Farmers, conservation and education.

In the yesterday's 'Volkskrant' (a national Dutch daily newspaper), I found an interesting news report about farmers. This reportage (3th page, "'Uit Ivoorkust komen ze naar mijn slootje'") Melvin Stolwijk (a farmer) is introduced who contributes on nature conservation at his property. The reason of this article is the fuss by the farmers about the decision of the provence to turn their land into swamps. This because to connect two wetlands, and in order to get their 'nature-targets'.

As described in the paper, most of the nature-protectors state that farmers are not willing to participate in conservation. According to Wim Dijkman (in the same article) this is not -totally- true. He explains that most of the 'new-generation'-farmers are well willing to participate in a nature conservation project, and that they often enjoy to do so. Wim Dijkman stresses that the involvement of the farmer is important to succeed in such a project: It is important that the farmer received understanding about his position, and to ask about their opinions and suggestions to conservate.

I think it is clear for other students in the CIMA-track, why I put this article on the weblog: As an analogy, we need the coöporation of the farmers to 'implement' new nature in their 'heritage', like the teachers in order to implement a new curriculum in their classroom.

The farmers (and other people in that area) in this reportage suggest a 'string of beads', to connect the wetlands, and to integrate new nature areas in their polders...