards and not by a larger livestock. The number of animals and the current manure production are around the level of 2002, which is also the reference year for the national nitrogen and phosphate ceilings. However, the room for use for animal manure has declined sharply since that time due to stricter fertilization standards for nitrogen and phosphate.

A small change in the supply has major consequences: the expansion of dairy farming around 2016 (abolition of the milk quota) led to a sharp fall in the price of manure in the Netherlands. The compulsory reduction of the dairy herd, which followed in 2017, largely reversed this decline.

It is therefore no wonder that the livestock sector in particular is looking for ways to reduce the costs of fertilizer disposal. The headline of this blog symbolizes this quest. In recent years, all kinds of ideas have come up, and sometimes embraced with enthusiasm. However, real success has not yet been achieved. This calls for reflection on the various solutions.

1. Allow arable farmers to purchase more manure
The idea of ​​fertilizer providers (livestock farmers and manure processors) is that arable farmers purchase more manure if the quality is improved through manure processing. This statement is easy to refute, because figures from Statistics Netherlands show that the total useable space for animal N and P is almost completely used by arable farmers and livestock farmers. There is therefore no room at all to purchase even more animal manure, barring exceptions.

In addition to animal manure, arable farmers also use fertilizer for an important reason: fertilizer is fast-acting, easy to dose and can be applied to the crop. This does not apply to most animal manure types. There are also plans to replace arable farmers' fertilizers with comparable animal manure-based products. This may provide more space for the sale of animal manure, but it is not free. Since these products are often more expensive, it is proposed to oblige arable farmers to use them instead of fertilizers.

Finally: cattle slurry is not as bad a type of manure as is claimed. The NP ratio matches the crop needs and fertilization standards of arable crops. It also contains a relatively large amount of organic matter, which the arable farmer can use to achieve a positive organic matter balance (in addition to green manures and crop residues). Processing cattle slurry often increases costs and is therefore not necessary at all for arable farmers.

Manure refining and valorisation
EAnother idea is to make 'valuable things' from manure and in this way to realize a positive economic value. This varies from chemicals for industry to fibers for making clothing. The problem is that all the valuable ingredients in manure are also in animal feed and it is much easier and cheaper to get them from there. For hygiene reasons, it is also very complicated to use manure as a raw material, especially for food applications.

The only advantage of manure refining is that manure as a raw material is much cheaper (it even includes money). Oh wait, if you are going to get a lot of manure from the market through refining, the price of manure will rise again. Incidentally, this will not happen very quickly, because such initiatives are and often remain small.

2. Large-scale manure processing and export
The idea is to process and export animal manure, which will bring the market back into equilibrium. The processing of pig manure is preferable to cattle manure. Not only because Dutch arable farmers prefer to use cattle manure, but also because pig manure contains more phosphate per kilo of organic matter. The product of manure processing is then, among other things, a phosphate-rich organic fertilizer that is exported to countries such as East Germany and Poland.

This is a serious option for balancing the market. The challenge is to organize this: the costs are considerable (€15 to €20 per cubic meter of processed manure). Until now, the livestock farmer who has the manure processed pays all costs. He commits himself for 10 to 12 years, because the operator of the installation wants to cover his risk. If nothing is organised, this leads to 'free-rider behaviour': whoever processes manure pays, and the rest profit from a higher price for manure. This applies individually, but also between sectors: pig farming will not pay all costs if dairy farming also benefits from it.

This can therefore only be arranged collectively. Calculations by Wageningen Economic Research show that the collective costs are also lower than the collective benefits. The major advantage for the livestock sector is that it can maintain its current size. A large-scale and efficient chain of suppliers, processors and customers has also been built on this scale.

3. Herd Shrinkage
The logic of the 'shrinkage of the livestock' measure is simple: fewer animals also means less manure supply. This is therefore a second option for balancing the market and it is also a measure that tackles the problem at the source. The province of Noord-Brabant is now actively pursuing a policy in this direction. In dairy farming, 'land-relatedness' is a consideration for reducing the manure surplus at farm level, which will also have an effect regionally and nationally.

The so-called 'Harmony model' of Denmark is also an example of this: the livestock on a farm may not produce more manure than can be used on its own land. This would mean an enormous change for the Netherlands: the vast majority of livestock farms have a manure surplus and would have to hand in animals or buy/lease additional land. With a significant shrinkage of the livestock, various economies of scale on companies and in the chain are lost and a lot of capital is written off.

Government intervention
When everything is considered from an economic perspective, large-scale manure processing and export seems the most interesting. It balances the fertilizer market and could also be economically beneficial. At the same time, this is not a simple scenario: the livestock sector has not shown in recent years that it is capable of organizing itself. Government intervention is then the only option, but it is doubtful whether the government will do this.

There is a lot of social resistance to a scenario that would maintain the livestock sector in its current form and development. In addition, government intervention is often a long-term process due to all kinds of legal procedures and part of the costs quickly end up with the government. This is difficult to explain from a social and European perspective.

From the perspective of circular agriculture, the option of land-relatedness is the most interesting, certainly on a regional or international level. It is then important not only to regulate soil-relatedness on the manure side, but also to think about the front/feed side. If you then bring phosphate-rich fertilizers to Eastern Europe, it might also be interesting to return grains and protein-rich animal feed raw materials for this.

Or is it wiser to move some of the animals, closer to the ground where the feed comes from and the manure goes, and perhaps closer to the sales market? It is important to answer these questions and to make strategic choices as a BV Netherlands. Wageningen University & Research could support this exploration with knowledge and calculations from various disciplines.

This blog is taken from www.wur.nl.
Pieter de Wolf is a senior researcher in sustainable agriculture at Wageningen University & Research.

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