The number of dairy goats in the Netherlands has again increased slightly, to almost 489 thousand. That is an increase of 1 percent compared to last year, according to the provisional figures of the 2022 Agricultural Census of the Netherlands on Wednesday. Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). More than half of the dairy goats are kept in North Brabant (137,000) and Gelderland (117,000), despite a goat stop in those provinces.
After years of significant increases in the sector, the number of dairy goats has only increased slightly since last year. Since 2017, several provinces, including North Brabant and Gelderland, but also Utrecht and Overijssel, have stopped keeping goats because of the possible health risks for local residents. According to research by the RIVM, people who live near a goat farm have a higher risk of pneumonia.
In the last two decades, the number of dairy goats in the Netherlands has increased almost fivefold, according to figures from Statistics Netherlands. Only between 2009 and 2010 there was a decrease due to a large-scale goat culling due to the Q fever outbreak. The farms have also grown: this year, a dairy goat farmer has an average of 735 animals, while ten years ago the average was 495 dairy goats. And in 2012 there were still 223 farms with 500 or more dairy goats, while that has increased by at least half this year.
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Fewer pigs and chickens
Although the reduction of livestock is high on the political agenda, this year also increased the scale of farms with dairy cows. An average dairy farm has 110 adult dairy cows and 58 young dairy cows on 60 hectares of land, while ten years ago there were 83 and 57 on 48 hectares. In the Netherlands, dairy farms use almost half of the total area of cultivated land.
According to the agricultural census, the size of the pig herd has decreased this year. With 11.3 million pigs in the Netherlands, Statistics Netherlands finds the lowest number in almost twenty years. There have been fewer and fewer pig houses for the past two years, partly due to buy-out measures for farmers. With this stop regulation, the government is trying to significantly reduce nitrogen emissions. There are also 2.3 percent fewer chickens this year. The cattle herd has remained about the same as last year at 3.8 million.