If you think Irish farming gets a hard time over its impact on the environment and climate change, you should spend a day in the shoes of a Dutch dairy farmer.
Having initially expanded cow numbers and milk production after the end of milk quotas in 2015, the Dutch dairy industry soon found itself in the midst of an environmental storm.
The increased cow numbers led to a spike in phosphorus output on Dutch farms.
In the first three years after quotas, the Netherlands exceeded its EU phosphate limits by up to 7m kg
Dutch dairy co-op FrieslandCampina aims to be free of fossil fuels at all its processing sites by 2050.
.
The extra phosphorus output forced the hand of the Dutch government to implement a cow-culling scheme, which incentivised the reduction of the national dairy herd by up to 180,000 cows in a bid to limit the phosphate overload in the Netherlands.
The government also introduced quotas for the amount of phosphate that could be produced by individual farms for the next decade. These phosphate quotas essentially put a cap on the size of the Dutch dairy herd until 2028, at least.
If Dutch farmers want to increase production over the next decade, they will have to achieve it by getting more from less. However, this type of innovation has never been hard to find in the Netherlands.
But phosphates are just one challenge that the Dutch dairy industry must overcome.
Society in the Netherlands not only wants the dairy industry to reduce its environmental impact but consumers are also demanding change in terms of climate emissions, biodiversity on farms and animal welfare.
To meet these changing consumer demands, Dutch dairy co-op FrieslandCampina has begun to overhaul its entire supply chain to meet a new sustainability agenda.
From the milk produced on farms to the energy used to process milk at its factories, FrieslandCampina has set itself ambitious sustainability targets up to 2050. At a processing level, this means moving away from fossil fuels.
Transition
According to Arnoud Smit, FrieslandCampina’s programme lead on climate change, much of the renewable energy it needs to transition away from fossil fuels will actually come from its farmer suppliers.
“By the end of this year, FrieslandCampina will be sourcing 100% of its electricity needs from renewable or green sources to power its worldwide network of offices and dairy plants,” says Smit. “At the moment, about 96% of our electricity needs worldwide come from renewable sources. The best part is that about 25% of this green energy is coming from our farmer members. About 2,500 farmers are supplying us with energy generated from solar panels on their cow barns. And this number is going to grow because we have another 400 farmers waiting to start producing solar power,” he says.
Our aim at FrieslandCampina is to be carbon-neutral by 2050 with no fossil emissions at any of our facilities worldwide
While the switch to renewable electricity is almost complete for FrieslandCampina, Smit says it won’t be so straightforward to transition away from natural gas, which is the key fossil fuel used in most of its milk processing plants where a huge amount of heat is needed to dry milk into powders.
The co-op hopes its own farmer members will supply much of its renewable energy needs.
“Our aim at FrieslandCampina is to be carbon-neutral by 2050 with no fossil emissions at any of our facilities worldwide.
"However, it’s a bit more of a challenge to switch from fossil fuels to renewables at our processing plants because we need a lot of heat to dry milk into powders.
"The majority of heat that we use is generated with natural gas right now but we do use other sources of energy such as woodchips and pyrolysis oil from wood residues at some of our plants,” says Smit.
“We need to lower this reliance on natural gas, obviously. So our aim is to produce as much of our energy needs from within our own supply chain. This means using energy produced by our farmer members,” he adds.
Renewables
FrieslandCampina has started a number of programmes to nudge farmers further into the energy generation sector and is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of renewable biogas it can source from its farmers.
Importantly, this would be a win-win for farmers and processors as it would also provide emissions benefits for farmers.
A mono-manure biogas plant installed on a Dutch dairy farm.
“We’re trying to increase the amount of manure digesters on farms, which would be able to provide us with a source of biogas, but it would also reduce methane emissions from cattle manure,” says Smit.
The digesters that FrieslandCampina is encouraging its farmers to establish on farm are mono-fermentation systems, or mono-manure plants, where slurry from cattle sheds accounts for 95% to 100% of the feedstock. Other raw materials such as grass or old silage can only account for a maximum of 5% of the feedstock.
This is different to anaerobic digester (AD) plants here in Ireland which, owing to the abundance of grass that we grow in Ireland, will use a more balanced mix of slurry and grass silage as the feedstock.
A small wind turbine and solar panels installed on a Dutch dairy farm.
These mono-manure AD plants produce less energy than AD plants here in Ireland but it also means less cost for the farmer because they don’t have to source feedstock.
Using fresh slurry creates biogas that can be sold off the farm, while also reducing a significant amount of methane emissions on Dutch farms attributed to manure storage.
Like Ireland, there is one major challenge in establishing a large-scale biogas industry in the Netherlands, namely farm size. According to Smit, a lot of dairy farms in the Netherlands are small family-run enterprises, where the cost of setting up and feeding an AD plant is prohibitive.
A solar panel installed on a Dutch dairy farm.
To help farmers establish on-farm digesters, FrieslandCampina has started a new subsidiary business called Jumpstart Co-operative, which helps farmers to finance the installation of biogas plants but has also provided €130m in price subsidies for the renewable natural gas (RNG) produced by Dutch farmers.
“Farm size determines whether there’s a viable business case for a farmer to install a manure digester on their farm. A viable business case for a small biogas plant starts at 130 to 140 cows (which is actually a large dairy farm in the Netherlands).
"These smaller plants produce combined heat and power (CHP or co-generation) of about 33kW to 75kW,” says Smit.
“An intermediate-sized biogas plant would be viable on a farm with 190 to 200 cows or higher, while on the larger farms of 350 to 400 cows the digester plants will generate only renewable biogas, with production typically the equivalent of 320,000m3 of natural gas,” he adds.
Apart from production of renewable energy, installation of an AD plant on the farm results in a substantial reduction of ammonia and methane emissions.
Encouraged
Because the average dairy farm is so small in the Netherlands (less than 100 cows), neighbouring dairy farmers are encouraged to come together in groups of four or five to establish one large biogas plant between them.
This spreads the capital cost and also ensures the volume of feedstock needed to supply the biogas plant is there.
Similar to Ireland, renewable biogas production is not competitive in terms of the low cost of natural gas. However, the Dutch government provides farmers with a 12-year subsidy that allows the farmer make some profit.
At this point, there are 10 farms in the Netherlands with an operational biogas plant installed, with a further 10 plants still under construction. Smit says the target is to get the number of biogas plants operational on its member farms up to 50 in the coming years as an intermediate target.
Looking to 2050, Smit says FrieslandCampina is looking at a range of alternatives to fossil fuels to power its processing plants.
Renewable biogas has a role to play in helping the co-op decarbonise but FrieslandCampina also sees electrification of its processing plants as the way forward.
Smit says new technologies are being developed, which will allow the co-op to use electricity in place of natural gas in its processing plants, while hydrogen technology should also play a big part as it becomes more readily available to businesses.
Farm level
At farm level, FrieslandCampina is grappling with the same challenges we face here in Ireland – methane.
Agriculture accounts for about 14% of all carbon emissions in the Netherlands, whereas in Ireland agriculture accounts for more than one-third of all emissions due to the absence of a heavy manufacturing industry. However, Dutch farmers are under similar pressure to reduce emissions, particularly methane emissions.
“We’re still looking into how to achieve net zero at farm level by 2050. But we need the IPCC. Obviously, it’s a natural process for the cow to produce methane so it’s rather difficult to influence that,” says Smit.
The co-op recently started a joint research programme with global chocolate-maker Barry Callebaut, feed additive producer Agolin and feed provider Agrifirm to trial a new feed additive for cows that could reduce methane emissions per kilo of milk by up to 14%. Almost 50 Friesland farmers will participate in the research trial, which will last for 12 months.
Since 2018, we’ve made it mandatory for our farmers to calculate their carbon footprint and their nutrient balance
However, Smit says that carbon sequestration will play a key role if Dutch farmers are to achieve emissions reductions targets.
Similar to Ireland, sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere by grasslands is not acknowledged by the Dutch government.
“Since 2018, we’ve made it mandatory for our farmers to calculate their carbon footprint and their nutrient balance. This is so our farmers know that their carbon footprint is considered to be important.
"Once the farmer knows what the main causes of emissions are on their farm, they can start to think about what they can do to reduce these emissions,” says Smit.
Right now, the Dutch dairy industry is at the same point on the carbon-neutral journey that our industry is here in Ireland.
At farm level, dairy farmers are starting to be given more data about their individual carbon footprint, which should allow them to make changes to reduce emissions.
At the same time, more and more investment is being made in on-farm generation of renewable energy, which will provide an additional income stream for farmers of the future, but also provide the renewable green energy needed by FrieslandCampina or Irish dairy co-ops to transition their processing sites away from fossil fuels.
With farmers and co-ops in both countries on this shared journey towards carbon neutrality at the same time, there is a lot we can learn from each other and much to be gained through collaboration.
If you think Irish farming gets a hard time over its impact on the environment and climate change, you should spend a day in the shoes of a Dutch dairy farmer.
Having initially expanded cow numbers and milk production after the end of milk quotas in 2015, the Dutch dairy industry soon found itself in the midst of an environmental storm.
The increased cow numbers led to a spike in phosphorus output on Dutch farms.
In the first three years after quotas, the Netherlands exceeded its EU phosphate limits by up to 7m kg
Dutch dairy co-op FrieslandCampina aims to be free of fossil fuels at all its processing sites by 2050.
.
The extra phosphorus output forced the hand of the Dutch government to implement a cow-culling scheme, which incentivised the reduction of the national dairy herd by up to 180,000 cows in a bid to limit the phosphate overload in the Netherlands.
The government also introduced quotas for the amount of phosphate that could be produced by individual farms for the next decade. These phosphate quotas essentially put a cap on the size of the Dutch dairy herd until 2028, at least.
If Dutch farmers want to increase production over the next decade, they will have to achieve it by getting more from less. However, this type of innovation has never been hard to find in the Netherlands.
But phosphates are just one challenge that the Dutch dairy industry must overcome.
Society in the Netherlands not only wants the dairy industry to reduce its environmental impact but consumers are also demanding change in terms of climate emissions, biodiversity on farms and animal welfare.
To meet these changing consumer demands, Dutch dairy co-op FrieslandCampina has begun to overhaul its entire supply chain to meet a new sustainability agenda.
From the milk produced on farms to the energy used to process milk at its factories, FrieslandCampina has set itself ambitious sustainability targets up to 2050. At a processing level, this means moving away from fossil fuels.
Transition
According to Arnoud Smit, FrieslandCampina’s programme lead on climate change, much of the renewable energy it needs to transition away from fossil fuels will actually come from its farmer suppliers.
“By the end of this year, FrieslandCampina will be sourcing 100% of its electricity needs from renewable or green sources to power its worldwide network of offices and dairy plants,” says Smit. “At the moment, about 96% of our electricity needs worldwide come from renewable sources. The best part is that about 25% of this green energy is coming from our farmer members. About 2,500 farmers are supplying us with energy generated from solar panels on their cow barns. And this number is going to grow because we have another 400 farmers waiting to start producing solar power,” he says.
Our aim at FrieslandCampina is to be carbon-neutral by 2050 with no fossil emissions at any of our facilities worldwide
While the switch to renewable electricity is almost complete for FrieslandCampina, Smit says it won’t be so straightforward to transition away from natural gas, which is the key fossil fuel used in most of its milk processing plants where a huge amount of heat is needed to dry milk into powders.
The co-op hopes its own farmer members will supply much of its renewable energy needs.
“Our aim at FrieslandCampina is to be carbon-neutral by 2050 with no fossil emissions at any of our facilities worldwide.
"However, it’s a bit more of a challenge to switch from fossil fuels to renewables at our processing plants because we need a lot of heat to dry milk into powders.
"The majority of heat that we use is generated with natural gas right now but we do use other sources of energy such as woodchips and pyrolysis oil from wood residues at some of our plants,” says Smit.
“We need to lower this reliance on natural gas, obviously. So our aim is to produce as much of our energy needs from within our own supply chain. This means using energy produced by our farmer members,” he adds.
Renewables
FrieslandCampina has started a number of programmes to nudge farmers further into the energy generation sector and is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of renewable biogas it can source from its farmers.
Importantly, this would be a win-win for farmers and processors as it would also provide emissions benefits for farmers.
A mono-manure biogas plant installed on a Dutch dairy farm.
“We’re trying to increase the amount of manure digesters on farms, which would be able to provide us with a source of biogas, but it would also reduce methane emissions from cattle manure,” says Smit.
The digesters that FrieslandCampina is encouraging its farmers to establish on farm are mono-fermentation systems, or mono-manure plants, where slurry from cattle sheds accounts for 95% to 100% of the feedstock. Other raw materials such as grass or old silage can only account for a maximum of 5% of the feedstock.
This is different to anaerobic digester (AD) plants here in Ireland which, owing to the abundance of grass that we grow in Ireland, will use a more balanced mix of slurry and grass silage as the feedstock.
A small wind turbine and solar panels installed on a Dutch dairy farm.
These mono-manure AD plants produce less energy than AD plants here in Ireland but it also means less cost for the farmer because they don’t have to source feedstock.
Using fresh slurry creates biogas that can be sold off the farm, while also reducing a significant amount of methane emissions on Dutch farms attributed to manure storage.
Like Ireland, there is one major challenge in establishing a large-scale biogas industry in the Netherlands, namely farm size. According to Smit, a lot of dairy farms in the Netherlands are small family-run enterprises, where the cost of setting up and feeding an AD plant is prohibitive.
A solar panel installed on a Dutch dairy farm.
To help farmers establish on-farm digesters, FrieslandCampina has started a new subsidiary business called Jumpstart Co-operative, which helps farmers to finance the installation of biogas plants but has also provided €130m in price subsidies for the renewable natural gas (RNG) produced by Dutch farmers.
“Farm size determines whether there’s a viable business case for a farmer to install a manure digester on their farm. A viable business case for a small biogas plant starts at 130 to 140 cows (which is actually a large dairy farm in the Netherlands).
"These smaller plants produce combined heat and power (CHP or co-generation) of about 33kW to 75kW,” says Smit.
“An intermediate-sized biogas plant would be viable on a farm with 190 to 200 cows or higher, while on the larger farms of 350 to 400 cows the digester plants will generate only renewable biogas, with production typically the equivalent of 320,000m3 of natural gas,” he adds.
Apart from production of renewable energy, installation of an AD plant on the farm results in a substantial reduction of ammonia and methane emissions.
Encouraged
Because the average dairy farm is so small in the Netherlands (less than 100 cows), neighbouring dairy farmers are encouraged to come together in groups of four or five to establish one large biogas plant between them.
This spreads the capital cost and also ensures the volume of feedstock needed to supply the biogas plant is there.
Similar to Ireland, renewable biogas production is not competitive in terms of the low cost of natural gas. However, the Dutch government provides farmers with a 12-year subsidy that allows the farmer make some profit.
At this point, there are 10 farms in the Netherlands with an operational biogas plant installed, with a further 10 plants still under construction. Smit says the target is to get the number of biogas plants operational on its member farms up to 50 in the coming years as an intermediate target.
Looking to 2050, Smit says FrieslandCampina is looking at a range of alternatives to fossil fuels to power its processing plants.
Renewable biogas has a role to play in helping the co-op decarbonise but FrieslandCampina also sees electrification of its processing plants as the way forward.
Smit says new technologies are being developed, which will allow the co-op to use electricity in place of natural gas in its processing plants, while hydrogen technology should also play a big part as it becomes more readily available to businesses.
Farm level
At farm level, FrieslandCampina is grappling with the same challenges we face here in Ireland – methane.
Agriculture accounts for about 14% of all carbon emissions in the Netherlands, whereas in Ireland agriculture accounts for more than one-third of all emissions due to the absence of a heavy manufacturing industry. However, Dutch farmers are under similar pressure to reduce emissions, particularly methane emissions.
“We’re still looking into how to achieve net zero at farm level by 2050. But we need the IPCC. Obviously, it’s a natural process for the cow to produce methane so it’s rather difficult to influence that,” says Smit.
The co-op recently started a joint research programme with global chocolate-maker Barry Callebaut, feed additive producer Agolin and feed provider Agrifirm to trial a new feed additive for cows that could reduce methane emissions per kilo of milk by up to 14%. Almost 50 Friesland farmers will participate in the research trial, which will last for 12 months.
Since 2018, we’ve made it mandatory for our farmers to calculate their carbon footprint and their nutrient balance
However, Smit says that carbon sequestration will play a key role if Dutch farmers are to achieve emissions reductions targets.
Similar to Ireland, sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere by grasslands is not acknowledged by the Dutch government.
“Since 2018, we’ve made it mandatory for our farmers to calculate their carbon footprint and their nutrient balance. This is so our farmers know that their carbon footprint is considered to be important.
"Once the farmer knows what the main causes of emissions are on their farm, they can start to think about what they can do to reduce these emissions,” says Smit.
Right now, the Dutch dairy industry is at the same point on the carbon-neutral journey that our industry is here in Ireland.
At farm level, dairy farmers are starting to be given more data about their individual carbon footprint, which should allow them to make changes to reduce emissions.
At the same time, more and more investment is being made in on-farm generation of renewable energy, which will provide an additional income stream for farmers of the future, but also provide the renewable green energy needed by FrieslandCampina or Irish dairy co-ops to transition their processing sites away from fossil fuels.
With farmers and co-ops in both countries on this shared journey towards carbon neutrality at the same time, there is a lot we can learn from each other and much to be gained through collaboration.
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