'Once upon a time in the dung?'

Many of us are familiar with the western classic 'Once upon a time in the west'. The Wild West was an era of simple rules, and violations of them were settled by duels with some regularity. Cowboys were tough, but fair. Actually, you didn't even think of breaking the rules. This is different in the wild west of the manure.

The mush of rules is often unfathomable and not always understood. In addition, our manure distribution and contracting sector is a club of diligent hard workers, who have a strong tendency to act first and then think. That is not always appropriate with this complexity of fertilizer rules.

The local dummy and the dung cowboy
The Eindhovense Dagblad recently wrote the local duddy 'Waiting for the next manure cowboy† An article that puts our fertilizer distribution and contracting sector, but also livestock farming, in a negative light (without any form of objective and thorough research). Purely intended as sensational journalism. As a result, reliable parties are directly or indirectly dismissed as fat cowboys in the making.

The examples from the last period are of course regrettable, and they have therefore been addressed (we suspect). It is not appropriate, however, to trivialize the (fraud) examples. The environmental permit for manure processing simply has to be in order and is certainly no higher mathematics. You shouldn't want to mess with that.

We cannot dismiss an unannounced visit by the police, the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) and other cars on a random Saturday morning with: "It was only a check visit." Negative publicity causes image and reputation damage. This harms our sector and fertilizer intermediaries that are doing well. It says something about our integrity and morals. The compliance behavior leaves a lot to be desired.

Manure is not expensive, the yield for meat and milk is too low.
The problem is easily marginalized into too expensive logistics and a fertilizer season that is too short. In my opinion the problem will be solved tomorrow with a healthy revenue model in pig and cattle farming. A revenue model in which a price is paid that is sufficient to pay a fair price for manure. It is naive to think that manure can be processed for €10 to €15. Dreams are lies.

A comparison with the price of virtually clean waste water (such as domestic waste water) shows us that slightly polluted waste water (from the food industry, for example) is many times cleaner than manure and is easier to process. However, it quickly costs the industry €50 to €80 per tonne. Household waste in our gray wheelie bin costs 1 household quickly €80 per ton and this household waste has an energy yield of approximately €80 (10 Gigajoules).

Manure does not go beyond a few euros, in terms of energy yield (0,7 Gigajoule). We don't hear about that. Without a fair price for our meat, which leads to a healthy profit, fraud is lurking. There is no herb against it. But first we must have the desire to comply with the rules and to hold each other accountable for wrong behaviour.

Interests in manure diverge too widely
The interests of the parties in the fertilizer chain differ widely. An action plan is in the pipeline, but support is hard to find. Everyone has their own interests and agenda; signals that are absolutely opposite and certainly do not solve the problem. Everything must be done to stop the tsunami of manure, while individual interests must give way to the common interest.

The negative publicity causes image and reputation damage and we should not want that. As long as the advocates keep saying that the manure is too expensive, the intermediaries are superfluous and want to take control themselves, they will be disappointed. Without the intermediaries, the problem would have long been a tsunami of manure been. Just so you know.

Wilfried Neelen

Tried and tested in business advice. Fulfilled multiple executive and managerial positions. In the last 20 years mainly active in the fertilizer distribution and contracting sector. Motto: we do the right things and do things right.

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