The Care Farming Sector in The Netherlands: A Reflection on Its Developments and Promising Innovations

Jan Hassink,Lana B Plug,Esther J Veen,Harold A B Van Der Meulen,Simone R De Bruin,Herman Agricola,Roald Pijpker

doi:10.3390/su12093811

Abstract

This paper describes the development of care farming in the Netherlands, one of the pioneering countries in this sector, where care farming has developed into a very diverse sector, with some farmers focussing primarily on agricultural production and others more specifically on providing care services. Care farms are increasingly open to a diversity of participants. The sector has become professionalised with the establishment of strong regional organisations and a steady growth increase in revenues, providing employment opportunities and boosting the economy of rural areas. In this paper, we highlight two promising innovations in care farming: education for school dropouts and the establishment of social farming activities in cities. These innovations face the challenge of connecting not only the agricultural and care sectors, but also the educational sector and the urban context. Initiators face a number of challenges, like trying to embed their activities in the educational sector, a mismatch in regulations and a lack of legitimacy in the case of education on care farms, as well as problems gaining access to land and a lack of recognition in the case of social farming in urban areas. However, the prospects are promising in both cases, because they match the changing demands in Dutch society and are able to integrate social, ecological and economic benefits.

Highlights

Since World War II, European agriculture has changed significantly
The work presented on social farming in an urban environment comes from three different projects, all descriptive qualitative studies that focused on an urban farming initiative involving people with mental health problems, urban farming initiatives involving people with dementia living at home and urban farming initiatives focusing on citizen participation while providing social services to a wide range of urban residents, for instance unemployed people
The data presented in this paper shows that the care farming sector in the Netherlands is a quickly developing and very diverse sector, offering innovative social services to a wide range of people

Summary

Introduction

Since World War II, European agriculture has changed significantly. To remain economically profitable, farmers have continuously increased the farms’ size, efficiency and external inputs (e.g., pesticides), while minimising the labour use per hectare. That has made agriculture valuable from an economic perspective, it has led to environmental problems, homogenisation of the landscape, outbreaks of animal diseases and poor animal welfare. This has had a negative effect on the reputation of the agricultural sector [1]. Growing concerns regarding nature conservation and the environment, as well as increasing demands from areas like housing and recreation, have put pressure on the sector [2]. Farmers started agricultural diversification in several European rural areas [3]. In addition to producing food, they have begun to organise other activities to meet societal demands, including therapeutic services and services aimed at stimulating social inclusion (“care farming” or “social farming”), recreation and landscape services [4,5]

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