The cabinet wants to combat nitrogen surpluses, among other things, by buying out livestock farms. Previous buy-out schemes were not a resounding success. Until 2020, for example, there was a stop scheme for pig farmers, with the aim of reducing odor nuisance in densely populated areas. More than 500 pig farmers applied, but in the end only 278 pig farmers left their business. Nevertheless, the number of farms in the Netherlands has been declining for years. Not through buyout, but through a concentration of activities and a lack of successors.
In 2000, the Netherlands had a total of 97 thousand farms, in 2021 there were only 52 thousand. However, the companies are getting bigger. The average cattle farmer had 89 cattle at the turn of the century and almost double that now. Among pig farmers, the average number of animals per farm has more than tripled, from less than a thousand to more than 3 thousand. There are now 3.8 million cows and over 11 million pigs in the Netherlands. This is evident from the agricultural census of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
Buyout can be a favorable option for farmers who cannot find a successor. About half of farm managers are 55 or older, and 59 percent of them say they don’t know yet who will take over the business. That differs greatly per sector. Most dairy farmers (63 percent) have a successor in mind, of the goat farmers only 19 percent. The lack of successors can also lead to a further concentration of agriculture in a few very large farms: the smaller the farm, the less often a successor is already known.