Als door een voedselbril…

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Door Simone Plantinga – MSc student

For the English version follow this link.

Mijn afstudeeronderzoek naar Food Policy Councils, is gestart naar aanleiding van een aantal verkennende gesprekken binnen de vakgroep Rurale Sociologie van Wageningen Universiteit, met de Brabantse Milieufederatie in Tilburg en de Provincie Noord-Brabant en gaat over de randvoorwaarden, mogelijkheden en de beperkingen van het opzetten van een ‘Food Policy Council’(FPC), een bijzondere vorm van voedselbeleid. Een FPC is een breed maatschappelijk netwerk of platform waarin verschillende personen plaatsnemen die belang hebben bij een goed ontwikkeld voedselsysteem. Een succesvol voorbeeld is de in 1991 opgerichte Toronto Food Policy Council in Canada. In deze blog beschrijf ik de (conceptuele) achtergrond van het onderzoek en de belangrijkste resultaten en conclusies (klik hier voor de volledige thesis). Continue reading →

The Black Gold

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Last week, students of the course ‘Agrarische en rurale ontwikkeling, sociologische perspectieven’  had two days of excursions and could choose from 4 different excursions to see different models of multifunctionality and institutional arrangements in farming (see Birgit’s blog about a different excursion). With our group, we visited the Stadsboerderij Almere and the nearby Zonnehoeve in Zeewolde. Both farms have different other activities related to farming, such as school education, cattle in nature reserves, home sales of products, relations with care institutes.

Both are also organic farms, or better; bio-dynamic farms, which goes a step further in closing the nutrient cycle than organic farming. The nutrient cycle turned out to be the key to understanding the multifunctionality of these farms. At the very core of it all was what Tineke called ‘the black gold’; good quality manure, the essential ingredient for a healthy and productive farm without dependence on external input.

To illustrate her point, she took a handful of manure from last year and encouraged students to smell it. Hesitantly a few did. To their surprise it did not smell bad. The mixture of straw, urine and feces of the beef cattle was far into the composting process. It smelled more like soil than like shit….

At the Zonnehoeve they heard again about the importance of building soil. Piet told many unusual stories which illustrated that building soil is quite literally building a resilient farm. He showed his long list of activities in which he diversified which dazzled the students (amongst others, a bakery, permanent housing for caretakers, facilities for therapy with horses, internet shop). But starting with his dairy herd, he emphasised the importance of  Tineke’s ‘black gold’ too.

The centrality of the herd in the farming philosophy of both the Stadsboerderij and the Zonnehoeve, illustrates very well the theoretical framework which the students had learned in class (see Ploeg et al 2003). Grounding the farm in this vital resource  for a healthy nutrient cycle, both farmers deepened their farm strategy by shortening the supply chain whilst delivering high quality organic produce and from that solid base they broadened their farm with new additional functions. Tineke explained this by showing her ‘black gold’, which had brought good economic revenue of their core activity; producing food (e.g. onion, pies, carrots) which made it possible to invest in an entire new facility consisting of a farm-house and barn for a further expansion into care farming.

Romashki or a Life Less Ordinary, part 3

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By Thomas Macintyre

…Belka the squirrel had been swishing her tail back and forth, and when I looked at her she held out a walnut for me to take. “This is a present” she said, as I took the nut. “It is a nut that was too high for you to reach in the tree. We must all help each other you know – humans and animals and all other life on earth.”  Having thanked Belka I waved a last farewell to my friends and began the walk back through the reeds. Just as I was about to begin the walk up the hill I heard a loud croak from Irenushka the frog and then the words of the Water Fairy being sung across the reeds: “Tom, we also have a gift for you. Keep walking, you will feel it soon.” I heard soft chanting words blowing in the breeze: “Earth fire wind and hail; open the realm of the fairytale.”

Soon after, as I reached the road that would take me to that other world, I heard a roaring thunder and saw the heavens open up as a torrential rain began to pour. Soaked in seconds I trudged along, my socks squelching in unison with the klomp, klomp of my wooden shoes on the road. For a second I felt a twinge of annoyance at being wet and cold, but then I stopped on the road and felt a sense of goodness swell up inside of me. Looking up at the sky as rain drops pounded my face I thought to myself: ‘the blessed water in a fairytale – the parting gift from Romashki.’ (Excerpt from page 153). Continue reading →

Who’s ‘the’ farmer?

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Yesterday (Tuesday) 42 first year students , Paul Hebinck and I visited two Dutch farms for the course ‘Agricultural and Rural Development: Sociological Perspectives’ (RSO 20806 ).

We firstly visited the multifunctional farm ‘Eemlandhoeve’ of Jan Huigen. In an inspiring talk, Jan explained about the development of the Eemlandhoeve and the future plans. The farm has different functions, such as care farming, recreation, herb production, beef production and education for schoolchildren. After a nice walk around the farm and the calming farm yard (see picture), we walked to the neighbouring farm. 

The neighbouring farm ‘Hoeve ‘t Witte Schaap’ follows another path of development: a large scale dairy farm, with about 300 dairy cows and four milking robots. For most students, it was the first time they visited such a large dairy farm. The shed is large and high, with a lot of light and fresh air. Gerrit (the farmer) talked engaged about his farm, including the technology and animals. Two workers take care of the cows and by feeding them and looking after their health. The cows are fed with grass and maize of the farm and hardly received any concentrates (only in the milking robot). The farmer applies all the manure on his land. In fact, his way of farming is not that far from organic regulations.

After both visits we gathered, where Drees of ‘Willem & Drees’ gave an inspiring talk about regional production and sale of fruit and vegetables in five regions the Netherlands.

During the discussion, the students raised interesting questions. Firstly, one of the students asked Jan Huigen ‘How much of your income comes from food production?’ This – of course – was a limited amount and several students seemed concluded that he was not ‘a real farmer’, but more an entrepreneur in the countryside. Thereafter, the large scale farmer was asked how often he was actually among his animals, which was limited, since he had two workers to take care of the animals. The students seemed to conclude that he was neither ‘a real farmer’, because he had limited animal contact. Instead, he was more a ‘manager’.

To conclude, it was an inspiring excursion, which showed two very different development paths of contemporary farming in the Netherlands and gave students a great opportunity to think about the question what a farmer is nowadays.

Citizens and Animal Welfare: Methods, Findings and Policy Implications

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Last Thursday (20th of May) I participated in an interesting workshop about citizens and animal welfare.  The workshop was organized at Aarhus University in Denmark and dealt with questions like: Whose opinion on animal welfare counts? How can one integrate the different perspectives of,  for example farmers, citizens, (animal) scientists and the government? We already know that citizens consider animals’ ‘naturalness’ a very important feature of ‘good animal welfare’. But what is naturalness exactly? Can you implement this in animal farming systems? Can you measure it? And what if the choice for naturalness is in conflict with other aspects, such as animal health? How do citizens make trade-offs between such dilemmas in animal farming? And how should one involve citizens in animal welfare research? Via surveys, farm visits, consensus conferences or are there other ways to be explored? To be short, although much research has already been done on animal welfare over the last decade, there are still many questions surrounding the animal welfare debate when it comes to citizens’ participation and involvement.

Raising new questions is of course a characteristic of research: finishing a research can give you the feeling that you answered some questions, but in the end it will always result in more questions. That’s what keeps us going. What in addition keeps me going, is the cooperation and discussion with other researchers in the world. Particularly after doing a PhD for six years on my own, it is really nice to exchange ideas and cooperate with other researchers in this field, like Jan Tind Sørensen of the Department of Animal Health and Bioscience and Peter Sandøe of the Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment . During my PhD I often had the feeling I was one of the very few researchers who is interested in public perceptions of animal farming. But recently, the importance of the public opinion of animal farming is more and more acknowledged, also in the field Animal Science, of which this workshop was a good example.