A street away, Geert Martens lives with his family. They have not yet had a visit from Defense, but see 13 hectares of their country on the dreaded defense map on which the new training ground has been drawn. “When the card was released, I was really shocked,” he says.
For an outsider, 13 hectares look like a total of 85 hectares, but it is precisely the profit margin of the company. “We have a land -bound dairy farm. That has a major impact on us. That 13 hectare is just crucial for our income. You can’t miss that,” he explains. “Our daughter is about to take over the company. I don’t know how to proceed.” Daughter Maryse is certainly: “If they come to talk about our ground later, they will not get any coffee.”
Martens is going to the screen with disbelief. According to him, it is eight farmers who have to surrender land. Some a lot, some little. But also a farmer who is allowed to keep his company, but loses all farmers’ land. “The spatial claim that defense places here is huge,” says Martens. It concerns 300 hectares of which 261 hectares of agricultural.
The decision of State Secretary Gijs Tuinman (BBB) calls Martens inimitable. “I don’t get it. It seems as if Defense is being used for the construction of buffer zones for nature.”
Martens’ phone is red -hot. Family members want to know how things are going and the neighborhood-whatsApp of the Laaghalerveen area has also exploded. There is also Martens’ biggest fear. “As a community we have it checking.”
When the Ministry of Defense came to him thirty years ago for a land exchange for expansion of the hair, that caused mutual friction. Something he is now also afraid of now that the pressure from outside is being increased. “The last time all social structures were a little bit broken. Now everyone has found their way again and Defense is throwing a stone in the pond again.”
The word soil exchange has already fallen. “We will have to count our knots and continue together,” Martens realizes. “We also have to hold on to each other right now.”