Dutch milk production for 2019 was down almost 100m litres, according to new figures from Eurostat. Dutch dairy farmers produced 13.3bn litres of milk in 2019 – down almost 1%, or close to 100m litres, on 2018's figures.

When compared to 2017 milk production levels, which was a record year for Dutch milk production, milk production in the Netherlands last year is back almost 4%, or 500m litres. The decline in Dutch milk production over the last two years has been driven by new phosphate quotas on farms which were introduced by the Dutch government in late 2017.

This new quota system, which was designed to limit the phosphate overload in the Netherlands, forced farmers to cull cow numbers. Up to 180,000 dairy cows were culled from the national dairy herd in the Netherlands as a result.