Frisian farmers in trouble due to stricter fertilizer rules: where to go with the surplus?

Yke Bijlstra (27) prefers to talk in the stable. He leans against a wall, in blue work overalls, hands in his pockets. There are 120 dairy cows and some young cattle here, they also have 26 beef cows further on the property in Drogeham, Northeast Friesland. When a cow starts to poop, it becomes alert. “Hear you, hear you,” he says, clapping his hands. “This is what it should sound like when a cow poops, clap-clap. Then the cow is healthy. Good manure.”

You shouldn’t be surprised if a farmer talks about gold while talking about poop and urine. Manure makes the grass grow faster, and the cows eat that grass again. For years this went around in a circle on the farm where Bijlstra works: they spread all the manure from their own cows over the grassland around the farm, mowed the grass when it was tender, and could feed it – partly dried – back to the animals.

Now that no longer works. Since January 1, Dutch farmers are no longer allowed to spread extra manure compared to their European colleagues. The exceptional position that the Netherlands has had since 2004 has been lifted by the European Commission, under loud but fruitless protest from outgoing Minister Femke Wiersma (BBB, Agriculture). According to the Commission, the Netherlands has not sufficiently achieved targets for (ground)water quality, which is why the preferential treatment has come to an end.

In recent years, the amount of manure that could be used on land has been gradually reduced – now the last exemptions have also been lifted. Farmers who still had an exemption have been allowed to apply one third less fertilizer to the land since January 1, mainly to ensure that less nitrogen (nitrate) ends up in the soil. The European maximum is 170 kilos of nitrogen from animal manure per hectare, while for Dutch farmers it was 250 kilos for years.

Alfons Beldman, who conducts research into dairy farming and sustainability at Wageningen University & Research, has calculated that as of this year, around 2.2 million kilograms less nitrogen from manure can be added to the land. That corresponds to the manure of approximately 140,000 cows (there are 1.5 million dairy cows in the Netherlands, and approximately the same number of beef cows). Not every cow produces the same amount of manure, but there are enormous quantities of liquid manure that come onto the market. Consider, at a rough estimate, 160,000 full tankers – a traffic jam from Utrecht to beyond Moscow.

Suddenly dairy farmer Yke Bijlstra is a player in the manure market. Because manure that you cannot get rid of has to go. Many farmers find alternatives such as buying more land or keeping fewer cows unfeasible – it is too expensive for their business to survive. In some provinces, such as Drenthe or Flevoland, there are arable farmers who can use the manure to grow their crops. Agreements have been made there for years about purchasing manure.

But in Friesland, where there are traditionally many dairy farmers with grassland and few arable farmers, farmers have a problem: where should their manure go? And can they afford to remove it? Bijlstra: “I think it’s very bad. Now we’ll have to buy feed while we’re delivering manure. That doesn’t make sense, does it? I’m afraid that young people will shy away from taking over a company because it will reduce yields.”

Automatically into the manure cellar

Jan Teade Kooistra (56) drinks coffee in his kitchen, iPad and telephone at hand to follow the work of the machines in the stables. He sits right behind the old stable that has been there for more than a hundred years, built by his ancestors, exactly opposite the white village tower of Eagum, just below Leeuwarden. He has 240 dairy cows, they are kept in a relatively new stable on his property, built in 2012. When the weather is nice, he takes a boat behind the yard and sails into the Alde Feanen protected nature reserve.

Spreading manure is allowed until September 1, and then again from mid-February. Now it is in the manure cellar, under the stable. Kooistra always removed 2,000 cubic meters of manure per year. This now amounts to an additional 3,000 cubic meters, and the price for this has also become much higher at around 35 euros: “The cubic meters that we have already removed also cost us more money. So we spend 130,000 euros more per year.”

Zoom in

Manure contains nitrogen, phosphate and organic substances. Some of it is absorbed by the crop, but some of it washes into the soil and that is bad for water quality. Then you get algae blooms and oxygen deficiency, fish that can suffer and possible influence on the drinking water. Last year the Union of Water Boards concluded, after research by the Deltares knowledge institute at 172 measuring locations, that the water quality in ditches and streams is insufficient in half of the agricultural areas.

Since the mid-1990s, the nitrate concentration (nitrogen) in water that washes away from farms has actually decreased enormously – so things are already going much better than before, although progress has stagnated in recent years. Anyone who looks at the Frisian measuring points for phosphorus and nitrogen will see that in many places things are not that bad at all.

A Frisian or Spanish farm

This is how outgoing minister Wiersma also sees it: she wrote to the House of Representatives in December: at most agricultural companies that used the exemption scheme for manure, less nitrate ended up in the groundwater than allowed according to European standards. These are often farms with a lot of grassland – which retains harmful substances relatively well. It is not without reason that a lot of grassland was a condition for being allowed to use more manure. But according to the European Commission, it is not enough: the water quality is not satisfactory at 20 percent of the measuring points – and in many places the situation has deteriorated again in recent years.

The new cabinet wants to promote nature restoration by skimming rights for numbers of animals and for phosphate when a company (outside the family) transfers to a new owner, according to the coalition agreement of D66, CDA and VVD at the end of last week. It is still unclear what percentages this concerns. In order to gain more benefit from ‘leftover’ manure, the government wants to experiment with dried forms that could serve as an export product. For example, chicken manure can already be converted into fuel, but this is more difficult with cow manure.

Zoom in

Kooistra walks onto his property. He takes a handful of spent grains – concentrates for the cows – from a bag and sticks his nose in it. He walks into the large stable and points to a sturdy white-brown cow: “Do you see how beautiful?” It hurts him that the same standards now apply to his Frisian farm as to a farmer in, he shouts, the south of France or Spain. While the weather (in a wet year there is more water pollution), the subsoil (grass retains a lot, more is washed away in sand) and the farmer’s working method (how do you distribute the manure on the land) are extremely important for the harmfulness of manure in the water.

Kooistra: “We would like to contribute to improving the water, that is also necessary, but look at the measurements per area. There are quite a few places where the surface water is good, we should be able to spread more manure there. Where the water is not good enough, we have to solve that first. Now it is just draining the manure everywhere and nothing else. While it is just great, manure, a great nutrient.”

Worse still – Yke Bijlstra also immediately started talking about it in Drogeham – he thinks that farmers should now be allowed to spread artificial fertilizer again, instead of regular manure. While that is also bad for the water. Wageningen University calculated several years ago that by losing the exceptional position, 18 percent less nitrogen and phosphate from animal manure will probably end up in the water until 2030. And indeed: there is also an additional 3 percent nitrogen in the water due to more fertilizer use, according to the researchers, but the water will nevertheless improve, the report stated. was shared with the House of Representatives.

Kooistra: “That’s what the models say. But who says that a lot more fertilizer won’t be used? Abroad they really don’t understand at all that we are now going to use more fertilizer. It feels crooked and it is crooked.”

Politics waited

Alfons Beldman from the university, not involved in that specific study, thinks that fewer harmful substances will end up in the water, but nevertheless understands the frustration of farmers. Beldman: “We thought for a long time in the Netherlands that we would maintain this exceptional position. But at the same time you saw that we were not achieving the targets in terms of water quality. If you then continue to wait, the blow will come at some point. You can wonder whether that is the fault of farmers, or whether decisions should have been made earlier at a political level.”

Zoom in

Dutch farmers, says Beldman, achieve higher yields from their grassland compared to European colleagues. According to him, higher manure use fits in with this – so he doesn’t think it’s surprising to spread more manure in our country. In addition, due to the expiration of the exceptional position, farmers are now converting grassland into built-up land. This in itself releases a lot of nitrogen, and more chemicals are often used on arable crops – both of which pose a risk to water quality. Beldman: “There are quite a lot of uncertainties, so I understand that those farmers are wondering what you gain from this.”

Jan Teade Kooistra steps over the threshold of his stable, looks around and points to his land. That land has become unaffordable, he says. Everyone wants land just to be able to dispose of manure. Kooistra: “That creates tension among farmers. When a piece of land becomes available, everyone jumps on it. And you see: the strongest can afford it, and the financially less strong players suffer.”

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