Category Archives: Agriculture

Good welfare of farmers as a precondition to provide welfare to pigs on farms

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Last week, I was invited to the Animal Science Days in Padua to present my Master thesis results concerning the effect of farm modernization on the welfare of pigs in Croatia. I was given the opportunity to present my results twice; first, I presented my main results as an invited speaker and later I presented some aspects of my thesis in the form of a poster.

The main point of my study was that the modernization of Croatian housing systems, particularly small ones, does not necessarily ensure a better standard of pig welfare. This is because it often entails the removal of bedding and intensification of production, amongst others to reduce labour time and costs. Bedding such as straw is, however, important because it reduces injuries resulting from behavioural abnormalities directed towards pen mates (i.e. belly nosing, ear and tail chewing) and floor qualities. Also, across Europe intensification has risen much concern regarding the welfare of intensively housed animals. One can therefore suggest that Croatia needs to find a way to modernise its production units while retaining its beneficial aspects such as small scale and straw bedding.

In the course of my study, however, I found out that small pig farmers-which make up the majority of Croatian pig farmers- often lacked knowledge about the concept of pig welfare and the EU pig welfare directives. In fact, they seemed to be uninformed about the exact changes which will occur in the course of implementing the EU rules and regulations. This resulted on the one hand in frustration regarding their own lack of future perspective and on the other hand in a lack of interest regarding their motivation to ensure or improve the welfare of their pigs. The results thus suggest that motivations to ensure pig welfare are also dependent on the welfare of the pig farmers.

My main conclusion was therefore that in order to ensure animal welfare, it is necessary to ensure welfare of farmers as well. In order to ensure and improve pig welfare in the future, this topic needs to be approached from both social sciences and animal sciences in order to understand the close link between human and animal welfare. My presentation received great interest from the audience and I hope that this topic will be further elaborated in order to support small Croatian farmers and their pigs in the future.

Local resilience to peak oil and climate change

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Last night I went to the film. The film night and the discussion afterwards was organised by the Transition Town Vallei, a new ngo which started in June this year. Wageningen and its surrounding villages is not the only place with a Transition Town initiative. They are mushrooming all over the Netherlands at the moment. The movement which is now taking off, started in Totnes, the UK:

“It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities of Peak Oil and Climate Change?”

The Transition Town website gives a guide for how to set up a Transition Town initiative, how to raise awareness around peak oil and climate change, how to connect with existing community groups, how to work with local government and how to come eventually to a “energy descent action plan” which increases the resilience of local community for times when energy is not such a self evident fact of life.

In Wageningen, we are at the awareness raising stage. We watched the film The Power of Community, How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. I can recommend this film to anyone remotely interested in the energy debate, the way forward with sustainability or more specific, the transition to local and organic food systems. After the initial shock and hunger, the Cubans massively started to farm on every square meter available. Tractors had become obsolete and the generation that still knew how to work with an ox trained a new generation. Without machinery, the conventional scale was untenable, which led to new systems of land distribution and a decentralisation of land ownership. Without chemical help, techniques of soil rehabilitation, worm composting, crop rotation, mixed planting and permaculture were adopted to “work with nature instead of against it”. “We call that ‘lazy agriculture’” somebody in the film explained. That should appeal to us all I would think.

Composting at Red hook farm NY

Composting at Red Hook urban farm NY

Afbouwers, liefhebbers en ondernemers – onderzoek naar de drijfveren van hobby- en deeltijdboeren

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Afstudeeronderzoek door Bart Bremmer

Hobby- en deeltijdboeren worden vooral gezien en beoordeeeld op wat ze niet zijn: ‘echte’ boeren. ‘Echte’ boeren hebben een bedrijf dat niet alleen nu maar ook op langere termijn een ‘duurzaam’  inkomen oplevert en dus investeren in groei om mee te kunnen komen. Omgekeerd geldt dan dat wie onvoldoende investeert niet mee kan komen: wat rest is een bestaan als deeltijdboer of als hobbyboer. Zo ging het ook met de opa en oma van Bart Bremmer: zij hebben begin jaren 1980 hun land verkocht. Maar ze zijn wel op het erf blijven wonen met een moestuin. ‘Echte boeren’ kunnen dus groeien door land van stoppende boeren aan te kopen, maar het ‘vrijkomende’ land kan ook een andere bestemming krijgen: voor natuur, recreatie, wegenaanleg of woningbouw. Maar vele hobby- en deeltijdboeren willen niet van wijken weten en houden (een deel van) het land aan. Naast de categorie (heel) grote bedrijven, neemt ook het aantal kleine grondgebruikers verhoudingsgewijs toe (zie Structuur primaire land- en tuinbouw, uit het Landbouweconomisch bericht 2000). En ook al hebben ze in verhouding niet veel land in eigendom, kleine grondgebruikers drukken wel degelijk hun stempel op het buitengebied. Het is een categorie waar je rekening mee moet houden. Zo ook bij de gebiedsontwikkeling in de Groene Poort, deel van de gemeente Borne. Bart Bremmer heeft in een deel van dit gebied onderzoek gedaan naar wat hobby- en deeltijdboeren zoal drijft, het belang dat ze aan inkomen uit bedrijfsmatige activiteiten hechten, hoe ze hun eigen toekomst zien en hoe ze tegen de ontwikkeling van het gebied aankijken. In zijn analyse maakt Bart een betekenisvol onderscheid tussen voormalige hoofdberoepsboeren die de bedrijfsmatige activiteiten afbouwen en tezijnertijd zeggen plaats zullen maken, liefhebbers die veel waarde hechten aan het wonen en werken op het platteland en ondernemende personen die zoeken naar manieren om ter plekke meer inkomen te genereren uit bedrijfsmatige activiteiten. Afbouwers, liefhebbers en ondernemers blijken ook een eigen kijk te hebben op de ontwikkeling van het gebied en hun mogelijke rol daarin. Voor de gemeente Borne is dit waardevolle informatie waar zij op in kunnen spelen. Bart heeft met zijn MSc- onderzoek ‘Hobbyboeren en deeltijdboeren; een restcategorie‘ een belangrijke restgroep een eigen stem gegeven die de moeite waard is om naar te luisteren.

Education in Urban Agriculture

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Urban agriculture (UA) will never substitute food production from farmland but it can contribute to make more fruits and vegetables available near our growing urban world population. This calls for interdisciplinary research, but above all for interdisciplinary education. The next generation of urban farmers and developers is currently applying to our universities. Now the potential of UA is beginning to be realized, these young people will need practical hands-on skills and interdisciplinary knowledge to design new food system solutions. How to use limited space in an intense way, using the newest technology in an ecologically sound way calls for a large number of skills (see growing power). A growing number of universities develops courses and programs on UA (Redwood in Agriculture in urban planning 2009: 236).

A good example of a course which integrates how to learn to grow food and slaughter small poultry livestock with the theoretical knowledge from various disciplines such as soil science, horticulture, (insect) ecology, sociology and biology is the Urban Agriculture course at University of California, Berkeley. According to the course description the interdisciplinarity will

“allow us to better understand the biophysical and socioeconomic opportunities for and obstacles limiting urban and peri-urban agriculture”.

With the next round of education reform towards a semester model coming up, there should be space for a course on Urban Agriculture at Wageningen University.

Urban Agriculture / Stadslandbouw

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Growing food in urban gardens and allotments has a long history. In the Netherlands, allotment gardens are a marginal but natural part of the city’s infrastructure. Other European countries have their own history in urban gardening too, such as many Eastern European countries. Also in the US, urban gardening is a long standing practice.

However, in the Netherlands as well as in the US, urban gardening is moving from the fringe into the heart of a debate about health and sustainability. The manifestations look similar. For example, the Alemany Farm in San Francisco which started on a vacant lot (see story) or the Red Hook urban farm (see earlier blog). Also in Rotterdam, Proefpark de Punt started on a vacant lot and also this initiative met skeptics of urban planners and city leaders until it had proven itself.

Reading the articles and websites of initiatives related to Urban Agriculture in the US and its counterpart ‘Stadslandbouw’ in the Netherlands, there seems a striking difference too. In the US, the food production aspect of the gardening is taken far more serious as an option for providing people a significant portion of their daily food. Growing food in urban gardens is about access to fresh food. Not in the last place for those who do not have easy and affordable access.

In the Netherlands, this notion is not absent of course. But the language around the initiatives starts from a broader notion of the need for ‘green space’ for the health of the urban citizen. A green environment, education about nature and food, recreation possibilities in accessible green spaces, the improvement of mental health and social cohesion by means of gardening. These notions can also be found in the initial objective for setting up Proefpark de Punt:

‘Landleven in de Stad’, een natuurlijke speel- en recreatiemogelijkheid voor de buurt te creëren.

A trend watcher on the website of Proefpark de Punt talked about ‘squatting green space’ which is what many initiatives in the US and the Netherlands essentially do. However, the local context differs considerably which means that the connections to health and sustainability are interpreted quite differently. A call for comparative studies I guess.

Proefpark de Punt

Proefpark de Punt