Farmers who are forced to leave because their farm is located in the middle of the area where a military training ground is located. Other farmers who have to hand in so much land, so that a life as a farmer is no longer in it. Due to the expansion plans of Defense, this is the reality in neighborhoods Laaghalerveen and Laaghalen at Hooghalen. Just as it was already the case in the nineties.
“They removed the plans from then again,” says Hendrik Jan Talens, who himself left Laaghalen during that period as a farmer. He opted for a new agricultural life in the polder, under the smoke of Almere. “That was hard, you don’t want to leave. But we had to bite through that sour apple. My son wanted to continue the company and there were opportunities in the polder.”
In the 1980s, the Ministry of Defense came up with plans to install a new training ground. The Kniphorstbos at Annen must become a nature reserve, somewhere else in the province must be room for soldiers. The eye falls on Laaghalerveen, south of Assen. Here are twelve farms and homes that have to make way for a training ground.
Talens did not live in the area that became a training ground, but in the neighboring neighborhood of Laaghalen. He does have to deal with the Ministry of Defense and the plans for a training ground. On the one hand because he was part of the committee who fought against the arrival of a training ground, on the other because there were insufficient land for farmers at Laaghalveen and Laaghalen. Farmers had to disappear.
“A farmer left quite early who could move to a new place,” Talens looks back. “A number of others would move to the polder, but that was canceled. This process had been around for five years. A farmer had to go away. Then I asked my son how he looked at a farm in the polder.” He sees that. Talens leaves for Almere. “That move was a big step. But you make such a decision and then you go.”
What led to Talens is the ‘hot’ information evening of Defense in the village house. The entire village came there to be briefed about the plans for a training ground. “There was a man there and he ran his cup of coffee forward. When the meeting started, he threw that coffee in the face of that general.” Don’t let Defense jeopardize. You can make agreements with it, but it will be nothing, “he shouted. “That man did not come from the village, but all the way from Brabant to warn us. Defense does but what it wants was, was his message.”
In the end, the Ministry of Defense manages to undermine the unity of Hooghalen, Laaghalen and Laaghalerveen as a village that evening. “They came with plans for a sports hall in the village and their own entrance and exit of the A28. Immediately there were fingers in the air. People wanted to know where that sports hall came. The end of the story is that nothing came of it, but the training ground has come there.”
The training grounds that were ultimately constructed in 1997 is much smaller than in the original plan. Too small, Defense soon comes to the conclusion. Now follows the expansion to a size that was already being discussed in the eighties of the last century.
“You can’t escape it. Defense must expand in the current world. You can say that it is not necessary, but the whole of Europe is putting more money in defense. You are not getting a foothold at the moment. There is no fighting against it.”
Talens therefore advises the current farmers who are being hit to look carefully at what they want. “You have to hold on to it and go for it. Negotiations on a few hectares of land make no sense, you don’t get along with it. And if you continue to live there, you have to agree on that with defense.”