By Geert Laugs, Director of Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) Netherlands.

This article has been translated into English, having originally been published in Joop BNNVARA on 30th January.

The nitrogen spectre is once again haunting The Hague.

The Dutch government is failing to execute its own national laws, which commit it to reducing industrial and farming nitrogen emissions. Factory farming accounts for the largest percentage of these emissions, which seriously threaten nature and biodiversity. However, national politics and even the government coalition are divided on how to address the problem. Recently - in December and January - two court decisions raised pressure on the government to find a solution. A big crisis is looming.

After these court rulings, the Dutch government has put together a crisis committee of ministers, rebuking the two agrarian, right-wing populist ‘Farmer-Citizen Movement’ (BBB) ministers at the Ministry of Agriculture. Apparently, the penny has dropped. They realise that BBB and its allies want nothing more than for our cows to be able to poop indefinitely.

Yet the latest court ruling was not the most important news of last week for me. Instead, it was a report by the University of Wageningen that shows painfully clearly that technological innovation in livestock farming cannot solve our nitrogen problem. 'Innovation' is the magic word with which BBB leader Van der Plas, agricultural minister Wiersma, and Big Ag say they want to solve the crisis. The researchers conclude that this is an illusion.

Reality falls short

Researchers took a close look at all existing 'innovations' and made a detailed inventory of the extent to which separating dung and urine from manure can reduce nitrogen emissions. The results were disappointing. Only when all livestock farmers participate, and when all expensive installations are used in the best possible way, is a nitrogen reduction of 60% feasible. And of course, that never happens. The researchers warned that results of innovations in practice often fall short of what is possible in theory, under ideal conditions.

High costs

What’s more, costs could amount to hundreds of millions of euros per year. The researchers warned of a vicious cycle: increasing technology to keep industrial livestock farms running costs a lot of money - and to recoup that, scaling up, further intensification and even more technology would be needed. A reduction in the number of animals and a certain degree of extensification of livestock farming cannot, therefore, be avoided.

Too much manure

Even looking beyond the nitrogen problem, we can only conclude that gambling on technological innovations entails major risks. Separating dung and urine does not solve the underlying problem that the livestock industry produces too much manure. Chemical installations in our once beautiful countryside will ensure that instead of one brown product, we will be stuck with two separate products (urine and dried manure), which we don't know what to do with.

Forgetting animals

In all this, we are forgetting the crux of the issue: the animals in the livestock industry, including the one and a half million dairy cows that account for most of our nitrogen emissions. Most cows are kept indoors for a large part of the year; one in four cows never go outside at all. The stable floors are often too hard, slippery and smeared with manure. Lameness and inflammation of udders and feet are common, and animals are exhausted by the extremely high milk yield. Further intensification to recoup the high costs of manure separation could easily lead to a worsening of animal welfare.

System change needed

I sincerely hope that Dutch Prime Minister Schoof and the members of the ministerial committee will not listen to the BBB ministers, or the suppliers and financiers of industrial livestock farming. Rather than pushing farmers and animals even further towards the dead end of industrialisation, they would be much better off opting for truly sustainable and animal-worthy livestock farming, with far fewer animals and healthy, diversified revenue models for the farmers who stay.

'Innovations' are driving farmers and animals into a corner