Yesterday 8 March 2012, the first ‘Day on urban agriculture’ took place in Almere. The program included contributions from urban agriculture entrepreneurs, policy, housing corporations, education, civil society, to name a few.  All in all, the contributors showed that urban agriculture in the Netherlands is moving to the next level and beyond the hype.

Special guest was Wayne Roberts from Toronto, Canada. In his talk, he stressed that we should use urban agriculture to deal with urban problems and thus using food as a lever. Basically he said that we should not ask what the city can do for urban agriculture but what urban agriculture can do for the city (freely citated after John F. Kennedy). In his talk, he praised the recently developed Almere Principles on sustainable urban development, in which urban agriculture takes a prominent role. He called it one of the most promising urban strategy documents he had ever come across (more on the Almere principles see this article).

Earlier, Jan Ferwerda, general director of Plus Retail, took the stage and promoted his supermarket, Plus, which apparently has the biggest organic assortment of any supermarket. Besides promoting his store, he also said that he thought urban agriculture was not just a hype but part of an important and lasting development that values local and sustainable food. In his view, fair (both local and distant)products should be prominently displayed on the shelves. Plus’ local fair trade brand is labelled Gijs (a very Dutch name) and seemed quite promising. Their vision on food supply for the future however could be summarised as convenient, enjoyable and healthy (in Dutch: gemak, genot en gezondheid).

In one of the breakout sessions entrepreneurs from Rotterdam and Amsterdam talked about their urban agriculture businesses which are going to take off this spring. One of the businesses, Uit je eigen stad from Rotterdam, has different components including vegetables, small fruit, chickens, aquaponics and also a restaurant, a shop and much more. They focus on bringing people together and showing them where good food comes from, inspired by initiatives such as SPIN farming, Sweet Water Organics and Growing Power. The three initiators have interesting backgrounds from real estate, organisational advice & change management and care farming. Another business from Amsterdam, De Groenten uit Amsterdam (or Grown Down Town) uses LED lights and ideas from vertical farming (creating 500m2 on just 100m2 floor space) to grow crops (using similar technology as we have seen in Plantlab but in this case also using crops that are growing in their own little plastic shells with nutrients and water already inside the bags). Both urban agriculture businesses are still looking for some funding to kick-off their plan. Uit je eigen stad has already received many requests of potentially interested shareholders and therefore sales seems to be one of their minor concerns especially in comparison with the enormous amount of regulatory barriers they had already taken conquered.            

Yesterday, the biggest Dutch national news broadcaster had an item on urban agriculture (and featured Uit je eigen stad), which was still announced as a ‘new’ phenomenon in the Netherlands. I suppose for the majority of the Dutch urban agriculture is still new and unknown and to have an item on the 6 and 8 o’clock evening news is therefore pretty ground breaking. You can watch the news item here.

Another interesting article was posted here. Jan Willem van der Schans (from LEI) created a map of the more ‘serious’ commercial urban agriculture activities in the Netherlands. He differentiates between ‘open (unused) space’ and ‘empty (derelict) building’ initiatives of which we have currently many due to the crisis.

After many years of preparatory hard work – we have much to look forward to this year with a new generation of  urban agriculture businesses in the Netherlands taking off.

Project team

Last week Foodlinks held its third face-to-face project meeting in Tirrenia on the west coast of Italy. This was quite an important meeting since the project is almost half over and we have struggled quite a bit with finding a clear focus for the activities in the communities of practice. The main aim of this meeting was to agree on activities and tasks that will interest people enough to engage actively in the online period.

Interestingly, online activities increased considerably a few weeks before the meeting as CoP facilitators and CoP members were discussing and preparing this meeting. Activities needed to allow for the knowledge brokerage process to take place as well as to have a clear content focus to make the exchanges meaningful in the first place. The groups chose different methodological approaches including group model building, peer review, speed storytelling, “the wheel”, ritual assent/dissent which they later in the week discussed for its usefulness before sharing their findings with the other CoPs. A speed networking session also allowed for some cross interaction on the final day of the meeting as this had been quite limited as the CoPs split up early in the week. During the next meeting in the Basque, CoPs will exchange more so that we can discover more commonalities and linkages between the different subjects.

speed networking

tool training

Although the CoPs followed their own process, they more or less came up with a similar output such as an evidence document to support decision making on short food supply chains or a ‘Tirrenia charter’ on public procurement. Working on a collaborative document can be quite challenging especially with people from different backgrounds, with different needs and ideas so this promises to be an interesting process. More information on what these documents are about and how you can contribute can soon be found on the Knowledge Hub which is also open for external people to join.

To simplify online collaboration, we organised two evenings for tool training. These were attended by those members who had a specific question on some of the online tools used (‘how do I add a document to the intranet’? or ‘how can I export my mindmap and insert it into the wiki’? and so on) or just wanted to experiment and learn to work on the new Knowledge Hub platform.

On Friday I shared some results of the monitoring data we had collected so far, especially the results of the social network analysis we undertook which allows us to see whether our knowledge brokerage activities are effective; whether we are able to create more interactions between different actor groups and if these new connections are used.

Olga and Leo from Purefood, both based at Pisa University, joined the short food supply chain CoP. Click here to watch a short reflection by Leo on his experience last week or watch some more photos.

In December 2011, Femke Hoekstra, PhD student and Foodlinks research assistant at Wageningen University was paired with Annemiek Canjels, senior advisor on EU public affairs with the Province of Limburg. Pairing is one of the knowledge brokerage tools identified in Foodlinks as being potentially helpful in linking researchers and policymakers. The basic idea of pairing is to link up and experience an ‘ordinary’ work day of your pairing partner in order to improve mutual understanding and collaboration.

Last week I visited Annemiek Canjels for a pairing experiment as part of our involvement in Foodlinks. I was particularly interested to learn more on the daily realities of a policy maker and to find out more about the importance of science in policy making. Before visiting Annemiek I had no clear idea on what her work as senior advisor on EU public affairs actually entails therefore I asked her to send me some documents in advance so I could “prepare” myself a bit for my visit. She shared with me a variety of websites which made me wonder even more about her job (see list below). 

Guest lecture by Annemiek Canjels at Maastricht University

I attended a lecture she was asked to give at Maastricht University on local food systems and went along with her to a meeting of her Rural Area department. This was the first time for her to give a University lecture and it was interesting for me to see how she ‘framed’ the issue of local food systems. The attending students (European studies) who had no specific lectures on food issues before were quite informed and ready for some action (“the time for labelling is over, we need radical change!”). Annemiek and I could both appreciate the sincerity of their remarks.

The meeting of her department was also interesting as they discussed the new Law on Nature and some internal developments related to the changing role of the Province. It made me realise that working for the Province means working within (and perhaps across?)boundaries (literally and those set by the EU and the State).

"Collectors item"; a bunch of name tags in Annemiek's car

Annemiek does not have many ‘ordinary’ days it seems and although I still not fully understand what her work is all about what I learned is that her work mainly focusses on lobby work around the CAP reform and the promotion of GreenPort Holland which tries to connect horticultural parties in the Netherlands to promote their work internationally and attract new business opportunities. Annemiek: “My work is about connecting my region to global challenges and opportunities and to influence EU policy and funds in a way that they support both the prosperity of her region and the EU 2020 objectives; on the short and on the long run. I have to move with care and loyalty between political and social priorities: the truth always has multiple layers”.

To summarise, it was a nice first impression of the world of policy making and I hope to go with her on another occasion to find out more on evidence based decision making. And of course in return she will be visiting us in Wageningen! 

Annemiek: “It was most refreshing to have a young researcher reflect on my activities. I enjoyed the first day of pairing very much and I am looking forward to observe Femke “on the job””.

Anyone else up for a pairing experiment?

List of websites relevant to Annemiek’s work:

- www.limburg.nl   &  http://www.limburg.nl/Beleid/Platteland_in_Uitvoering
- www.greenporthollandinternational.com & www.greenportholland.nl
- www.purple-eu.org
- http://www.toekomstglb.nl

Last Saturday, my boyfriend Ivo and I went to the Contact day for small organic farmers in the Netherlands and Belgium which was organised for the third year in row. This year’s organisation was in the hands of Applied Plant Research (PPO), DLV an agriculture extension service and Inagro, a Belgian organisation for research and consultancy in agriculture and horticulture.

My boyfriend, who just started a two year part-time training in organic farming, was sent by the gardener of his internship position to get three tips to deal with “knopkruid” (Galinsoga) which is a serious weed many organic farmers are faced with. I joined him as I thought this day could be an interesting show case of how research and practice could interact.

And it was interesting. There was a good balance of knowledge input from research as well as space for farmers sharing their knowledge with each other.

We first attended a presentation by Inagro on knopkruid, which apparently easily produces 10,000 seeds per plant which also have a 90% chance of germination (to sketch the seriousness of the problem). I thought this presentation was full of interesting findings and there was quite a bit of response from the attendees, who also shared their own experience in dealing with this weed with the group. Although we did not hear “the” solution to get rid of it, there were some good practical tips that people could take home and experiment with.

Another presentation, although interesting as it contained new developments on tillage and GPS controlled tractors that followed a precise path to reduce the impact on the soil, was clearly targeted at farmers on a different scale and aroused less interest.

After that we had a delicious lunch (endive salad with pear, beet mousse and home baked bread and apple pie) which was followed by a presentation of some small scale machinery and a tour on the premises of Stichting De Beukenhof; the location of the meeting. De Beukenhof which is a care farm with organic vegetables and livestock, runs a vegetable box scheme with 280 customers and also produces organic cheese and dairy products.

But before going on the tour, we attended the best part of the day: a show case of products/innovations by the farmers themselves. Before the meeting everyone had been invited to bring along something they were proud of and that they wanted to share with the rest of the group. It was great to see how passionate people talked about their own products and how much interest these “innovations” aroused in the group. These short lively presentations also offered excellent opportunities for people to chip in with their own experience on production and marketing.

For example, there was one farmer who brought along some “funny vegetables” that he had a hard time selling in the supermarket (as the produce looked unfamiliar) but were a great success in his box scheme. Like Brussels sprouts which were still on the stem to show people how this vegetable actually grows while at the same time it saved him a lot of time in harvesting. Like a special type of beet with a beautiful pattern inside as well as a special type of cabbage and some kind of chicory. Someone else brought some berries which we could all taste.

All in all it was quite a success for the both of us. Ivo had his tips to take back to his internship and I got some new ideas on how to “bridge the gap” between research and practice.