The price we pay for manure
Reporting by Kristin Karlsson, Hanna Nikkanen, Lotta Närhi, Marieke Rotman and Katharina Wecker.
This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
Manure is piling up in Europe’s livestock-producing regions, causing serious environmental harm – from the destruction of marine ecosystems to groundwater pollution and deforestation.
Farmers across Europe have taken to the streets to protest nutrient regulations. They have often succeeded in getting their demands met. Fearing political backlash, decision-makers are hesitant to enforce stricter rules.
But why is this problem so difficult to solve? And why isn’t all this excess manure being used to fertilize Europe’s fields?
Over the past ten months, reporters from Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden teamed up to investigate Europe’s complex relationship to manure. Here’s what we found.
We'll continue to add articles and fresh insights.
1. Why is there too much manure?
Farm animals in the EU produce over a billion tonnes of manure annually. While the number of animals is slowly declining, the number of livestock farms has dropped much more sharply, leaving fewer but much larger operations.
Currently, just 4% of European farms generate 80% of the continent’s manure. This is where the crisis begins.
In western and northern Europe, intensive livestock farming has become concentrated in specific regions. Pig farms, in particular, have formed industrial belts around key infrastructure. This has led to huge amounts of manure piling up in small areas.
Manure is rich in phosphorus and nitrogen, essential for plant growth. Yet the farmland near these "manure hotspots" can no longer absorb the surplus.
Pig manure, in particular, is difficult to transport over long distances. The intensification of agriculture has led to increasing distances between livestock farms and crop-growing areas. As a result, what was once a valuable resource has become a serious environmental pollutant.
Use the slider to see the proliferation of industrial livestock farms between 2007 and today. Cattle farms are exempt from the Industrial Emissions Directive and therefore not featured.
2. Where is it a problem?
Where there are animals, there is manure. Europe’s highest concentrations of livestock are found in southern and central Netherlands, northern Belgium, and western Germany.
But the number of animals isn’t the only factor in the manure crisis – the land’s ability to absorb nutrients plays a key role. Using data from the Natural Resources Institute Finland, we identified regions where the amount of nutrients contained in manure is exceptionally high compared to the available agricultural land. Once again, the Netherlands and Belgium stood out. Alarmingly high nutrient levels were also found in Brittany (France), Galicia (Spain), Lombardy (Italy), parts of Denmark, northwestern Germany and Ireland.
In some areas, manure hotspots are too small to show up in regional statistics, but their local environmental impact is significant. Examples include the "nutrient belt" in southern Sweden and the Aura River delta in southwest Finland.
3. Why is it a problem?
When over-fertilized farmland can no longer absorb excess manure, nutrients seep into the air, water, and soil, causing significant damage to forests, soils, groundwater, public health, and marine ecosystems. The problem is worsened by increased rainfall due to climate change.
When nitrogen from farms contaminates groundwater, it poses a health risk. As it enters surrounding ecosystems, it damages forests and wildlife.
Excess phosphorus, meanwhile, triggers eutrophication in rivers, lakes, and seas. Algae and invasive plants feast on phosphorus, crowding out other species and destroying habitats. This issue is particularly severe in the Baltic Sea, where toxic algae blooms have become an annual occurrence.
4. What is the role of EU subsidies?
The EU faces a paradox: while it tries to address the manure problem through legislation, it simultaneously fuels it with subsidies that promote animal production and agricultural intensification. According to a recent Nature article, 82% of the EU's agricultural subsidies – 45 billion euros annually – support animal products: meat, dairy, eggs.
These subsidies encourage farm expansion, leading to more livestock and, inevitably, more manure being concentrated in smaller areas. Smaller farms, unable to compete with the efficiency and lower prices of bigger operations, often feel forced to expand or risk being priced out.
As these factors worsen the manure problem, the EU attempts to balance the issue with regulatory measures. From a livestock farmer’s perspective, this can be frustrating: the European Union encourages them to expand their farms, but then penalizes them for not being able to manage with the resulting pile of manure.
5. Why isn’t regulation working?
We tried to trace where Europe’s excess manure ends up but quickly hit a wall. It turned out that even authorities lack access to key information about farms' manure management, fertilizer use, and soil nutrient levels.
The lack of data is ”a big dilemma”, says Frank Hilliges, a manure expert at Germany's main environmental protection agency Umweltbundesamt. ”We have no knowledge of how much nitrogen an individual farmer applies and how much of it potentially ends up in the environment.”
Researchers warn that this lack of oversight allows some farmers to cut costs by spreading manure on already over-fertilized fields, causing runoff and environmental harm.
Efforts to address the data gap have faced resistance, with some farmer groups arguing that they are already overburdened by bureaucracy or that the data should remain private for legal reasons. Helena Valve from the Finnish Environment Institute disputes this, stating, “This is critical environmental information needed for regulatory control and to reduce nutrient runoff.”
Some farmers, however, support transparency, believing it would expose manure mismanagement and reward more responsible farming practices.
6. How is this related to farmer protests?
Manure – and the EU’s efforts to regulate its use – is at the center of farmer protests across Europe. Major tractor demonstrations against environmental regulations have occurred in countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, and Poland. Many governments are now hesitant to impose stricter rules, fearing political backlash.
The situation is particularly heated in the Netherlands. A 2019 court ruling held the government responsible for violating the EU’s environmental regulations, bringing nitrogen emissions and agriculture’s environmental impact into the political spotlight.
Both the Netherlands and Ireland have long been allowed to exceed EU limits for spreading organic nitrogen – that is, manure – on fields, under a special exemption called the nitrates derogation. The exemptions are set to expire in 2025. Producer groups in both countries are pushing for extensions, and their governments appear to be siding with the farmers. Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris recently defended the derogation, calling it "a national asset" and "an important part of our farming infrastructure," according to DeSmog.
7. Could excess manure be used as fertilizer?
Europe faces a paradox: regions with intensive animal farming have a nutrient surplus, while plant-growing areas face a shortage. Currently, the majority of plant farmers rely on chemical fertilizers, often imported from Russia.
Manure could be a valuable resource if properly processed and distributed. However, turning manure into transportable products like dry granules or pellets has proven difficult.
The market for recycled nutrients is stuck in a catch-22. Livestock producers are hesitant to invest in additional storage and transport as long as there are no treatment facilities to sell their manure to, while investors won’t fund such facilities if there are no buyers. Plant farmers, meanwhile, are reluctant to move away from familiar chemical fertilizers if the supply of recycled fertilizers is uncertain.
Some countries have tried to create a functioning market for recycled nutrients, but experts say efforts have been too small in scale.
Some experts are hopeful that large biogas facilities could cover the cost of transporting manure to central processing terminals, thus addressing one of the barriers to bio-based fertilizers. However, biogas production doesn’t use the nutrients in manure; nitrogen and phosphorus remain waste products that need to be dealt with.
The EU Commission's draft directive, "Renure," proposes allowing farmers to temporarily exceed nitrate limits if they use bio-based fertilizers. The proponents hope that this will encourage them to shift away from chemical fertilizers.
8. What other solutions are there?
Countries have attempted to manage the manure problem by treating its immediate symptoms. One method involves spreading gypsum on over-fertilized fields. As gypsum binds to phosphorus, it can temporarily reduce runoff into rivers, lakes, and seas. However, this solution merely buys time: if the root cause of nutrient excess isn't addressed, the treatment has to be repeated over and over again.
Eutrophication in lakes and sea bays can sometimes be reversed by applying large amounts of polyaluminium chloride into the water. The substance binds to phosphorus and makes it sink to the bottom. The treatment can produce crystal-clear waters within hours. The effect is temporary, and algae blooms can be expected to return in full force in 5-10 years.
Experts agree that technical solutions alone won’t solve the problem.
“Ultimately, we cannot avoid reducing livestock numbers in high-pollution regions,” says Frank Hilliges from Germany's environmental agency Umweltbundesamt. He suggests tying livestock numbers to available land, allowing farms to keep only enough animals to produce manure that can be absorbed by local fields.
Elin Röös, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agriculture, SLU, also believes livestock numbers need to align with farm size. She advocates for reforming the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). “It’s not the farmers' fault, but a system error that forces them to run giant facilities with animals,” she says.
Stories from our team
Kristin Karlsson / Sveriges Natur: Dubbla signaler när jordbrukets utsläpp ska minskas [Mixed signals when agricultural emissions must be reduced]
Swedish lakes and seas have paid a high price for today's agriculture. Now the Swedish government proposes that farmers solve the half-century-old eutrophication problem – while under pressure to produce more food. Research shows that the EU's agricultural support contributes to increased eutrophication.
Hanna Nikkanen and Lotta Närhi / Long Play: Alas paskavirtaa [Down the shit river] [paywall]
Manure from farm animals has become a major problem across Europe. In Finland, the situation is worst in a handful of small municipalities north of Turku, where more than 200 million kilos of manure is produced every year. For this longform story, Hanna Nikkanen and Lotta Närhi kayaked down the Aura river for three days to find out what is happening to Southwest Finland’s piles of manure.
Katharina Wecker / Zeit Online: Once enemies, now partners: Farmers and water company solve nitrate pollution
Germany’s groundwater is threatened by excessive nitrate pollution. The government has failed for years to pass stricter fertilizer regulations, arguing it doesn’t want to burden farmers with more bureaucracy. In Cologne, a water supply company and a group of farmers are taking matters in their own hands to reduce nitrate pollution. A visit to an unconventional collaboration.