By: Evert Jan van Hasselt
Some time ago, I spoke with a farmer in Westbroek. A dairy farmer who wants to farm sustainably. He cares for his animals and told me that he wants to let his cows grow old on his farm. So when their milk production decreases, he doesn’t send them off to slaughter. They are allowed to retire with him, so to speak.
However, this unexpectedly creates a problem. The price this farmer receives for his milk from the dairy cooperative is partly dependent on the number of animals that die on his farm. Because he doesn’t send his cows off to slaughter, more cows die on his farm. So by choosing the welfare of his animals, his milk yields less income. He accepts that, but he doesn’t really understand it.
The same farmer wanted to build an installation (sorry, I can’t remember what kind of installation) as part of the sustainability efforts on his farm. Everyone was enthusiastic! Including the municipality, whose new council strongly emphasizes sustainability. But here again, an unexpected problem arose: his plan doesn’t align with the zoning plan that the municipality had previously established.
In this example, the farmer doesn’t understand the environment in which he has to operate. The municipality doesn’t understand the effect of its policies. And the dairy cooperative doesn’t understand the effect of its purchasing policy. If you want to solve the issues around farmers and nitrogen from an ivory tower, you need to understand the whole playing field. If the individual actors don’t even understand their part of the story, how can they understand the whole in The Hague? And if you don’t understand what you’re doing, the likelihood of solving one problem only to get three or four more in return is high. A new scandal is in the making!
Many officials I speak with understand what I mean to some extent. But something really needs to happen, and you simply need central policy for that, right? That’s not true. There’s a lot that can be done decentrally, if only there’s a little room for it centrally (and I’m not talking about area tables, where participants are expected to come up with solutions along centrally devised lines). The complex issues (the so-called “wicked problems”) of today can actually be better solved decentrally. You just need a little process guidance to get that started.
In a small way, Madelon – our founder – showed that on Saba. For 20 years, they tried to find a solution for the decline of the red snapper population there. By guiding the fishermen in a Participatory Action Research process, those fishermen developed a solution in just 7 weeks. They developed an action plan with self-devised rules for sustainable red snapper fishing, including a six-month fishing moratorium on that red snapper. Subsequently, all relevant authorities didn’t believe that the fishermen would actually implement that plan. But they did, because it was their own plan!
Madelon about her project on Saba
Imagine if we did the same in the Netherlands with the nitrogen issues. Various parties are grappling with each other there. The farmer from Westbroek nicely illustrated that these parties often don’t fully understand their own role in this. What if we now guide all those parties – farmers, nature organizations, banks, dairy cooperatives, governments – in a defined region through a process, just like Madelon did with fishermen on Saba?
Farmers and nature organizations can inspire each other enormously. I expect that various parties can inspire banks to adjust their financing models. There’s a good chance that dairy organizations will discover how to adjust their procurement policies to strengthen sustainability plans.
In my opinion, such a process would lead to beautiful plans. Plans with a much more intended impact on nature. Plans with less negative impact on the farmers and their families involved. Plans that can count on support. Because when parties make their own plans, that support automatically follows. It probably takes more than 7 weeks. But it will definitely be faster than when the central plans are pushed forward, resulting in endless legal procedures.