The pig population in the Netherlands decreased by 1.6 percent last year. According to Statistics Netherlands, it is currently 11.3 million. The pig herd has been shrinking since 2018, partly because mushrooms have been subsidized in recent years. Overall, the pig population has dropped by 9 percent since then.
Most of those leaving are small pig farmers, so the average number of animals per farm has increased from 2883 to 3,446 in five years. Almost half of the pigs in the Netherlands are kept in Noord-Brabant.
cows
The number of cattle in the Netherlands reached 3.8 million last year, a slight increase of 0.4 percent. Compared to 2017, there was a decrease of 6%. According to the Dutch Statistical Institute, this is partly due to the phosphate reduction scheme that forces companies to sell dairy cattle.
As in pig breeding, especially small farms are closed in the dairy industry, which means an increase in the number of cows per farm. The average dairy farmer now owns 107 cows, up from 94 in 2017.
1.57 million dairy cows in the Netherlands make up the largest category of cattle, followed by fattening calves (1.04 million animals) and young cattle for dairy farming (980,000). The slight increase in the last year can be attributed to the growth in the second category. The number of cattle in other categories remained the same or slightly decreased.
Source: NOS
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
