Agricultural revolution sees six out of seven farms disappear since 1950

The Dutch farming sector has been transformed since the war by massive consolidation that has seen six out of every seven farms disappear, new figures show.

A study by the CBS confirmed that large-scale agribusinesses now dominate the sector. The average pig farm in 2017 had 1,600 animals, against a figure of seven in 1950. Similarly, cattle farmers now have an average herd of nearly 160 cows, compared to 13 in 1950.

Overall the Netherlands has 55,000 farming businesses, cultivating a total area of 1.8 million hectares. Both the number of farms and the total land area have shrunk since 1950, when there were 410,000 farms working 2.3 million hectares overall.

The number of sheep has declined sharply from a peak of 2 million in 1992 to around 780,000, slightly fewer than in the early 1980s. Pig farming declined during a swine fever outbreak around the millennium, when the number dropped from 15 million to 11.4 million, but has since recovered to 12.5 million.

Dairy goats have been a growth sector, having been introduced in the mid-eighties after quotas for cows’ milk were set. There are currently half a million goats on dairy farms. Poultry numbers fell slightly in 2016 to 2.4 million, following the bird flu outbreak.

The decline in the number of farms and mechanisation mean there are far fewer jobs in the sector than in 1950: in 2016 172,000 people worked in agriculture, as against 580,000 after the war.