After January 1, Dutch agriculture is heading for a manure crisis that may cost a large number of farmers their heads. The alarmed House of Representatives demands quick solutions from the responsible minister Piet Adema. But that’s precisely the problem.
Yvonne Hofs31 december 2023, 05:30
At least eight parliamentary groups sounded the alarm in the last plenary parliamentary debate before the Christmas recess. “I think we are in alarm phase one,” warned NSC MP Harm Holman. BBB agricultural spokesperson Cor Pierik noted that the sector is ‘on fire’. Pieter Grinwis (Christian Union) spoke of ‘a noose around the neck’ of Dutch livestock farming.
These panicky comments are about impending fertilizer problems for farmers. For a few weeks now, agricultural spokespeople in the House of Representatives have been bombarded with cries for help from the sector, which feels overwhelmed by the strict fertilizer restrictions that Adema announced on December 6. These measures mean that from January 1, thousands of farmers will be allowed to spread less animal manure on their land than they were used to. These manure standards will be further tightened in 2025 and 2026.
Pollution from manure
Adema does not restrict the spread of manure on Dutch fields and meadows on its own initiative. He has been forced to do this by the European Commission, which is very concerned about water quality in the Netherlands. Dutch surface and groundwater have contained far too high concentrations of nitrate and phosphate for years. This pollution is largely the result of the excessive use of fertilizers in agriculture.
For the Netherlands, European environmental regulations are particularly harsh, because Dutch livestock farmers have enjoyed a large manure advantage (derogation) since 2006 compared to farmers from most other EU member states. They are allowed to spread 35 to 47 percent more manure per hectare than farmers without a derogation. Because removing and processing manure is so expensive, this gives Dutch livestock farmers a cost advantage.
But this derogation will be gradually phased out between 2023 and 2026, because Dutch agriculture poorly adheres to European environmental rules. In recent decades, the Commission has noted time and again that the Netherlands is flouting environmental regulations from Brussels. For example, several studies show that there is large-scale fraud in the manure accounting of livestock farms and manure factories. There is therefore a good chance that much more manure is spread in the Netherlands than the official figures indicate.
High cost
The fact that farmers will be allowed to spread less liquid manure on their land from next year will pose problems for dairy farmers in particular. Pig and poultry farmers are already used to having to dispose of the vast majority of their manure. Disposing of surplus manure – abroad or to a fertilizer factory – costs a lot of money. Dairy farmers generally own more land, on which they could dispose of most of their cow manure for free. From next year, they will also have to have an increasing part of their manure surplus processed or exported at high costs.
The Dutch Center for Manure Valuation (NCM) calculated in Het Financieele Dagblad that the manure surplus will increase fivefold over the next three years due to the manure control measures. This extra supply could cause the price that livestock farmers have to pay to get rid of their manure to rise from 25 euros per tonne to 40 to 50 euros per tonne, the NCM thinks. “That will be a cost that many farmers cannot bear,” says NCM director Jan Roefs in the FD. Dairy farmers will spend thousands to tens of thousands of euros more per year on manure disposal.
Several parliamentarians expressed their horror in the parliamentary debate about a threatened ‘cold restructuring’ in livestock farming. The House of Representatives instructed Adema in a motion to come up with solutions to the manure crisis within two months. However, the beleaguered minister tempered expectations. ‘There is only one possible solution: a lot of money has to go into the agricultural sector. There are really no other solutions at the moment,” Adema replied. And then immediately torpedo that solution: direct income support to distressed farmers, on top of the European agricultural subsidies already distributed, is not permitted under EU rules.
Substantial subsidy scheme
Adema is prepared to push the boundaries to accommodate the parliamentary majority. For example, his ministry is setting up a substantial subsidy scheme for young farmers who want to take over their parents’ business. A subsidy of 120 million euros is also available for livestock farmers who are hit hardest by the phasing out of the derogation. But it is expected that all these subsidies will not be able to absorb the cost increase for all farmers.
Apart from possible price increases, other problems are emerging on the sales market for animal manure. For example, in recent years Germany has started to look much more critically at the manure it imports from the Netherlands. German inspections have been tightened after it emerged in 2018 that the paperwork was not in order for a third of manure transports from the Netherlands. In addition, Germany must also introduce stricter fertilizer rules, because the European Commission threatened sanctions this year due to the poor water quality in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Besides abroad, manure factories are the most important sales channel for animal manure. The Netherlands has several hundred biogas plants subsidized with billions of euros, in which animal manure is burned to produce ‘green gas’. There is also a lot of cheating in this industry.
In so-called co-digesters, 50 percent animal manure is mixed with other waste before it is turned into biogas. Formally, this other waste may only consist of uncontaminated animal and vegetable remains. But criminals also use these manure digesters to dispose of illegal waste, including drug waste. An inspection about eight years ago showed that 75 percent of the intermediaries who supply manure and other waste to manure digesters were violating the rules, including all four largest intermediaries.
“The use of unauthorized waste and residues leads to serious risks to public health,” states an internal official ‘signal’ from 2016 that became public thanks to a WOB request. The residue left behind from the production of biogas, the digestate, is often spread over fields as fertilizer. As a result, it enters the human food chain via food crops or via the meat of the animals that eat these crops.
Fraud-sensitive
The Ministry of Agriculture has done little with this administrative signal, probably because the manure factories are essential for eliminating the Dutch manure surplus. “Co-fermentation remains sensitive to fraud,” the Dutch investigative services write in a 2021 report. “The signals we receive are not decreasing.” This year, inspection services found serious violations at 27 of the 33 manure digesters in the three northern provinces. The environmental inspectorate found amphetamines in the digestate from 23 of these fertilizer factories and, in 27 cases, heavy metals such as zinc and copper.
The cause of the pollution is not known, but the presence of amphetamines points to criminals mixing drug waste with animal manure and then burning it in a fertilizer factory. The inspection services do not rule out that the digestate contaminated with heavy metals and drugs has ended up in the environment and the human food chain.
The manure factories that were caught have been temporarily shut down, which prompted parliamentary questions from the VVD and the BBB. The gist of those questions is not concerns about the risks to public health, but concerns about the consequences for agriculture. MPs Caroline van der Plas (BBB) and Thom van Campen (VVD) especially wanted to know from Minister Adema when the factories can open again, because the manure cellars of livestock farmers need to be emptied. This situation is even more dire now that the derogation is disappearing.
NSC member Harm Holman suggested during the parliamentary debate that farmers will now spread (even more?) manure illegally, unless the minister offers financial or practical solutions for the increasing manure surplus. Adema protested that livestock farmers could have seen the expiration of the derogation coming, because the European Commission had been pushing for this for several years.
But Dutch farmers seem to have become accustomed to the government coming to their aid and have therefore not anticipated the measure. The only hope now is that the voluntary buyout schemes for livestock farmers with high nitrogen emissions will make a dent in national manure production.
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