DAIRY NEWS MAY 8, 2018
NEWS // 15
n giant barn occurs on side or top, so we use it for biogas. “We were planning to build another biogas converter on this location, but EU changed laws and subsidies so it’s not as attractive.” They are renovating a shed where calves will be housed from day 1 to 20 weeks. They now use igloos and although Guus says it is a good system, feeding 100-150 calves is a lot of extra work. “Having calves in one barn in one location will make it much more efficient.” They will also install a new slurry system. “Right now we are hauling everything. Next year we will be able to pump manure from barn to fields with a drag hose. Our fields are in a radius of 5-6km so the drag hose system will be good. With slurry tanks we can spread 40cu.m an hour; with a drag hose it will be 250cu.m an hour so it will
save a lot of time.” Cows weigh 650 700kg. Milk now sells for 30-31 Euro cents/kg liquid milk. Guus said this was “pretty good, not the greatest”. Their production cost is about 29-30 Euro cents/kg. “When we started we were paid 27c. In Nov 2014 we were at 27c, then it went down to 20c. We had two rough years after building the barn. Then it went up to 40c but we knew it wouldn’t stay there. Then it dropped 9c from one month to the next.” There are no milk quotas but tillable land is 300 Euros/ha and grassland sells for 90 Euros/ ha. To get this price farmers must meet Government requirements. The Lansinks met the Government criterion of growing a green crop on 6% of tillable land by planting alfalfa, which Guus said is
PROFITABLE BIOGAS THE BIOGAS is profitable, as it earns money from the energy company and subsidies from the Government – 90 Euros/tonne. Their animal waste is mixed with a self-propelled feeder, making methane which is burnt off and generates electricity, which he is paid for. That waste is then used to fertilise grassland. It has a higher concentrate of nitrogen than dairy slurry and has proven more effective. “The way the dairy market is, it would have been more profitable to invest the money we spent on the barn in a new biogas generator,” Guus Lansink said. Farmers must give their processors two years notice of intention to leave, and Guus says they can be told their price two weeks into a month or at the start of the month. There is a bonus for additional fat and protein but litres milk is the main profit drivers. Once you produce a benchmark for fat and protein the additional cost required to raise this is not necessarily rewarded. “Effectively, the more I produce the more I’m paid. A few months ago we averaged 38L/day and that was a bit too much. We always need to look at what can be produced but also ask, is it going to work out for cows? We’re happy at 36 – 36.5L/day.” They produce 33,000 - 34,000L/day (3.9% fat and 3.4% protein). However, the real bonus is supplying nonGMO milk. “It’s a huge thing in Germany now; they are going crazy for non-GMO.” It wasn’t hard to change because GMO products are banned in the EU. They had to switch their soya bean supply from the US to Hungary. “We just feed that and show the government we’re not using non-GMO products from companies that don’t use GMO products in those trailers. “They’re pretty much forcing us to do so. DMK said ‘produce non-GMO or we’re not taking your milk’.”
great feed for dairy cows. “If you build a new barn you can get subsidies, but this province only subsidises up to 500 cows. They say bigger farms can sustain themselves. If we were 40km down the road we would have been eligible.” Subsidies for barns are 40%. • Lely paid for Stephen Cooke’s trip to Germany and the Netherlands.
Gerhard Lansink milked cows in Canada before moving back to Germany.