February 23, 2021
 

Netherlands sees slight increase in nitrogen animal excretion in 2020

Nitrogen excretion in livestock manure produced by animals in the Netherlands increased slightly in 2020 compared to the previous year by just 1.0%, reaching 494 million kilogrammes, a value below the nitrogen ceiling that the European Union has set for the Dutch livestock population.

Phosphate excretion was 151 million kilogrammes, 2.8% less than in 2019 and well below the ceiling according to Statistics Netherlands data, based on preliminary figures.

Nitrogen excretion from the pig sector, which amounted to 90.9 million kilogrammes, decreased in 2020 compared to the previous year by 2.8 million kilogrammes.

Phosphate excretion, which amounted to 35.7 million kilogrammes, decreased by 1.1 million kilogrammes. Both decreases are related to the reduction in the number of finishing pigs (over 3%) and the number of breeding animals (over 1%).

Nitrogen and phosphate production from the swine sector have been below production ceilings of 99.1 million kilogrammes of nitrogen and 39.7 million kilogrammes of phosphate since 2016.

- CBS (Netherlands)