Landscapes Podcast [14] Kapitaloceen
Building new land relations from within the core: A Dutch land access model
Episode Description
The Netherlands is a world leader in the industrial model of agriculture with speculation-driven land prices to match. Dido van Oosten of Stitchting Kapitaloceen presents a strategy for unravelling entrenched land relations from within a place where property is sacred.
Episode Links
Nicholas Blomley: Performing Property: Making the World
De Warmonderhof training program
Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: “Kilkerrin” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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Introduction
Hello everyone, This is Adam Calo and you are listening to Landscapes.
In case you haven’t already figured it out, this podcast is really a parallel project to my job, which is teaching environmental governance and politics at a university. Recently, I’ve been giving some talks about one of the central themes of this podcast, which is to say that promising visions for sustainability are very welcome, but if we don’t generate significantly new land relations to match these designs, then ideas for a green future might forever live, in the sketchbook instead of as policy.
And after these talks, there inevitably a response that goes something like this:
“If you are so interested in building new ways of relating to land, you should go study peoples and cultures that don’t operate under the strong ownership model of private property. They have already figured it out”
This comment is mostly correct. The whole power of property is that if you grow up dancing to its tune, it seems unfathomable that we can organize our society any other way. Taking a glance into institutions and cultures that manage land from a vastly different set of organizing principles is indeed an experience that proves there is nothing natural about private property.
But what’s the next step? I don’t think we are talking about a project of mere translation, where say, the cultural commons management practices of a small scale fishery “out there” can be overlaid atop the layered legal and social practices of the ownership model that dominates the West.
As Nicholas Blomley remarks, a group of neighbors can today, knock down their fences and manage the newly linked grounds as a common landscape with a unique and original set of rules of use and access. But the state-back power of private property is always there to take all that away in an instant.
So, instead of a project of translating known alternative ways to govern land, I think this is a project of unwinding or unraveling … peeling back the many layers that entrench property. And for this, I think we need to draw on examples emerging out of the core, rather than the periphery. I’m interested in people and institutions that are trying to unravel the power of property in places where property, not land, is sacred. I’m interested in seeing what techniques are clever enough to build a new way of relating to land surrounded by cultural and legal signals that this. Is. In fact. impossible.
Todays episode is an interview with Dido van Oosten, co-founder of Stichting Kapitaloceen, a project in the Netherlands that attempts to acquire land for agroecological production surrounded literally by industrial production. Of course Kapitaloceen is inspired by the distant examples of durable commons management. But the types of legal innovations they use, the way they frame their project, the allies they forge, the forces they are grappling with that threaten the projects long term success. These are the lessons I think should be highlighted in order to build the type of land politics to run parallel to the emerging green agenda.
Here is Dido van Oosten of Kapitaloceen.
Interview
*The transcript has been edited for clarity and comprehension
[00:03:18] Dido van Oosten: My name is Dido and I'm a co-founder of Stichting Kapitaloceen and mainly a farmer in the Netherlands.
[00:03:26] Adam Calo: What is farming like in the Netherlands?
[00:03:28] Dido van Oosten: That's a good question. The first thing I think about is like already, I think like the main topic that we're going to talk about today is access to land. That it's very difficult. There's, uh, maybe the highest land prices in the world are here. So I think on average you pay like 75.000 euros an hectare. And the translates into like, uh, yeah, that this country is mainly a monoculture based. There's loads of green fields for cows. Um, which, yeah, you could say it's a green desert.
And over the, over the past years, I would say like the, the past maybe 70 years. The amount of farmers really decreased immensely and the land, the amount of land per farmer increased a lot.
[00:04:15] Adam Calo: So you're painting this picture of a green desert, highly productive, few farmers, really expensive. But all these things are related. How did it get this way?
[00:04:25] Dido van Oosten: They got this way, well, it started, I think just after the second world war. There was this minister in the Netherlands called Mansholt. There was a lot of hunger, of course, in, in the war. So they wanted to have a very productive way of farming. So people weren't hungry anymore.
I would say the driving factors behind the agricultural situation in the Netherlands at the moment, was mainly indeed high productivity. Every farmer had to grow to survive. If you were a small farmer, you just couldn't survive. So they disappeared anyway. Which meant that farmers were getting bigger and bigger. And also that agricultural land is like an, is still part of the market. It's not regulated. So it's also a very good investment. So there's also a lot of speculation there. For example, the last 10 years already, the land price has doubled.
[00:05:18] Adam Calo: And so, are these farmers then super profitable if the land is valued so high? Or is it really being valued because of the speculative interest?
[00:05:27] Dido van Oosten: Uh, yeah, that's it. I think it doesn't have so much to do anymore with the value of, for example, vegetables or milk or that you can get from the land. It's rather separated from that. It’s just too expensive. And, the thing is that, the bank, the Rabobank in the Netherlands, it's like the farmer's bank has a huge influence, to create this access to land. So if you need money to buy land, for example, you go to this bank and they really want the growth based, like economical growth based business plan, I would say. Which means like, the use of artificial fertilizer a lot and pesticides. So if you want to go into organic farming and you need money, then the bank will not give it to you. That's like one side. And the other side is like the supermarkets that ask really low prices.
So, farmers are a bit stuck in between. I would say like on the one side, the high. Land prices and the bank that only gives money if you use the land extremely productive. Well, productive in a very narrow meaning of that. And on the other end, the supermarkets. So, it's very difficult in this country to farm in a different way. But there are some helpful projects coming up also.
[00:06:57] Adam Calo: Yeah, that leads to kind of your story. You described this farming landscape, but you don't necessarily live in that world. What was your personal path into farming?
[00:07:08] Dido van Oosten: My personal path, well, it is quite a story. Well, a story. I was born in the city and my parents didn't farm at all. There were no family members doing it. And I first studied climate science and geology and I mainly liked the fieldwork. So I felt I was already like, hmm, I think I want to work outside. That's a thing. And not only behind the computer. Then I went to nautical college. I went to do sailing. Which was like, very nice and outside.
And I once made this very long trip to the Caribbean with a good friend. We'd all know sailing cargo ship with, with many people, but like with one good friend, which was actually a farmer. And on every island we came, he was like, ‘Let’s have a look!Let's have a look at this garden and at this garden.’ So I think he sort of inspired me. And I was looking for like, what do I want to do? Which is outside, but also political. So that's like in short, sort of my personal, like, then I decided I want to go to farming school and see what happens.
[00:08:28] Adam Calo: But you didn’t go to a farming school that was, you know, industrial livestock production.
[00:09:33] Dido van Oosten: Yeah. There's this one, one farming school, it's called the Warmonderhof. It’s like a biodynamic farming school. It's quite small and like a very nice people doing the school. And still, that was really nice. And there, and there we got to know a bit like the community around alternative farming, I would say.
And, and there we also, like, I asked my friend David, who was also my neighbor by then, to join me just sort of as a joke. But he did it. He really liked it; he liked the idea. So, we went there together with both different backgrounds. But already together we were joining climate activists or in general, just protests a lot. And thinking about how to change the world, I would say. Or how to get out of this capitalist reality. And in the farming school, it was all about the practice of farming, but how to get access to land, for example, or more political questions weren't really a thing. But we did see a lot of young people that wanted to go into farming and like loads of enthusiasm. But in reality, we only saw monoculture when we drove to the landscape. Well, we started thinking: ‘What to do about it?’
[00:09:56] Adam Calo: Yes, you described this powerful image of young people wanting to change, being taught kind of technical practices. And that's the main criticism of the food movement is a practice only, a technology only. But so, you were always at the beginning weaving climate politics with agriculture. Can you explain that to me?
[00:10:18] Dido van Oosten: Well the way most of the farmers or industrial farmers at the moment is well, disastrous, I would say, for the, for the climate and the biodiversity crisis. It's really part of it. It's very, well, for example, the artificial fertilizer and the pesticides are, are like huge destroyers. And the fossil fuel based way of farming.
It's really an industry rather than working together with nature or with the landscape. And well, and then this alternative group of farmers, which is, it's really hopeful in a way. Because I think if, if I have it right, like 15 years ago, there were only maybe five. Now I'm talking about CSA farmers.
So like not, per se, biological farmers who still could have monocultures, but do it in a different way, which already is a big difference. But like the group of CSA farmers like community supported agriculture, it's very small scale, direct chain. So they sell directly to the community around them. I think the past 15 years, if I have it right, they grow with, they started with five or so, and now it's already 300.
So it's like a huge, well, it's not a big group yet. But it's growing very fast. And one of the reasons for them, or for us, I could say, most of them farm on like a piece of land of maybe half a hectare or one hectare or maybe two hectares. Which is relatively very small, but it's also easier to get access to because it's not so expensive.
But yeah, if you don't think of, of industrial farmers, that own or rent on average 40 hectares. But there are many farmers that have like around a hundred or maybe even thousand. And then this, this little group of 300 farmers with their one-hectare plots. Like in the landscape, it's not very visible, I would say.
[00:12:32] Adam Calo: Yes, so you highlight this disconnect between a growing movement of people on one hand, but they still can't get enough land to make a meaningful difference.
[00:12:40] Dido van Oosten: Indeed. Like in the landscape as a whole. It’s just tiny dots. So yes I would say, yes, the amount of, CSA farmers should grow. But especially the amount of land that they have, or that they have access to should be way bigger, way bigger than this one hectare And this is also for us, it was an inspiration to start with Kapitaloceen. Sort of this like urgency of, come on, we should grow in amount! But it's, I think, not so difficult because there are so many people that want to go into farming. But mainly we should take more space. Like it's fun right? It’s also like, in feminism, it's a thing like; ‘Women should take more space!’ Or queers, but it's always, and with this, it's the same, like sort of fight ourselves into the status quo.
[00:13:40] Adam Calo: I wanted to ask you one more question about the farmer's school. On the one hand, just focusing on biodynamic practices, for example, doesn't bring that politics and therefore doesn't address the kind of root causes of the problem, but in the same time, maybe it brought the inspiration for you to join agriculture in the first place. What do you make of these types of training programs or these kinds of technocratic solutions for new farmers that don't get to the land?
[00:14:08] Dido van Oosten: Yeah, I think it would be very nice and important like it's to, yeah, that farmer schools also give some time and space to these questions. Because when you when you finish school and you want to start farming. How do you get access or what are the possibilities? Or actually, I think it would be very nice if in these schools also like students start to organize themselves to maybe fight these problems. But yeah, because I also think with biodynamic farming, for example, like access to land is really the core thing. Like if farmers have access to cheap and like maybe quite a lot, so not to half a hectare, but maybe 10 hectares of land without the like insane financial pressure that's on it now. Then like these practices, the biodynamic practice, but mainly like maybe food forests or like, I think then if the space is there without this money thing. But I think access to land is one of the most important things.
[00:15:16] Adam Calo: And so you came to this conclusion that access to land was the core of this issue. what is the underlying driver? Of the unequitable land access, in your opinion?
[00:15:27] Dido van Oosten: To survive as an industrial farmer, you have to grow all the time. Which means that there's a big, like, a lot of farmers want to have more land, which goes together with the fact that many farmers have to quit, because they cannot survive anymore. Yes, and so if a farmer is quitting, then the neighbors will buy the land probably, and it will not be on the market even. So that's one thing like with the access to land problem. But mainly like that land is, it's in the market. So, it's a very good investment. And especially when it's close to a city and the zoning plans might change from agricultural land to urban. Like some people buy the land to sort of speculate. Yeah, I think those things are quite underlying drivers.
[00:16:24] Adam Calo: Yeah, as an outsider, I've noticed the pressure on housing, it really distorts these land markets. I can imagine any open land, with this hunger for housing.
[00:16:34] Dido van Oosten: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So people know that probably cities are going to grow and agricultural land is getting used for that. So if you buy some land close to a city, it's a great investment. That’s true. Yeah. And indeed, it's sort of a, it's quite a tiny country we have. So a lot of agricultural land is close to villages or cities.
[00:16:55] Adam Calo: So you highlighted the key underlying driver of the problem; the need for growth and how that matched to the financial support to access land. And the other is that land is just a marketable commodity. How did you address these problems in your foundation?
[00:17:10] Dido van Oosten: Yes, so mainly. The big thing to start with, like when you you need land and you want to buy it or you want to have some, well, I will talk about it later, maybe. Um, yeah, you need money, right? So we, we started, we thought, Oh, maybe we can play, uh, for bank because all these young idealist farmers, will not get access to money, because of the existing banks. So we started the foundation, the foundation Kapitaloceen with this foundation we want to organize money. Collected donations. But yeah, in practice, if you, if you need like 400 or 500.000 euros only in donations, it's really not easy.
So we thought, let's do loans, and then interest free loans. So, we asked for example, for the first piece of land. There's 40 people that supported the, the foundation. So 40 people that, lend us like a certain amount of money. And then with that money we can buy land. So that's, yeah, that's like the first, the, the basic thing.
And, the thing is like, the people will not just give us money, of course, to buy land for whatever thing. So we, we, we made some, uh, like a nice story and also what do you want to, what do we really want to do. So yeah, access to land is, is very difficult for idealist farmers, but also for non-humans for non-human life, especially with all the pesticides and also pressure on land and nature.
Well, there's just not so much land where they can live. So we, we thought that we make some rules. That 50 percent of the land is not for, for human use. So it's just a nice place for non-human life to, to hang out, to make babies, to play around. And 10 percent of the land is for humans, which is, which could mean an ecological garden, like a CSA garden.
where a farmer also could, could get, um, an income from. And then the rest of the space, like 40%, is a shared space between humans and non-humans. And this is quiet, it's feel like maybe it sounds quite rigid, like sort of, oh, all the rules, but. Yeah, just to make sure that it's actually an attempt or an, or an experiment to live together as a human, as humans with non-human life, or to also make space for others.
So that, that sort of, and, and, and no use of pesticides and artificial fertilizer, ofcourse. And this also comes back like what I just talked about with the scale that CSA farms, most of them have like half a hectare or one hectare. And we should become bigger. Like in this vision, the 10 percent is like a CSA farm, which could be one hectare or a half hectare.
And the rest, for example, the 40 percent of food forest and, and space for other life. So instead of half a hectare, we have almost five hectares with the first piece of land that we bought. Yeah, which already is not like as an average farmer, but it's, it's, it's already 10 times bigger. And so that's also an important thing that we want to do.
And the land that we buy. So this was the first piece of land where we are farmers ourselves. But we hope to buy another piece of land this year and maybe another next year. Um, we, yeah, buy it out of the market. That's the, the idea. So, it's never going to be sold again. Which also means, so if you plant trees or like slowly an ecosystem will, yeah, will be there and become more complex over the time. That everybody can stay, although a farmer is retiring. Or wants to stop. So we really tried it that it's not going to be sold ever. That will be great. And that
[00:21:12] Adam Calo: gets at the issue of growth, right? If there's no expected future sale of the land that allows for changing idea of what the land could be used for.
[00:21:21] Dido van Oosten: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like it's a, I can imagine as a farmer, there are different motivations coming with that, that it's never going to be sold. And also I think what is important to say is that because the interest, because the loans that Stichting Capital Hussein gets, are interest free. So if people lend us their capital, it will not accumulate. That also means that the farmers don't have to pay any rent for the land. Like they don't pay anything for it. Like the birds or like other animals that live there. Like it's yeah. Cause they live together.
[00:22:01] Adam Calo: you said about the land, the cost of land is prohibited for many farmers, but why can't they just, yeah, beginning farmers, small farmers. Shouldn't they be able to rent land to get started?
[00:22:13] Dido van Oosten: Yes, that's actually what many farmers do. There is a, there is a market for that. But the thing with that is for example, in France and Belgium, you have like quite long term contracts. So you know, as a farmer that you can farm there for, for example, at least 16 years, or maybe even your whole life.
Uh, but here in the Netherlands, it used to be like that. But they changed it like in the housing markets and like in all kinds of areas. They changed it into like, they really are stimulating short term contracts. So these contracts are maybe for one year or sometimes for two years, if you're lucky, five years.
But like for farmers, especially for agriculture or like agroecology farmers. Like soil life is extremely important. The way we farm is like building up a nice, like a very living soil and it takes time. And if, if the soil is very alive, then like it, it's every time goes better. So if you only, if you don't know how long you can stay, then yeah, it's, it's, it feels weird to farm in this way. And especially when you talk about planting trees or like have sort of agroforestry system. Yeah. It's very demotivating. So that's also, I hope they like also talking about policy, they should change that very soon because renting is quite an okay. I know a lot of CSA farmers that rent, maybe most of them even. So that’s a very important thing that should change.
[00:24:14] Adam Calo: So you do all this legal complexity how does it work? There's one site now, there's some plan. What happens there? What's going on? What does it look like?
[00:24:23] Dido van Oosten: Yeah. So this it's a plot of four and a halve hectares. Um, it's like one hour drive from, from Amsterdam to the east. Uh, and, um, we are now with four farmers, and we all work three days a week. And that's also, we really don't want to change that. I think we are also, uh, I'll think that maybe everyone should just work three days a week and not more than that.
We work three days a week and we, so a little part of the land is the, is the vegetable garden. It's in the middle. It's very long and small piece of land. And there used to be, there are already quite a lot of cherry trees, a few thousand even, and plum trees. And they are like with a lot of plastic and steel and there may be one meter from each other.
So, it's like the starting point that we had was like an industrial farm. So we have been cleaning over the past two, two years a lot. To make space to plants like an agroforestry system. And also to make like, um, yeah, sort of a, a capitalist ruin that we started with. And it would be nice to make it into a nice place for other life as well.
But we started as a self-harvesting garden. And so we hope that people from the neighborhood would come and harvest themselves. It's a very nice model. It saves up some work and people feel very connected to the land because they come there a lot. But we were like, our situation is that there's another garden like that, just like two kilometers away or something. And she was still looking for people. So, we had to change our model. So now we bring, like we make vegetable bags every week, like with all kinds of vegetables and fruit and herbs. And it's both for people in the neighborhood, but we also drive back to Amsterdam where we all live, uh, when we work on the land, we sleep there, but in the weekend, the four other days, we are in Amsterdam.
And here it is very easy, like we asked around and many people were interested, and we're going to buy an electric fan to transport that. And what is also very nice and what's also part of the, like the alternative farming community in the Netherlands, at least, and it's also the inspiration is coming from Germany, I think. It's like we work with social payment. So, when someone is not earning a lot, the vegetables are very cheap when someone is earning a lot. It's very expensive and everything in between. So, we it's also not the question, what do you think this cucumber, costs or what do you want? What do you want to pay for this? But we connect our labor to the labor of the, of the, the people that eat our vegetables. So, it calculates. Does he, yeah, uh, we work around one hour per week per person for their food, so they can decide what we earn per hour or what they pay per week with their own wage, like, yeah. As an indicator, and that's also really nice.
So, the food is, is also X like accessible, not only for rich people, uh, which now like organic food is only accessible. It's, it's just very expensive in the store. So, it also means when you are at minimum wage or don't have a job, you can eat like extremely organic and nice food. We really enjoy this. And we also have a little store at the street and there we do the same.
Like per product you can choose between four prices. Like under minimum, like average and above average or something. And it's really nice. People all, everyone understands this quite well. And people start to think about, yeah, it's just also a different way of thinking. And quite logical, I would say.
[MUSIC BREAK]
[00:29:32] Adam Calo: And so one of the terms you used to describe this model was collective non-ownership. What does this mean and why is that important to frame what Kapitaloeen is doing against ownership?
[00:29:43] Dido van Oosten: Yeah, what's wrong with owning the land? If, if, uh, if land is privately owned and the farmer does all kinds of nice things on the land, but sells it again after 40 years, and then maybe to an agricultural, an industrial farmer. Then yeah, then like the ecosystem gets lost, but in general, like that land is owned by private people. It seems that it has a very destructive influence on what happens on the land. We are a big fan of collective ownership and especially collective non ownership. So if the land is from no one or everyone, but mainly no one. It also means like, if, if the land is really from someone and someone has to write to extract things from the land to extract, uh, nutrients. To kill everyone that's living on it and when it's not owned by anyone, like everyone has the responsibility of take care of it. But to create a legal structure in this country, you know, this country where private property is quite sacred, I would say. It's not so easy, like there's not a law or a, or a legal structure we could just use to make, to make it of no one.
We tried to make this structure based on the Miethuizer Syndicate. It is like a German housing organization to try, to sort of try to make it this way. And I think other organizations do it differently.
[00:31:21] Adam Calo: And the reason why you need to do this legal structure, because without it, if you just say we all in this, we all take care of this. The legal preference for individual ownership is always a threat to that common ownership. If you just figure out the informal rules of how to relate to each other, and non-human nature, and take care of a piece of land, without also creating some legal tools, then these commons you've created. Could be defeated by the laws or individual ownership.
[00:31:52] Dido van Oosten: We really want to create this legal structure to, well, that it's safe, that it's safe from a future person that in a private ownership situation, we'll treat the land differently, or we'll maybe sell it to make money or whatever interest. So, we make this legal structure so that. Yeah, it's, it's safe, but as safe as possible, like it's an attempt to, to keep it for the future.
[00:32:21] Adam Calo: And how does this housing syndicate work and how do you apply it to the Netherlands and to farmland?
[00:32:28] Dido van Oosten: Yeah, so this Mietshäuser Syndikat, organization, like that's an umbrella organization. They, it's German and they mainly buy houses. That's their project and every project ,sort of a company, every housing project is independent and they are organized in a certain legal structure.
And like the resident association is responsible for all the day to day management things. and the Mietshäuser Syndikat only has something to say about, like, the selling of the houses. They've kind of a veto on, on changes. Like in the articles of association, like this, they sort of like when the local association or like the people, the resident’s association, if they want to sell the house, Mietshäuser Syndikat will say: ‘No, no, no, that's not possible.’
So that's sort of a way to keep it that the houses never can be sold again. And it's turned into social housing, sort of collective ownership. And all the people that live there are autonomous, but this umbrella organization is there to make sure it's never sold, and it goes in the right way. And that was quite inspiring. There's also this Dutch Housing foundation that's, that started to work like this, which is, it's called ‘Vrijcoop’. So, they also select by houses out of the market and make it accessible for, low-income renters. But these renters have, also feel very responsible for that. We thought it was quite inspiring.
So, what we do is that Stichting Kapitaloceen is saying is the umbrella organization of the land that there's now, and also the future land that we're going to buy. And yeah, Stichting Kapitaloceen has all the, like also the legal structure to, for example, on the status and the bank account, the goal is that they organize money. And with every land that is bought, an association is started. And this association will be the owner of the land. And this association has two members: Stichting Kapital and the farmer company. So, for example two or three farmers start to farm on this land. They will have a little company or association to sell their vegetables. So, they're both members of the, of this association that owns the land. And then again, Stichting Kapitaloceen is 51 percent of the membership. And the farmer's company 49, but it actually just means that, um, the farmers are very autonomous. They do what they do, what they want to do. There's only this, this, this rules that you 10 percent of the land is for humans and 40 percent for like a shared space and 50 percent for non-humans. So, like in daily life for the farmers, like they're very autonomous and decide themselves what they do. But if it's got like questions, like about selling the land or changing things in the legal structure, for example, Kapitaloceen always has to vote. And they have a bit more power. I would say like when it comes to selling and in the, in the articles of association, if that's the word, of Kapitaloceen, it said that the land is never going to be sold. So yeah, in that way we try to sort of, that it's safe for the future. And it is, it's owned by this, by this association. But who is this association? It's the farmers, but they cannot sell it. It's Kapitaloceen, but they cannot sell it. So that's how we try to make a legal structure that achieves collective non ownership as good as possible. And, and also, and also like, we really try. So, it also changes the reality, like it's, the question is not who is the owner of this land? It rather is who has access to what and under what conditions? That now is the most, like the more important question. Yeah, it's, it's this association, but that's not really someone, like it's, it's not so, it's just not important anymore. Uh, the farmers have access to the land. To the land, but, but under the conditions that Kapitaloceen stated, so the, but there's also a lot of access for non-human life.
[00:36:42] Adam Calo: Yes so, if the association can't be approached as would an individual farmer from some kind of realtor with a deal to sell it out.
[00:36:48] Dido van Oosten: Exactly. Like, even if, if, if like a municipality has a great deal, uh, the farmer, the farmers will not be like, they cannot sell it, uh, not on their own, at least. And Kapitaloceen is saying, we'll say, yeah, we will never sell it. That's the thing. Yeah. So, there's no yeah. Financial, like any financial benefits.
[00:37:09] Adam Calo: I’ve heard you describe these types of legal tools that set up capital. No sane as a trick. Why is this a trick? I mean, who's being fooled and why do we need such craftiness to get to the land access needed for agroecological production?
[00:37:23] Dido van Oosten: Yeah. It's also in a way. It's, it feels a bit like a trick, like it's a sort of, yeah, anti-property project. Or like at least private property, but we still are in the system that we live in, where property is holy or sacred and where land is very expensive. And we actually use quite some, yeah, I would say tricks. For example, that we use that this association, well, this legal structure that we built, in the world. Yeah, it's still like, there's still ownership, in the eyes of others of a municipality, for example. And this. We use this ownership or this property thing like to, it's, it's the safest way to keep land for a long time. There's no, you don't, you do not rent it from someone or, or from a municipality that can change in 50 years or in five years. So that's, that's maybe one of the tricks to actually use property in a different way. Yeah. And we also use this trick, like just like lend money from people, put it into an anti capitalist project. Yeah. That's also what big companies do all the time, right? Having their shareholders. Although our shareholders are not really shareholders because they don't have anything to say.
[00:38:47] Adam Calo: Is there some kind of policy change that would make this model more scalable or not such a hassle?
[00:38:54] Dido van Oosten: Well, this model, when you talk about, like having a little CSA farm and the food forest around. I think if there would be any policy change that would make land more accessible and more cheap. Then this would be like very scalable. But then that's only the, the, the land use, I would say, because I really believe if someone, That now every CSA farmer now, but on their half hectare or one hectare, if you give them 10 times more land, a lot of them will probably just plant trees and shrubs and like a food for system.
So, if this part of the model, would just, would be very scalable with better access to land. And well, then now we made this, legal structure to create sort of a collective non ownership. It would be very nice if there's like a simple way of doing that. That there will be policy and also like recognized by politicians, but also the idea of not owning something. Like that, owning a house or owning land is not better than just having access to it. This whole idea will be like now it's like people find it really weird that we don't want to own the land ourselves just in general. Like a very, a tiny niche really understands it. So if there would be a policy change that made it make it more easy, but also, yeah, that people are going to talk about it in a different way.
[00:41:01] Adam Calo: One of the criticisms here that you might find is that because the business of farming is so poor, a lot of farmers are counting on that future land sale in order to feel secure, in order to retire. Even if you own land and your business isn't doing great, you can still apply for lines of credit. It gives you status in society and many other things of the benefits of that property relation. How do farmers in this system of non-ownership secure their future if they can't sell that land one day?
[00:41:35] Dido van Oosten: It’s a very good question. It's also, there are now a few organizations doing it. And, and I think it's a big experiment and no one is, is there yet that, that the farmer wants to retire, for example. But I, yeah, we couldn't, we can definitely on the think of systems like the, like a first important thing would be that farmers just get like nicely paid for their products. Yeah. So, then they can make a pension themselves, for example, or that's, or we could also think of, we now work on this land. We put a lot of effort and we plant trees that if we retire, for example, that, I think, I think there's an organization doing that, that the next farmers that work on the land will also, pay a little bit to the previous farmer so that they can live. Yeah. But yeah, it's a good question. Like now, now farmers are, are indeed like cash poor and, but they have like this land that they can sell. So, they're, most of them are millionaires. Which is crazy. Yeah, we, we have to think you have to think of this.
[00:43:08] Adam Calo: Yeah. And maybe recognize that the current model of millionaires who are waiting for that day, but day to day are really stressed. Buying inputs is also not ideal.
[00:43:21] Dido van Oosten: No, definitely not. No. And if there's less financial pressure in the moment. You can just relax. And if your rent of the house is like, it's also a system change, you know, like I think it's now it's all also in the housing market, like people, everyone is screaming, like, I should buy a house because that's the only way to like have a nice, like, have a nice retirement, or at least it's safe, or just give some security.
Um, but yeah, yeah, it, it's more and more the, the truth in a way because this neoliberal politics, is really like fucking up. I'm sorry for my words, like the, the rent, the renting, yeah, the house, the houses that you can rent. Um, so everything has to do with, with each other. Like it should be normal to not own everything again. Yeah. Like a lot of things to change. If your rent is not so high, you can just stay in the house where you, where you are, and you don't need a lot of money.
[00:44:37] Adam Calo: So this question of systems change brings me thinking back to this workshop we had where there was a bunch of kind of property law people and but alternate food people and something that impressed me was kind of like each group had a different vision of how to solve this land access problem. Some that were quite reformist and some that were a little bit more systems change. For example, we heard from a law professor who talked about how maybe new case law. In the environment might force a reckoning with some of these norms of property in Europe. Another idea was maybe the Land Van On's model, where one of private investment with a small return gets funneled into ownership structures, and then, farmers are given favorable leases if they deliver sustainable practices.
And then a final idea was, well, what if we just go to the industrial farmers and get a 2 percent of their land for alternative production, just convince them to change practices. And then maybe, you know, you represent more of the systems change perspective, challenging the very nature of property itself.
With what are tools you have lying around, why do you think there's this variety of opinions about how to face this land access problem and where do you say, you know, can property be reformed or is that some kind of social or legal revolution must be brought against it?
[00:46:00] Dido van Oosten: Well, I think also many of these solutions can go hand in hand. Like, I think it's quite nice that different organizations do it in a different way. And also, we don't claim that the way we do it is like the, the way to go. Um, but it's, I would say it's a bit more, it's a bit more on the radical side or a bit more of the system change. Um, and not just like, we go on with the, with how things work, but we just change it a bit.
Like we, we already tried it for, for decades, I imagine, but it doesn't really work. I also think it's already quite nice. We are for system change, but we also managed to do it like on a very tiny scale already in this system that's, that's there that we, of course, want to change.
And the ‘Land van ons’ model, for example, that people can invest. And they can sell it again. Yeah. I don't know. You're not a big fan of that. And also, that the farmer there is not the number one. It's like they're, not really autonomous. Still the people that invest money can decide what happens.
So again, like what's already happening in the world all the time, people with capital or with money are the ones that have power, the ones that say how things should look like and yeah. If, if you have a lot of money, you have a different view on things because you most of the time, you people want to get more money with it again.
So that's, yeah, that that's really part of the system we are in now. It is growth based, way of thinking and organizing. Uh, so in that sense. Um, yeah, I think we are on the system change side and that we have to. Also this, this power, shouldn't be at the people that have money or that own things it should be, yeah, it should be like we have a right for food, a right for housing.
[00:48:30] Adam Calo: And that's where the power lies. Use over ownership.
[00:48:35] Dido van Oosten: Thank you for that.
[00:48:36] Adam Calo: In my research, one of the criticisms I get and others get about agroecology and alternative food production models is people say, well, where's the labor going to come from? If you replace these intensive inputs. Or mechanization to some extent, you're going to drastically lead a lot of new labor and maybe that's okay to some extent. I often suggest in my research that if that pressure of the land market was removed from the picture, maybe alternative farming wouldn't be such a hustle. Maybe it's just 1 of the options for the farmers to focus on amongst the diversity of values they could use the land for. What is life like on the farm now under the non-ownership of this Kapitaloceen concept?
[00:49:26] Dido van Oosten: Well, it's, it's a lot of fun. I will say it's really, We see, we are like, we have this plot of land of almost five hectares. Ut used to be an industrial fruits like strawberry farm, strawberry and cherries and plums. So, we've been removing a lot of steel and plastic over the past years and we started this in this garden and we now feed like maybe 80 to a hundred people this year. That's the plan and we are with four. So, we actually, we have a lot of fun and it's very relaxed and we, we see our neighbor farming farmers. They own quite a lot of land with big machines. They're, they're always on their own on their tractors while we are having a tea together. And it's also a lot of work, physical work, of course, but like, it's, it's also not that we, that we go back to the 1850s or something.
Of course, more labor is needed, which I don't think is a big problem if, if we would need it like directly, maybe, but. If you would. Yeah, I think there's many people that would like to work, for example, two days a week on a farm. I do really believe that. But there's also electrical tools, for example, like there's new innovations for small scale farms that really help and that make work a bit more light or that we don't need too much people. But I would, I would recommend everyone to, to start farming actually. And we just planted, many trees. So, there's also this, yeah, we grow the vegetables, which is every year sort of the same. We started two years ago, so it's all quite new also. And then, with the layer of planting trees and shrubs like we can harvest from them maybe in five or ten years. There's this other layer in time, yeah, which is just really nice and so nice to take care, to take care of the land, to make it beautiful and to see, um, yeah, see wildlife. Well, wildlife is maybe a big word. But yeah, the bees and the butterflies and insects and deers and slowly coming back.
It's really, it's really a hopeful kind of work, especially, yeah, we, we came from this or we are still like sometimes blocking or, uh, industrial where, or like, like we are also activists, which is quite, uh, tiring sometimes and always against a system and yeah, sometimes things change, but it goes really slow and, and farming is so nice and hopeful and, and we create a sort of, it's very tiny, but still we create a, an alternative economy and alternative place. Where things are in a way that we like it. Well,
[00:53:01] Adam Calo: Dido, with that vision, I think that's a great place to end. Thanks for talking about land, land access and sharing with your intervention here.
[00:53:11] Dido van Oosten: Thank you for, yeah, for the nice interview. If people are around or live in the Netherlands, everyone should come by. Everyone is welcome to see what happens there.