Mandatory land-based gives farmers headaches

Compulsory land-use will soon saddle the cattle sector with high additional costs. According to the Future Manure Policy Roadmap (April 13, 2021), about 40% of cattle farms were already land-bound with a derogation. Without a derogation, this is only 10%.

Voluntary land-based work is fine, but it is not mandatory with new regulations. In the proposed obligation, the Minister also assumed that the derogation would be retained in 2020. In the event of a loss of derogation, you are land-bound with a stocking density of 1,5 large livestock units per hectare or less (170 kg nitrogen per hectare). Extra land under the farm puts cattle farmers at high costs in a market with many land claims already. Moreover, investments in land are at the expense of the investment capacity of the companies. Such as for a coherent integrated approach to the reduction of methane (climate) and ammonia (nature). Compulsory land-use adds little to low-emission business operations. Keeping less livestock is a possibility, but for many companies this is often at the direct expense of the company's income and future prospects.

Short distance
Allowing land-relatedness with regional cooperation agreements sounds sympathetic, but is this also effective? This option is possible with farmers at a short distance (up to 20 km) who can use the (surplus) manure. A study by Wageningen Economic Research (Report 2022-061, 2022) shows that if derogation is lost, many CBS manure regions will have too little land to be able to conclude the necessary cooperation agreements within these regions. Not to mention the acceptance and the costs for concluding these agreements.

The cooperation agreements correspond to the manure sales agreements that were introduced in 2002. This system also related to land dependency. The volume of manure production was then made dependent on pre-guaranteed application and sales possibilities for manure. For the sale of manure, agreements were introduced with recognized fertilizer processors or exporters and recognized intermediaries. Due to a lack of steering power, the manure sales contracts were abolished after a few years.

Enough question
Arable farmers at greater distances would like to continue receiving cattle slurry. The fertilizer composition fits well with the fertilizer requirement. The distance criterion for land-bound makes optimal use of this important sales channel virtually impossible. The Netherlands has a sustainable energy target of two billion cubic meters of biogas. Large planned biogas plants need a lot of manure from elsewhere. Land-relatedness hinders this development.

Mandatory land-boundness without derogation and with fertilization-free buffer strips certainly does not result in a simpler, more feasible and enforceable manure policy. The sector is already helping the government with the real-time and digital recording of manure transports (rVDM) and with further certification of the manure chain. Waiving the mandatory land-bound not only relieves cattle farmers, but also the legislator of a lot of headaches.

Jaap Uenk

Jaap Uenk is the owner of consultancy Mestem and has more than 40 years of experience in various positions in the Dutch fertilizer sector.

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