Summary Market for Manure – Development of demand-driven chains for raw materials from manure Drs. G.G.M. Boosten (DOTank) and Dr J.G. de Wilt (InnovationNetwork) InnovationNetwork Report no. 11.2.260, Utrecht, The Netherlands, May 2011. of manure which needs to be placed outside the Dutch arable farming sector. The mounting pressure on the manure market will cause an explosive rise in the costs of removing manure. The risk of fraud will also increase. Clearly, systemic solutions are required. Growing manure surplus Over the centuries manure has been a valuable product for keeping soil fertile. Due to the large-scale imports of animal feed for livestock farming, many livestock farms – particularly in the intensive farming industry – produce more manure than is needed to fertilize the soil. To avoid dumping, the use of manure has been subject to strict regulations since the mid-1980s. Of the total annual production of 70 million tonnes, farmers currently spread about 50 million tonnes on their own land. The remaining 20 million tonnes goes to arable farming or is exported. Farmers currently pay an average gate fee of about € 20 per tonne for the removal of the manure. The total annual costs amount to some € 300 million. Due to the adoption of more stringent environmental regulations, the abolition of the milk quota and other factors, the manure surplus and related costs are set to rise steadily in the years ahead. For several years now, the Dutch farming sector has been confronted with a manure surplus that cannot be placed elsewhere. In 2015 this unplaceable surplus will grow to aproximately 8% of the Dutch phosphate production, representing 12,5 million kilos of phosphate. That is 50 million tonnes From waste to value As things stand, redundant manure is priced as a waste product which is very expensive to remove; in the pig farming sector, the removal of slurry constitutes 6.25% of the cost price and this percentage will rise further unless the policy is changed. A new market model is required to arrive at a systemic and sustainable solution: manure must be transformed from a waste product to a valuable commodity. We must treat manure as a composite product of useful ingredients for third parties within and, above all, outside agriculture (see box). 79 Pagina 85
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