“Worthless to the market”. Farmers who grow beans see crops lost

Not all farmers have the means to continuously pump water along canals. Some farmers even see their crops completely lost. For example, the bean harvest of farmer Vanneste from Hooglede is already worthless because he cannot pump up: “If you bring water here for beans, it costs you too much per acre. You must still be allowed! We must go to the canal, go to navigable waterways and that costs too much money to bring here according to your merit to the beans.” (Read more below the photo)

“Worthless to the market”

The damage to the beans is now considerable. The plants will remain small, and the beans themselves will also be too small. And Johan cannot sell it to the frozen vegetable company. He has signed a contract that obliges him to deliver ‘beautiful beans’. “Even if the beans are half bad, it’s not good. They’re small beans, they’re dried up beans, they’re not pretty beans. It’s worthless to the market.”

Loss of 20,000 euros

The beans cost farmer Vanneste 2500 euros per hectare. And he has eight of them. The loss thus already amounts to 20,000 euros. He looks to the government and asks for support. “The government here could do a lot more. Build a lot more reservoirs! The government says: we are going to support farmers for reservoirs, but if applications are submitted, only 7 out of 100 will be approved.”