The farmers want to solve part of the emissions problem with technology. In Jan Willem de Jong’s dairy stable you will quickly learn why dairy farming produces so much nitrogen. The cow’s feces and urine get mixed and this creates slurry, muddy, liquid manure. When it comes into contact with oxygen, ammonia is formed, which is a nitrogen compound.
De Jong is reducing his emissions in the stable by using manure robots: “They sweep the feces and urine between the slats into the manure cellar. This means there are fewer emissions from the stable.” But the resulting slurry must be removed from storage at some point. “Spread less on the land and put more in a manure digester (mono-digester),” De Jong explains. There is already one at the Riedstra and Hoving dairy farm. De Jong also wants one. “With this I can produce green gas for Veenhuizen to replace natural gas and I ensure fewer emissions of CO2, methane and nitrogen.” One step later, De Jong is thinking of a way to make his own fertilizer from the residual product from the digester. But that is still far away.
The farmers want a buffer zone of about 13 hectares adjacent to the Fochteloërveen. Riedstra stands on a corn field, and immediately next to it lies the forest of Veenhuizen and behind it the Fochteloërveen, both Natura 2000 areas. “In the buffer zone we can grow crops that release less nitrogen and do something with more water, so that the nature behind it dries out less. The farmer who has to leave here with his corn or beets must get a place back further down in Veenhuizen so that he can continue farming.”
The farmers are also considering more extensive farming in some places, i.e. with fewer livestock or less burdensome arable farming. “And we have to get started with both water quality and water quantity,” says Riedstra. And farmers want to create strips with more biodiversity along the edges of watercourses.