Rethinking our global food systems | Magazine Articles

For Carl and Marieke van Jaarsveld, dairy farming includes searching to the long run. The couple—who took about Carl’s parents’ dairy procedure in Hekendorp in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 2006—have an 11-calendar year-old son who claims he needs to run the small business one working day. “We are functioning to produce a corporation that is sustainable so he can,” says Carl. This indicates making food in a way which is superior for people today, animals, and the atmosphere.

In the Netherlands, the dairy sector has an outsized impact on the atmosphere: It is the largest consumer of the country’s agricultural land, with about 20,000 farms and approximately 1.5 million cows developing milk and other products and solutions for sale close to the planet. As a result, biodiversity in this tiny but really productive European place is below serious tension.

Carl thinks that a new Biodiversity Monitor instrument for the dairy sector—developed jointly by WWF-Netherlands, monetary services provider Rabobank, and Friesland-Campina, a worldwide dairy organization based in the Netherlands—can aid strengthen creation tactics by furnishing economical incentives and rewards for dairy farmers who boost biodiversity on their farms. The device lets farmers to measure their impression on the land through particular targets—the volume of nitrogen in the soil, greenhouse gasoline emissions, and drinking water high-quality, for instance—and to keep track of their progress in reducing environmental pressures and supporting much healthier biodiversity.

By providing dairy farmers additional perception into their operations, the device enables them to establish chances to superior defend their normal resources, from fertile soil to cleanse groundwater—often in methods that reward their base strains.

Also by means of the Biodiversity Monitor tool, the van Jaarsvelds are concerned in a campaign by Friesland-Campina that pays better costs for milk from much more sustainable farms, encouraging greater practices even though rising farmers’ margins. Due to the fact improvements in the fascination of increased sustainability frequently charge revenue up entrance, Carl notes, farmers require to be compensated with greater charges for their solutions, decrease-interest financial loans from the bank, and superior enterprise designs that keep farming economically feasible.