Pointed cabbage, red cabbage, kale, under a gray, wide sky. In the Lutkemeerpolder, between Amsterdam and Schiphol, the last vegetables of the year are harvested. When turnips and radishes come up in the spring, the air is probably halved and the people at Pluk horticultural company look at the massive walls of a distribution centre. Cables are laid along a new road. Buses drive back and forth. Ahead is already such a dark box.
Trijntje Hoogendam, in the store of care farm De Boterbloem, is not allowed to say anything, she says. That was the agreement when, after much resistance and interference from the ombudsman, the municipality promised that the farm does not have to give way to companies yet. Pluk allows De Boterbloem to use another three hectares, while the surrounding fields are now being prepared for construction.
Natasha Hulst is allowed to talk. She does this on behalf of Voedselpark Amsterdam, a citizens’ club that fights with the activists of Behoud Lutkemeer for the last piece of fertile agricultural land in Amsterdam. The last clay polder, everything else is peat meadows around Amsterdam. They are for farming. Before short food chains. Before a green landscape. Against the doze. Against land speculation. And so against the municipality, which changed the zoning plan from agricultural to business park.
The Amsterdam Food Park has now raised half a million euros through crowdfunding, hoping that the municipality will pay half. The Lutkemeerpolder can become a hub for food, is the plan, for Amsterdammers from all over the city, but also for other urban farmers. With market gardens, fields, shops, perhaps a small distribution center for food from the region. Community Supported Agriculture, they call it. Agriculture by and for the community. “But it shouldn’t be the umpteenth hipster project,” says Hulst. She talks about the principle of the commons, common lands, like the commons of old, which were run by the whole village. “There is nothing ideological about that, it is just a practical way of arranging things.”
Hulst refers to something else apparently old-fashioned: the green ‘skegs’ that were part of Cornelis van Eesteren’s General Expansion Plan for Amsterdam at the beginning of the last century. Those green coves in the city meant that all city dwellers could go outside into nature. In times of crisis, says Hulst, these wedges can provide the city with food. Very topical, if you think our food should be closer to CO2emissions from transportation.
The remarkable thing is: the city council (PvdA, GroenLinks, D66) wants all of that too. There is a ‘food strategy’, a ‘main green structure’, a ‘climate-neutral roadmap’, an ‘circular agenda’. Read the coalition agreement: more greenery, protection of the wedges, urban agriculture, a more climate-resistant landscape, conservation of biodiversity, bringing food closer to Amsterdammers.
But in the Lutkemeerpolder? Not now. Contracts have been signed, the money is being counted on and to stop now would cost the municipality almost 100 million in preparation costs, lost income and claims from investors – although opponents say there is no substantiation for this. Moreover, says Hulst, building will also cost a lot. “Because you already know that a new road has to be built to handle a thousand traffic movements here every day.”
And so this is all about what can be expressed in money, because damage to the landscape, biodiversity, soil and air quality are not on the budget. And fertile clay is worth nothing.
What are we talking about, you may say. A stamp of 43 hectares, sandwiched between roads and businesses. Always noise. And a club of privileged Amsterdammers who have made campaigning their hobby. Moreover, companies and distribution centers on the outskirts of the city are necessary to reduce emissions in the city, says a spokesman for the alderman. “And it is not the case that the entire polder is being built up.” 21 hectares remain free for nature and 10 hectares for farming. And two thousand fruit trees will be planted on the business park.
Read more about the Lutkemeerpolder:How the polder became a business park
On the other hand: if so many people, far beyond Amsterdam, are concerned about a piece of land, then it is not a not-in-my-backyard issue. Then the local bickering stands for something bigger.
It is significant that Land van Ons has also committed itself to the Food Park. Land van Ons, a citizens’ cooperative that buys up farmland throughout the Netherlands to restore biodiversity and the landscape. And who last year in Zeewolde made a throw to the ground where Facebook mother Meta had devised a data center. A club that knows what it’s all about in three words: don’t sell valuable agricultural land to a company or developer with deep pockets. Keep it for the community, make the ‘land ours’.
The Lutkemeerpolder faces greater dissatisfaction, says founder Franke Remerie. “Everyone sees that things have to change, but our administrators are stuck in the old way of thinking.” Always following the demand for more. Consume more, deliver more, pack more. The big problem: “It simply yields too much for municipalities to designate agricultural land as a business park.” The more land you sell for that higher square meter price, the better. Distribution centers are a blessing in that regard, they eat up square meters.
Good example
But what kind of message is that? “You ask citizens to behave more sustainably, without setting a good example yourself? It does not only bother a small elite, but large groups of citizens. That they have to lead the way themselves, but are powerless because they do not have the money to buy the land.” Not only in Amsterdam, also in Nuenen, Venlo – wherever boxes turn up. Or more broadly: wherever politics gives priority to short-term profit over a long-term vision of what you want to be and what you want with your food supply, as a municipality, as a country. The fact that it is the green parties that kill the discussion by hiding behind the costs only makes it more cynical.
Read also: How can the dosing remain manageable?
They haven’t given up yet in the Lutkemeerpolder. They hold on to what remains. You can still do a lot on the edges. Or, Remerie’s idea, maybe you could lift one of those boxes and grow mushrooms under it, or let pigs free range. Although it is always about money, Voedselpark and Land van Ons continue to talk to the shareholders of the development company, which is largely owned by the municipalities of Amsterdam and Haarlemmermeer and the province. Remerie: “You can wait for the government to solve it. But do we let it happen or do we put the shovel in the ground ourselves?”
Four NRC editors – Hanneke Chin-A-Fo, Bas Heijne, Folkert Jensma and Martine Kamsma take turns discussing what strikes them about their specialization here.