On 24 November, an international group of European policy-makers and researchers paid a visit to DAIRYMAN Knowledge Transfer Centre (KTC) De Marke. The visit to De Marke was part of a two-day workshop about fertiliser management in sustainable farming. The European Commission and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation asked Wageningen UR to organise the workshop. De Marke is a pioneering centre where crops are fertilised according to requirement using fertiliser produced by the centre’s own livestock.
Made-to-measure fertilisation
De Marke manages this process thanks to a simple separation technique in combination with fermentation and other fertiliser management methods, such as limited field space and a shortening of the fertilisation season from mid-March until late July. The visitors were enthusiastic about the results at De Marke as they demonstrated the possibility of achieving good crop production within the norms without using artificial fertilisers, but using solely home-produced animal fertilisers.
Individual assessments
During the discussions, it became clear that every region and every farm can take different, but appropriate measures to close the cycle effectively. It would therefore be sensible to assess each farm on its individual environmental merits, thereby allowing farms to implement their own flexible system of measures.
De Marke, part of Wageningen UR, serves as an experimental farm and centre of expertise for the Netherlands and Europe in DAIRYMAN and Koeien & Kansen. For more information about KTC De Marke, please contact the manager, Zwier van der Vegte. E: zwier.vandevegte@wur.nl; T: +31 (0)320-293367.
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