 Does a cow not need to sleep? Have chickens and pigs no right to rest? In stalls where modern farmers keep their livestock, the light is on twenty four hours a day, in the name of production. For the real inhabitants of the countryside - the livestock - it will never be dark again.
The Royal Commissioner in the province of Friesland was interviewed by the local radio six months after his appointment. In almost lyrical terms, he described how he had spent the weekends in the summertime exploring the Frisian countryside. He had been particularly moved by the quaint, well maintained little villages. “Standing in the meadows and fields, just as dusk was falling, at the beginning of the evening, I was moved to tears.”
You would indeed be moved to tears, lots of them! Because what the Frisian Commissioner describes as “nature” has actually got nothing to with nature at all. Since the beginning of the Fifties, large portions of the Dutch countryside have been destroyed. It was divided up by means of land consolidation, to the largest extent at the expense of the taxpayer.
Natural landscape is whimsical. It is characterized by unequally sized portions of land, criss-crossed by winding streams whereby nature regulates her own drainage. The banks of those streams are naturally adorned by wild shrubbery and trees.  Following nature, man created roads alongside the wider ditches. Uneven meadowland with high ground water levels formed a paradise for birds, small animals and a variety of wild plants; a meadow was more than grass alone.
However, this landscape formed a great problem for ambitious farmers, which was solved through consolidation. The winding streams were filled in; the decorative shrubbery along the banks was removed. In this way, smaller plots of land were lumped together to form a bigger plot. Dead straight lines with wide verges were formed; there were no trees, because they only impede progress. Then huge machines came in and dug the land down to a depth of a meter or more and installed irrigation systems to regulate the water level in the plot. Larger and heavier machinery was set in and the result was a green baize cloth where only grass grew, completely in accordance with the wishes of the farmer. Grass, grass and more grass: English rye grass, just as bad as sand in the desert. Nothing else may or can grow there.
To compensate for the loss of so much natural landscape, portions of land were forested along the outskirts of the villages. Not too much, however, and only fast growing trees, such as poplars, were planted. This is inferior timber that gives the illusion of a forest for about ten years and then needs to be chopped down to allow the next growth cycle to begin. The idyllic picture painted by the Royal Commissioner in Friesland is nothing but a green desert. The natural landscape was destroyed by land consolidation and was replaced by linear landscape architecture: dead straight lines, with no variation whatsoever.
Land consolidation also brought with it the so-called cubicle stalls. These are enormous sheds with black corrugated iron roofs where the farmer keeps his cows, pigs or poultry. Although the appearance of these buildings totally clashes with that of the characteristic farmsteads, there was not one planning authority in rural areas who dared to speak out. Those authorities were far too busy annoying normal citizens wishing to build on to their houses. Such modernizations threaten the historical character of the appearance of a village and should be prohibited, or at least be strongly contested.
Meanwhile, the inhabitant of the rural areas started wondering what on earth the historical value was of cubicle stalls, beside which huge mounds of grass covered in black plastic formed the decor. By the way, the secret of the cubicle stall lies, not above, but under the ground. The cubicle stall is built on a huge concrete basin embedded in the ground. The roof of that basin functions as the floor of the stall in which every couple of centimeters, grooves have been drilled. The cow dung on the floor is trampled by the cows through the grooves into the concrete basin under the stall. This is nice and convenient for the farmer, because it saves him having to clean it up himself every day. Whether the cow is as charmed about having to trudge around through dung all day is of no interest to the farmer. At any rate it is not hygienic.
The farmer has the concrete basin full of dung suctioned clean a couple of times a year, and then spreads the manure out on his land. These are the days in the Spring and Autumn when Dutch Agriculture shows its true face. Manure stinks, that is why it is manure. But the headache-inducing steam that rises from the manure would lead one to think that it is not manure that is being spread, but chemical waste.
During recent years, destruction of the Dutch landscape has been taken even further. Many farmers now have one or more windmills on their properties: large white propellers which capture energy from the air. This “green” energy is sold to the public as an inexpensive form of climate- friendly energy. It is certainly inexpensive; at least it is for the farmer! The hundreds of these unsightly windmills are heavily subsidized and - if the wind blows anyway favourably - they form a cheap source of income,
To many city dwellers, the term “countryside” conjures up an image of “quiet and space”. That “space” has been ruined by the cubicle stalls and the windmills and the “quiet” by the noise of the farm machinery. As farming industries expand, so also does the fleet of machinery: not so much in numbers, but in power. Whereas in former times, the tractors returned from the land and the meadows when it got dark, nowadays the 350 pk tractors leased from the contractors continue to growl and snarl well into the night, if needs be. In the stalls, the light is on twenty four hours a day. A cow doesn’t need to sleep after all; this is why it will never be dark again in the countryside.
A couple of times a week, a lorry with food concentrates comes along and blasts - with great power and much noise - the fodder into the silos.
The newest trend in dairy farming is the milking robot. This is a machine with which cows can be completely automatically milked twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and three hundred and sixty five days a year. To the farmer, such a robot is a wonderful invention. He is relieved of the duty of doing the milking himself for an hour or two twice a day. The majority of farmers who have bought such a robot are therefore very satisfied with it. After all, without the robot, they would have to milk their cows themselves twice a day and would thus be prisoners of their own businesses: the cow’s udders would dictate the farmer’s daily routine.
Although the milking robot provides the farmers a freedom they never had, their unfortunate cows never come outside. Every few hours they need to pass by the milking robot in the stall, so it is more efficient if the cow stays in the stall. The robot also caters for higher production. The milking robot empties the udder several times a day, so that the cow’s milk gland is continuously productive. When milking is done twice a day, the milk gland stops itself when the udder is full. The robot sees to it that the udder is never completely empty and its engine runs non-stop.
The milking robot allows the farmer “freedom”, but it will never be quiet again in the countryside. |
