We need better food for healthier people. The basis is an agricultural and food system that does not further damage nature, but rather restores it. Based on these principles, create a new design for the Dutch countryside with all parties involved, so that farmers know where they stand and see where their opportunities lie. And you will see that it makes people happier and healthier.
Drees Peter van den Bosch has a mission. Healthier food that is sustainably produced. Because decades of striving for the lowest price for consumers has created a food system that causes enormous damage. Not only for nature and the environment, but also for us as people ourselves. The sooner we choose a healthier lifestyle with ditto food, the better our health and nature will be. Then we pay a little more every day for real quality and avoid having to correct the excesses of a derailed system every few years through large sums of taxpayer money. Bear in mind that healthcare costs - which now amount to more than all expenditure on food and drinks - are largely lifestyle related. As long as we continue to cherish that hopeless system, we cannot offer the farmer - our primary food producer - any real perspective.
25 billion
The Dutch government now wants to spend 25 billion euros on, among other things, buying out livestock farms that emit too much nitrogen too close to nature reserves. All tax money - approximately 1.300 euros per Dutch person - that at most prevents further deterioration of the living environment. It leads to heated debates and blocked highways. Logical, because there is no prospect of a better perspective for livestock farmers; they are forced to go even further in expanding and intensifying their business; to reduce costs and to continue paying interest and repayments. The further intensification in particular will cause new problems, which we will then have to 'buy off' with tax money. Wouldn't it be wiser to prevent this by staying closer to nature and producing and consuming healthier food locally? To ask the question is to answer it, Van den Bosch believes.
Italian women
While working at Unilever, he wondered where all those raw materials for the multinational's food brands came from. "Do you remember that Bertolli commercial, where older Italian women prepare pasta sauce in an authentic way? I literally looked into the kitchen and saw that production did not take place in a family business, but in one large factory with ingredients from all over the world. The story was beautiful, the quality was also fine, but different than imagined and I had more and more difficulty with that."
This was the reason for Van den Bosch to quit his job and, together with a partner, start a company that made locally produced food accessible to citizens in the city. That turned out to be a difficult task 14 years ago. "We didn't get much further than selling to dark green customers, people who already bought organic products. To really make an impact, we were perhaps too early. And it is very difficult to compete with the mainstream thinking in the food industry," he looks back.
A lot, cheap, unhealthy
The mainstream assumes that food should be available to consumers as cheaply as possible. "That's why we get soy from Brazil, we raise and slaughter pigs in the Netherlands and we sell the pig feet in China," he gives an example of what he sees as the globalization of the food system. With all the negative consequences that entails: climate change, declining biodiversity and a culture in which people choose a lot of cheap and often unhealthy food. “Low food prices and high returns for shareholders are the two poles that define our food system. It is time we choose different goals.” According to him, food has too much impact on our society to leave it solely to shareholders.
levy
The government must play an active role according to Van den Bosch. "Compulsory measures are a prerequisite, starting with taxing external costs. Just take CO2 emissions, one of the most important challenges we face as humanity. A tax on CO2 would mean a major shift in our food system," he predicts. He mentions the boom in avocado consumption in the Netherlands. Within a few years it has become one of the most popular fruits. "We get it from South America without worrying about the ecological disaster that expanding production there will cause in terms of water, biodiversity and CO2. Partly because CO2 emissions from transport are not taxed, supermarkets can offering avocados cheaply to the consumer. Only when things really get out of hand, such as with the avocado or soy in Brazil, will there be a countermovement and we can try to limit the damage a bit, let alone repair it."
Von Thünen
Van den Bosch opts for an approach that actually prevents damage. He bases this on a classic model developed in the nineteenth century by the agriculturalist Johann Heinrich von Thünen. He drew circles around the city and found that fresh perishable products, such as vegetables and milk, were produced in the first circle, close to the city's consumers. Further afield, it concerned longer shelf life (staple) products such as grain or (dried) meat. "In the absence of fossil energy for transport and cooling, the city is not growing further than the surrounding area can provide. Consumers mainly buy local food and the carbon footprint is relatively low." We cannot and do not want to return to the situation as Von Thünen described it. But according to Van den Bosch, a new division of the rural area is a prerequisite for building a sustainable agricultural and food system.
Drees Peter van den Bosch
Perspective
He outlines the following perspective: We will eat differently in the coming decades, because emissions of harmful substances must be reduced and because we want to live a healthier life. "That means, for example, more legumes and less meat in our diet." And we will produce our food differently, because we close the cycles and want to be less dependent on exports to and imports from outside the European Union. "For convenience, assume Western Europe, for example a radius of 1.000 kilometers around the Netherlands. For that area we produce what the market demands, so increasingly plant-based. And we agree that, for example, we will source 70% of our food from that region. involved," Van den Bosch mentions possible starting points. "If we agree on this, you can start putting the puzzle together."
That may be the case, but so far not all parties involved agree with such a vision of the future. "I know that. I do understand farmers who wonder what their perspective is. But that perspective is there if we separate the interests of various chain parties from the desirable perspective for people and the planet. We must create a path for everyone from the current situation. But we must be clear about the future perspective and the need for change."
Proof
The scientific evidence that a different course is necessary is mounting. Van den Bosch points to studies by Imke de Boer of Wageningen UR and, among others, EAT Lancet report, in which 37 leading nutrition scientists indicate how we can feed 10 billion people well and healthily by 2050. "On this basis, you can, by analogy with Von Thünen, define areas in the Netherlands. I am thinking of four types: only nature, nature-inclusive, regenerative agriculture aimed at short chains, large-scale regenerative agriculture that supplies food companies and retail and agro-food parks with highly productive agriculture. In the latter there may also be room for intensive livestock farming." Such an approach is also included in Johan Remkes' report. Van den Bosch predicts that when the Dutch countryside is redesigned in this way, it will become clear that there is sufficient perspective for different forms of agriculture. "There is then plenty of room for entrepreneurs - both farmers and chain parties - who want to solve social issues. They want to make healthy and sustainable food for people, instead of just profit."
Healthier and happier
It therefore comes down to farmers who are open to innovation - according to Van den Bosch, there are more and more of them - and leaders who dare to use their vision to convince shareholders of the need to look beyond quarterly and share price profits. And those consumers not only want to feed cheaply, but also want to educate them with knowledge. Knowledge about a balanced diet that contains less meat and more plant-based food, that is not flown in from the other side of the world and that has a low footprint. "You will see that it will make people healthier and happier, I am convinced. OK, the food will become a little more expensive, but if that happens gradually, it should not be a problem. Just look at countries like Denmark and Austria, where more local food at a higher price does not lead to poverty."
Does he have any advice for people who are considering becoming such a visionary leader? "Communicate a different story about food. Because now it is only about 'always the cheapest'. You don't do that when it comes to a car or a mobile phone. It is high time to advertise honestly for food that gives us when people reconnect with nature."
AGRICULTURE & FOOD IN 2040
according to Drees Peter van den Bosch
This sponsored article is part of the series 'Speakers of the Future', an initiative of the Food Transition Coalition. In this series of interviews, written by Jeen Akkerman, visionaries give their views on the future of food production in the Netherlands. The editors of Boerenbusiness is not responsible for the content of these publications.