I'm in the Netherlands.
Remarkably, this small nation is the world's
second-largest exporter of food.
But I want to learn more about a couple
of key environmental issues facing the livestock sector.
The first is curbing nitrogen emissions.
I've come to leading agricultural facility
Wageningen University to meet nitrogen expert Wim de Vries.
Well, at this moment, the specific thing
is ammonia that comes from agriculture.
And on the other hand, it's nitrogen oxides
that come from traffic and construction, et cetera.
Nitrogen can be a ground and water
pollutant and a contributor to climate change.
It comes from various sources, but about 40
per cent of the nitrogen that falls in the Netherlands
is thanks to agriculture.
That's largely due to a combination
of nitrogen-rich feed, fertilisers, and animal waste.
And it's been an issue in the country for a long time.
Since the '80s, the amount of emissions
have been reduced by 50 per cent, 60 per cent.
But still, we are above critical levels of nature protection.
So we have to go further.
Now, recent legislation has frozen the expansion of dairy,
pig, and poultry farms.
Some experts have even suggested that livestock numbers should
halve.
In response, farmers have taken to the streets in protest,
concerned about their incomes and the potential costs
involved.
Well, farmers are angry because they have the feeling
we have done already so much.
Of all the livestock farming in the Netherlands,
dairy farms account for about 60 per cent of nitrogen emissions.
That's why I've come to this dairy farm near Leiden,
where experts from the university
are working to cut its nitrogen output.
There are now three areas - feed, manure, and grazing -
where they can reduce nitrogen in a very effective way.
But you have to create awareness about where
the opportunities lie.
When it comes to feed and grazing,
the aim is for cows to eat grass or silage
like this, rather than nitrogen-rich industrial feed.
Meanwhile, techniques like putting air filters
in the sheds, separating liquid and solid animal waste,
diluting the manure with water, and then injecting it
into the ground are all effective ways
to cut ammonia output.
Are these expensive techniques, they
require lots of investment?
No, it costs less money.
The important thing is that the efficiency is bigger.
So at the end of the line we make money out of it.
Beukeboom's ammonia emissions have come down
by a quarter in each of the three years
since adopting these new techniques.
Experts believe that a 40 per cent
drop across the Netherlands is not unrealistic.
But while nitrogen is a particularly hot topic
right now, I also want to find out
how the agriculture industry here
can move towards a wider target of cutting greenhouse gas
emissions.
Until now, and despite the effects of the coronavirus,
the European Commission has said it
will stick with its ambitious target
to become carbon neutral by 2050.
As part of that, Dutch farmers are
aiming to cut their emissions by about 11per cent by 2030.
I'm on my way to Kipster.
They call themselves the world's first carbon-neutral farm.
But what exactly does that mean?
And how do you manage to get an egg with no carbon footprint?
Kipster is home to 42,000 hens.
Farmer Ruud Zanders is using a variety of techniques
to become fully carbon neutral.
For example, his hens are of the more efficient white,
egg-laying variety.
And they all live in state-of-the-art solar
panel-topped coops.
A key part of Zanders' strategy involves
what he feeds his chickens.
70 per cent of the carbon footprint of an egg
depends on what you are feeding your birds.
And we are making a feed with only waste products,
for example bread or biscuits, all these kind of things which
we cannot eat anymore or we don't want to eat anymore.
These waste scraps have half the carbon footprint
of regular chicken feed.
It looks pretty edible.
I mean, if I wanted to, I could probably put it my mouth.
This includes sort of Rice Krispies.
We have toast over here, which is broken up
with biscuits, and some broken-off rice cakes, flour,
and everything else.
A Kipster egg costs around 26 euro cents,
about the same price as a free-range egg.
The company now has two farms and plans to have four more
in the US by next year.
It's also in talks with parties in France, Germany,
Belgium, and the UK.
So the Kipster business model doesn't
look like a flash in the pan.
What we want to do is we want to show
the world that it's possible.
We want to export this concept to other countries.
A huge challenge lies ahead for Dutch farmers,
but they seem to be taking steps in the right direction.
And in a country that exports almost 100 billion euros
a year in agricultural products, that
could prove significant for the entire world.