Teenagers on the farm. Joost and Marleen van Heesbeen put the students to work. “Grab the wheelbarrow and shovel the roughage to the cows.” They awkwardly grab the shovel. “Ooooowwwwww, this looks like the Icebreaker [een soort pikhouweel] by Fortnite“, exclaims Gizelio (14) enthusiastically. This is the perception of the youth: grown up with games on their phones, teenagers who know “almost nothing” about where their food comes from. “They usually have no idea,” says dairy farmer Joost. Schoolchildren do drink milk, they tell the farmer, “but only from the supermarket.”
The Van Heesbeen couple run a dairy farm in Vlijmen with more than a hundred cows. They receive students about twenty times a year, such as today from the practical school De Rijzert in Den Bosch. When the boys and girls are not looking at their phones, they listen to Marleen explaining how cows are milked. By a robot. They stare at the machine that has begun to clean the udders of “cow number five.” Then the milking begins.
When the boys and girls are not looking at their phones, they listen to the explanation of how cows are milked. By a robot
Marleen: “This cow has been giving milk for two hundred days. Do you know how much per day?” No idea. “On average 35 liters per day.” Silence. Do they also drink this milk themselves? Yes, say the dairy farmers. The milk for supermarkets is extensively checked for quality and pasteurized, but they themselves drink the milk fresh, cooled, not boiled. “That is very healthy,” they say.
The visit to the practical school is a ‘lightning internship’ that is organized – in collaboration with farmers’ organization ZLTO – by JINC, a non-profit organization that is committed to equal opportunities on the labor market, says Noor Pieterson, project employee at JINC. “We organize visits from schools to companies to broaden the knowledge of students, let them discover something new and learn to dare to ask questions about it.” To this end, the students visit “preferably twice a year”, in addition to companies, banks and municipalities. And farmers. “To show them something they don’t know. Because how do you know what you want to become if you don’t know what there is to choose from?”
Students from the De Rijzert practical school in Den Bosch learn everything about farming.
Photos John van Hamond
Lightning internship
For farmers, these visits offer a welcome opportunity to bridge the gap between society and farmers. Because it is big, many farmers think. They often feel misunderstood and undervalued. It is time for a “rediscovery of the countryside”, Hugo de Jonge recently said at a symposium of farmers in the south of the country. After a ministerial position, the former CDA leader became the king’s commissioner in Zeeland, where he grew up, and says he has rediscovered how indispensable the farmer is for the well-being of the country.
People are gradually, in De Jonge’s belief, starting to feel more ‘love’ for locally produced food again. According to him, more people are also seeing farmers as “carriers of the landscape”. And he also mentions “farmers involved in the community”.
Many people have a farmer’s heart, but they have to discover that first
The cows of Joost and Marleen van Heesbeen lie in the stable on a waterbed. The students look up at the silos with feed. They complete a list with questions such as “What is the first milk a cow gives when a calf is born?”. (Answer: colostrum). They can climb on a tractor. And they sort the contents of buckets: straw, corn silage, hay, grass, beet pulp, chunks. Most are visiting a farm for the first time, and a few have been to a riding school. “We are an urban school,” explains teacher and mentor Chris van Ingen.
The students seem to find farm life interesting. They learned “how to make butter from whipped cream” and “the difference between hay and straw.” It is not surprising that they appreciate a visit to a farmer, policy officer Maaike Mikkers of ZLTO. “I have yet to meet the first child who does not like working with chicks or calves. And later perhaps with milking robots.”
Dairy farmer Joost van Heesbeen: “Many people have a farmer’s heart, but they have to discover that first.” So do the students at the Den Bosch practical school want to become farmers themselves after today? “I might want to do something with horses,” says a girl cautiously. After a long silence, another girl dares to say no. “I can’t stand this smell.” Yes, it stinks, others say. Lars (13) says that he would like to become a farmer. Why? “Because then I can drive a tractor.”
Dairy farmer Joost van Heesbeen watches two students scoop with a shovel.
Photo John van Hamond
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