Crop tour Klaasian Boer
'Sometimes you get the lid on your nose'
The company of Klaasjan Boer and his son Pieter has been in Kortgene for exactly twenty years now. Klaasjan came there from Rhoon, where he had to leave because of nature compensation for the expansion of the Maasvlakte.
He started in Kortgene with 80 hectares and expanded over the years to 120 hectares. For the future, he sees more possibilities in cooperation with a cattle farmer, from whom he already buys manure and exchanges land.
In total, the arable farm VOF Boer en Zn. is 120 hectares in size. The crops that are grown are seed onions, consumption potatoes, sugar beets and grain. Every year, approximately 10 hectares of seed onions are grown with a crop rotation of 1 to 8. Partly on own land and partly on exchange land. The soil type is loam and light clay, largely 25% to 35% siltable.
Strategy aimed at long-term storage
Klaasjan grows onions and consciously chooses the Dormo and Hyfive varieties. He grows Dormo because of its quality, especially its hardness. He chooses Hyfive more because of its yield and because it is also a good storage onion. This year there is also a piece with a renewed Dormo, the Storo. His strategy is in any case aimed at storing longer. "You always want to get the best out of it and then you are sometimes inclined to wait too long", he says about that. "Sometimes you get the lid on your nose."
He grows everything freely, without contracts, and thinks that he gets the furthest with that. "You will also sometimes be wrong, but in recent years you quickly exceed the contract prices that are offered." A major disadvantage for him is that there is no possibility of irrigation on his plots. As a result, he sometimes misses yield, and in those cases a contract is not at all attractive to him. "If I don't get the kilos, such a contract has little value to me."
Worries about the future
When he looks ahead to the future of agriculture, he is worried. The disappearance of resources and the increasingly strict restrictions worry him. He thinks that mildew and phytophthora in particular will become major problems, as will the disappearance of weed killers. He also sees nematodes and insects as increasing threats. "It's still going a bit, but it's just getting worse. Manure is getting less, they want less artificial fertilizer... This is not going to end well," he says.
He also doesn't know exactly how this should be solved. "I think it just has to go wrong at some point. And it will happen at some point. But then we can only hope that it goes wrong at a European level and not just here, otherwise you will ultimately see very little effect from it."
Collaboration and freedom
What he likes most about being a farmer is the freedom: "Stirring around outside and being busy." He doesn't mind sitting in the office every now and then either, so he does most of the administration himself. Klaasjan finds it hardest to keep a good mood when something doesn't work out. "That's sometimes difficult. And as long as you're healthy, that's actually more important, but you still take it home with you." He sees the future mainly in more cooperation, such as with the livestock farmer. "You create a circular agriculture and everyone does what they're good at."
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