7 April 2025
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The participants of the Circular Animal Protein Chain cluster are doing well. In the coming time we will highlight their activities, starting with the collaboration of Kipster, Nijsen Company and other partners. From arable farmers to supermarkets and bakers to chicken farmers, this diverse group of companies is working together to create a circular chain for circular agriculture. The result? Wholemeal bread, eggs and meat for human consumption. But above all, a cycle that closes better and is much more sustainable, because all raw materials remain circular in the chain. There are successes with this experiment, but as with any new development, there are also challenges.
Source: samples against food waste
The big impact of animal feed
.How do you feed the world fairly and what is the role of animals in that? The way we currently treat animals in the food chain is not efficient. All the good grain and corn we give to animals, we as humans could also eat ourselves. Growing these ingredients for animal feed costs a lot of CO2, money, water and land, among other things. While there are also more sustainable alternatives that have less impact on our environment. For example, feeding the animals with circular feed from residual streams from the food chain, such as unsold bread. Kipster, Lidl, Nijsen Company and several partners are working together to make the chain circular: circular agriculture.
Ruud Zanders, founder of Kipster and initiator: "We are now trying with great effort to close the cycle more sustainably. It used to happen naturally. My great-grandmother even still had an oven in the yard in which she baked her own bread. The leftovers from the land went to the pigs and chickens. Nothing was wasted and there were no imports from other parts of the world. That is what we are working toward again. Not because we long for the past, but because we want to move forward sustainably."
The Circle
The cycle of this group of farms works as follows: in Groningen, participating arable farmers sow wheat from supplier Agrifirm. Most wheat from the Netherlands is only used for animal feed, but this one is suitable for baking bread. Over the fields they spread manure from Kipster chickens. Meelfabriek De Jongh mills the grain for Bakkerij Fuite. The wholemeal bread they bake is on sale at Lidl. Bread that remains is partially processed into chicken feed for the Kipster chickens in cooperation with Nijsen Company. The chickens turn it into eggs and meat products, also available at Lidl. And the chicken manure then goes back into the fields. In this way the cycle is closed as much as possible and the raw materials remain circular in the chain. Moreover, this makes the Netherlands less dependent on developments in the global (raw materials) market, because the entire production takes place in the Netherlands.
Challenges
."Whether this project is successful depends on how you look at it. That a heterogeneous group of companies forms an autonomous chain is successful. That as a result local quality products with a significantly lower CO2 footprint are in the supermarket for the same price, that farmers get a small storage, and that the residual streams end up in the right place, also makes it successful." Explains Ruud Zanders of Kipster. "At the same time, this collaboration reveals a vulnerable imbalance in our food system. The chain partners have not yet succeeded in truly closing the cycle. For example, there is more Kipster manure than needed for the fields, they have used (minimal) pesticides and fertilizers, and the bread scraps are only a limited component of the chicken feed." So there are still challenges in this.
The collaborating partners include: Agrifirm (seeds), arable farmers, Bakkerij Fuite, Kipster (eggs, meat and chicken manure), Lidl Netherlands, Meelfabriek De Jongh and Nijsen Company (chicken feed).