The Call of the Godwit an Exploration of Birds and Farmers in a Landscape of Loss

Sjoerd Vredenbregt

The Call of the Godwit An Exploration of Birds and Farmers in a Landscape of Loss

Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History

Abstract Vredenbregt, S.J.C. 2019. The Call of the Godwit – An Exploration of Birds and Farmers in a Landscape of Loss. Uppsala, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. The lives of black-tailed godwits and farmers in the meadow landscapes of the Netherlands are closely entangled. While godwits and other ‘meadow birds’ have lived in around the human shaped meadows for many centuries and, especially in the first half of the 20th century, profited from farming practices, from the second half of the 20th century, their populations started to decline rapidly. Based on studies to the ecology and ethology of godwits, and interviews with farmers that work to save godwits and other birds on their land, this thesis explores the relationship between godwits and farmers situated in the meadow landscape through lively ethographic storytelling. Storytelling is a powerful method because it leaves open for multiple perspectives, without privileging the one over the other. Through this approach I aim to tell the stories of godwits and farmers alongside each other, in a way that gives individuals agency and presents their lives as meaningful. Through these stories I hope to engage readers with, and (re)connect them to, the lives of godwits and farmers and open up to a ‘capacity for response’. Keywords: black-tailed godwit, meadow birds, agriculture, multispecies studies, lively ethography, flight ways, storytelling, landscape, conservation. Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History (60 credits), supervisor: Anneli Ekblom, De- fended and approved spring term 2019-06-05. © Sjoerd Vredenbregt Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126 Upp- sala, Sweden.

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to everyone who supported me in the process of writing this thesis, or in the explorative journey that preceded, ultimately leading up to this thesis. In particular I like to thank Anneli Ekblom, who, as my supervisor has given me the freedom to discover and deepen my interests in writing this thesis. Also my study friends have helped me a lot in various ways and studying with them almost every day has made this year very enjoyable. I am also very grateful to the interviewees presented in this text for donating their time and shar- ing their fascinating stories. Lastly, I thank my parents, for their unconditional love and support during my Swedish adventure and their continuous interest in my studies, godwits and farmers.

Birds have a way of weaving themselves into space, with their calls and their cries: a quotidian givenness that can make their disappearance shocking, difficult to absorb, unthinkable. Hugo Reinert, 2018

Contents

1. Introduction ...... 8 1.1. Storying entangled multispecies histories ...... 9 1.1.1. Lively ethography ...... 9 1.1.2. Bird migration through human eyes ...... 10 1.2. Black-tailed godwits ...... 11 1.3. Farmers ...... 13 2. Situating the landscape ...... 15 2.1. Towards a godwit ‘El Dorado’ ...... 15 2.1.1. Cultivating the land ...... 15 2.1.2. Fertilising the land ...... 17 2.2. Rationalising the landscape ...... 19 2.2.1. Mechanising milk ...... 22 2.3. Ways of farming in a productionist agriculture ...... 23 3. Sky Shepherds ...... 27 3.1. Flyways ...... 27 3.1.1. Evolutionary paths ...... 27 3.1.2. Skyward ...... 29 3.2. In the meadows ...... 31 3.2.1. Welcomed by farmers ...... 31 3.2.2. Breeding ...... 31 3.2.3. Nesting ...... 32 3.2.4. Growing a new generation ...... 33 3.2.5. Departure ...... 35 4. Loss of godwits in a ruptured landscape ...... 36 4.1. Setting the debate ...... 36 4.2. Ecologists as spokespeople ...... 37 4.2.1. Rendering godwits visible ...... 37 4.2.2. Representing godwits politically ...... 39 4.2. Farmers’ perspective ...... 41 5. Meadow bird farmers ...... 44 5.1. Views on regular farming ...... 44 5.2. Agricultural landscape management ...... 46 5.2.1. A farmers’ encounter with predation ...... 49 5.3. Seeking motivation ...... 50 6. Botes’ oase ...... 52 7. Aukes’ transition ...... 58 7.1. Composing with the land ...... 58 7.2 Opening up the land ...... 61 8. Discussion ...... 62 8.1. Storying the landscape ...... 62 8.2. Participants in godwit loss ...... 63 6

8.3. Experimenting in response ...... 64 8.4. Resonating calls ...... 65 Bibliography ...... 66 Interviews ...... 71

1. Introduction

For many people in the Netherlands, especially in the rural areas, black-tailed godwits are the heralds of spring. Their arrival in the meadows symbolises how the landscape comes back to life after winter. Even for me, spending most of my life in Dutch cities, the arrival of black- tailed godwits (hereafter just ‘godwits’) is magical. Their return feels like a combination between joy and relief: “There they are again! Still alive!” Yet, there is more about godwits than their annually discontinuous presence in the meadows. For me, there is something enchanting about the character of godwits. I think this feeling is based on their proximity to humans and the way they are interwoven into human-made landscapes and amplified by their characteris- tic, vivid calls and their seemingly fragile appearance. It gives them, what Jeremy Lorimer calls an ‘ecological charisma’, a set of characteristics that resonate particularly well with the way humans perceive their environment (Lorimer 2007). It is not just me who is fascinated by godwits, in 2015 they have been elected as the Dutch national bird, indicating that the affection for them is widespread in the Dutch society. I was reminded of the beauty of these birds a couple of years ago, when I walked past a meadow full of godwits in early spring. The birds had just arrived in the landscape and as I walked there, godwits were flying across the sky, exclaiming their calls, which as Albert Beintema (2015) has observed, start with their Dutch name (‘grutto’) and merges into their English name: ‘grutto-grutto-grut-too-gwut-gooo-gdwut-gooo-dwit-goodwit-godwit-godwit- godwit’1. The birds circled around for a bit before landing on their long, slender legs. Godwits are migratory waders2 and therefore comfortable in both air and water. Like other wading birds, godwits are characterised by long legs that enable them to wade through water. How- ever, godwits are becoming increasingly ‘out of place’ in the Dutch landscape. The meadows in which they have bred for centuries, at least ever since humans have cultivated them, and that stood at the basis of a landscape in which their numbers could increase to unprecedented heights, have become increasingly unfriendly to them. Changes brought about by intensifying farming practices make it harder for godwit parents to raise their offspring successfully. Only a couple of decades ago, the godwit populations in the Dutch meadows flourished: around 1970, the number of breeding pairs was estimated at 120.000 (Kentie et al. 2016). Now only about 31 to 38.000 godwit pairs are left and their amount is still decreasing annually (Sovon 2018). Watching the godwits forage in the grass I am reminded how vulnerable they are, how year after year, they are struggling to breed successfully. I picture them mourning their losses. These encounters with godwits, and my concern and fascination for their double-sided relationship to humans, have evoked in me a curiosity to the lives of the godwits more broadly. This curiosity provided the starting point for this thesis, and guided my journey in exploring the lives of godwits and the way they are connected to humans. In this exploration, I will develop a narrative that lets the story of godwits travel alongside that of farmers (cf. Griffiths 2007, Van Dooren 2014). Farmers have, implicitly as well as explicitly, played a significant role in the lives of godwits over the last centuries. Intensifying farming practices not only changed the living condition for godwits, but also for farmers. From the second half of the

1 For a recording of the godwits’ call, see https://www.xeno-canto.org/169923 2 Waders are a group of bird species with bodies adapted to wetlands. 8

20th century, the number of farmers has decreased, while the number of cattle and production rates have increased strongly. Moreover, in media and discussions farmers are often portrayed as the main driver of the loss of godwits, as their actions impact the landscape directly and strongly. In this thesis I will show that some farmers also work to care for godwits, not rarely at the cost of financial gain. In gathering the stories for this thesis, I have delved into ecological and ethological studies to godwits and interviewed farmers. Departing from these stories, I present a narrative here that gives insight in the way we, humans, are involved in the lives of godwits. Instead of excluding some stories in favour of others – those of godwits over farmers or vice versa – based on quick judgements, over this thesis I will follow the stories of godwits and farmers alongside each other.

1.1. Storying entangled multispecies histories

1.1.1. Lively ethography In May 2019 the United Nations published a report, estimating that one million species are threatened to extinct within decades due to human actions3. This not only endangers the species involved, but also human existence, that is fundamentally connected to and depending on other life. The report reminds us that we do not stand ‘above’ nature – an assumption on which western lifestyles are grounded – but ‘within’. Addressing these problems requires to rethink humanity ecologically (Plumwood 2002), as work in the field of multispecies studies does (for an overview of this work see Van Dooren et al. 2016) and that is also my point of departure here. The field of multispecies studies challenges the central position humans have assigned themselves in the world. Doing so, means firstly to take account of the ways our lives are woven into an ecological network and secondly to challenge the notion of nature as a background to which human culture can define itself. The time has come to bring nature to life and give it agency in shaping human practices. Storytelling is a method that can do both. Tom Griffiths (2007) points out that ‘the stories we live by determine the future’. Stories can generate new insights that invite to envision alternative futures. Telling a story means taking the time to understand different stories and see what can be learned from them. In this way, it is a method that leaves open for multiple perspectives (Griffiths 2007), it does not privilege some stories over others. In building the narrative of this thesis, I was particularly inspired by the ‘lively ethographies’ by Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose (2016). This way of multispecies storytelling recognises the life of non-humans as meaningful – like humans, non-humans try to make themselves at home in the world. Ethographic storytelling involves an ‘arts of becoming-witness’ of a specific context and on the based on this, open up to a ‘capacity for response’ (Van Dooren & Rose 2016). This thesis presents my journey of becoming witness to the lives of godwits and farmers in the meadow landscape. In the process I was furthermore inspired by Thom van Dooren’s view of species representing ‘flight ways’ (Van Dooren 2014, p. 21-43). Through this approach Van Dooren stresses the importance of viewing species as continuously evolving, shaped by the work that is performed by individuals within a species, time and time again, generation upon generation. Every generation involves processes of growing, surviving and bringing forth new life, and every individual has to deliver hard work to overcome the challenges posed onto them in order to succeed in this task. Every individual organism inherits a history, involving adaptations to changing environments, leading to – continuously evolving – morphological and behavioural traits.

3 See: https://www.ipbes.net/global-assessment-biodiversity-ecosystem-services 9

A species is thus never stable but always in an ‘intergenerational process of becoming’ (Van Dooren 2014, p. 27). I show what this means in Chapter 3, in describing how new generations of godwits continuously adapt their migration tactics to changing landscapes. Through these adaptations, the trajectories of future godwit generations are possibly influenced as well. Life as such, is not just passed on to next generations. Producing and raising offspring requires dedicated work and as such, generations must be achieved. From this, every individual organism is an ‘intergenerational achievement’: shaped by the history of its species, involving the work of countless generations involving raising new generations and responses to changing landscapes. Generations are therefore actively shaped and individuals are not just passive ‘members’ of a group, but active ‘participants’, contributing to and shaping new ways of life (Van Dooren 2014, p. 27). Thinking species as flight ways means taking into account different time frames over which the species are shaped (Van Dooren 2014). Investigating the current generation requires to take into account the history of the generations by which they have been shaped. The current generations, and the connections by which they are defined will in turn contribute to the lives of future generations. From this, to understand the lives of godwits and farmers in the meadow landscape of the Netherlands, I will start to analyse the development of Dutch agriculture and the way it has influenced the landscape in Chapter 2. In order to understand the relation between godwits and farmers, in this chapter I will also explore how land-use changes have influenced the lives of farmers. In this way, Chapter 2 provides the context that is helpful in understanding the situatedness (cf. Haraway 1988) of the subjects in this thesis, the godwits and farmers inhabiting the landscape today. My hope is that lively ethographic storytelling, with an understanding of species as flight ways, will allow me to engage readers with the lives of godwits and farmers in the Dutch meadow landscape in a way that moves beyond the closures that often arise when discussions have become polarised. In such discussion, the stories that different parties tell become simplified caricatures, distancing parties from each other and from the possibility of defining constructive solutions. These patterns can be recognised here as well. As I will set out in detail in Chapter 4, farmers tend to be portrayed as the drivers of godwit decline, leading to statements indicating that farmers and godwits will not go together into the future anymore. On the other hand, farmers that do not care about godwits on their land, might reduce the birds to beings without meaning and hence not worth saving. In telling lively stories about godwits and farmers, my aim is to move beyond such simplifications and draw readers closer to godwits and farmers, calling for care and concern for their entangled ways of life.

1.1.2. Bird migration through human eyes The seasonal presence of birds in landscapes has puzzled humans for a long time throughout history. Some, like Aristotle, have argued that swallows hibernated, while others developed theories describing how they descend to the bottoms of lakes and other waters to spend the winter months there in torpor. The possibility of bird migration was also considered – Aristotle for example shared observations of cranes migrating towards the Nile delta – but it took until the 18th century until theories about bird migration solidified. In 1757, Carl Linnaeus published his work Migrationes Avium (On the Migration of Birds), in which he described the migration patterns of a range of bird species and added the suggestion that studies in the south of Europe were necessary to map the routes more accurately. Other studies to migration in Linnaeus’ time focused on the effects of meteorological conditions to birds. The hope was that

10 it would be possible to predict the arrival of birds in the landscape which would be helpful to farmers.4 From the end of the 19th century methodologies arose that made it possible to study the ‘flow and ebb of the feathered tide’ (Newton 1896, p. 549) more closely. In 1899, Hans Christian Cornelius Mortensen, a zoologist from Denmark, was the first to bend rings around the legs of starlings, which enabled observers in other parts of the world to report their sightings of these birds (Niels 2001). Nowadays, bird ringing is a widely used practices, relying on the observations of a great number of amateur bird watchers. In the second half of the 20th century technologies based on radio and satellite telemetry came available that did not rely on human resightings anymore. Instead, individual animals were equipped with transmitters that opened up new ways of wildlife surveillance to scientists (Benson 2010). The first transmitters were too big to be carried by birds, but thanks to refinements in the technology over the last decades, transmitters got smaller and could be used in avian research as well, enabling scientists to achieve new levels of ‘ecological proximity’ (Lorimer 2007) to the migrants they study. Trans- mitters have been used in godwit research since 2009 (Beintema 2015). The transmitters im- planted in the bodies of godwits through which the birds can be ‘watched’ from a distance, seemingly without any human interference (Reinert 2013). Nevertheless, human influence was not totally erased, as in some cases, transmitters had negative impacts on the birds carry- ing them. In godwits for example, the transmitters were related to lower survival rates and deformed eggs (Hooijmeijer et al. 2013). On the other hand, the transmitters stand at the basis of studies giving valuable insights in the lives of godwits that will also benefit their conservation. I will draw on the result of this work later in this thesis, in Chapter 3.

1.2. Black-tailed godwits

Black-tailed godwits are migratory birds that have developed populations across the world, each of which inhabit distinctive flyways, that have been shaped – and as we will see in Chapter 3, continues to be shaped – by numerous generations of birds. The breeding ground of black-tailed godwits extends between Iceland and Eastern China and Russia. After breeding, the birds fly southward to their non-breeding areas, ranging from Southern Europe and Africa to South Asia and Australia (see Chapter 3). Biologists have recognised three subspecies of black-tailed godwits (Höglund et al. 2009). In continental Europe (ranging from the Netherlands to Russia) the European black-tailed godwit (Limosa limosa limosa) breeds, which migrate to Southern Europe and West-Africa after breeding. This subspecies is di- vided over two populations with distinct flyways. Although some parts in the non-breeding areas overlap, individual birds stick to the population they are born in (Beintema 2015). The Icelandic black-tailed godwit (L. l. islandica) is a subspecies that breeds in Iceland, the Faroe Islands and some regions in Norway. These birds migrate to their non-breeding sites in Great Britain, Ireland and South-West Europe. The third subspecies, the Asian black- tailed godwit (L. l. melanuroides) breeds in Eastern Siberia, Mongolia and China and flies to the east coast of Australia (Beintema 2015). In this thesis, I will follow the ‘East-Atlantic’ population of black-tailed godwits (which is the population I refer to as ‘godwits’ throughout the thesis) along their migration tracks (see figure 9 in Chapter 3). In 2015, about 87% of the East-Atlantic population was estimated to breed in the Dutch meadows (Kentie et al. 2016). Through their flyways, godwits, like other migratory birds, connect the – human-defined (cf. Reinert 2015) – landscapes they inhabit. As such, to give a complete picture of their lives, I will follow them across the other landscapes in relation to which godwits shape their flyways. In Chapter 3, I will story the diverse lives of godwits in more detail, but in what

4 http://www2.linnaeus.uu.se/online/history/ornitolog.html 11

Figure 1. A black-tailed godwit lands in a meadow. The bird is ringed, indicating that it is studied in a research project. Source: Van der Velde et al. (2018). follows, I will introduce some information already that is helpful in understanding the text that comes before. Godwits are sandpipers, a group of wading birds mostly found in wetlands, which is where the ancestors of the Dutch godwits bred, until these wetlands were cultivated into the meadows that shape todays’ landscape (see Chapter 2). Wetlands, for example grasslands with high water levels or peat bogs, are attractive to godwits as they are rich in worms, the main food for adult godwits at their breeding sites. During their time in the meadows, adult godwits eat an incredible amount of worms, more than 700 per day (Onrust 2017). Godwits are tactile hunters which means that they detect prey by probing the soil with their bills, through which they are able to sense and locate the movements of worms (Onrust 2017, Van de Kam et al. 2016). The birds have long bills – about 10 centimetres – and therefore are well-equipped to reach for worms relatively deep in the soil. This gives godwits an advantage over bird species living in the same habitats that hunt based on vision and can only detect worms very close to the soil surface (Onrust 2017). Unlike their parents, godwit chicks feed on insects and other arthropods living in the meadows (Klein et al. 2009). Chicks are not fed by their parents and therefore need to run after insects themselves from the moment they are born. Born in a nest on the meadow soil, surrounded by tall grass, godwit chicks are vulnerable to predators from the first moment they are born. A suitable habitat for the chicks is characterised by grasses that are of perfect length, long enough for them to hide but short enough to comfortably move through. Moreover, as insects often sit high up in the vegetation, when the grass is too tall most prey will be out of reach for the little chicks. Chicks will get exhausted and not find enough food, making them vulnerable to predators (Beintema 2015).

1.3. Farmers The seven farmers I have interviewed for this thesis are all dairy farmers and part of a small group of farmers that strive to create a habitat that is hospitable to godwits and other meadow birds, in an agricultural landscape that overall becomes increasingly unfriendly to these birds. All the farmers presented here live in Friesland, a province in the north of the Netherlands, which has the highest density of meadow birds in the country. All farmers were born into farming families, and took over the farm of their parents, or moved somewhere else to continue the work of another farmer. In the interviews some farmers described themselves as ‘meadow bird farmers’ (‘weidevogelboeren’ in Dutch) and I will use this term in my thesis as well, in reference to farmers that shape their land to suit the needs of meadow birds. Although meadow bird farmers share a concern for godwits and other birds on their land, there are significant differences in how they define ‘good’ meadow bird farming, as will become clear throughout the thesis. I will introduce the meadow farmers when they come forward in the thesis, but in order to give an example of what it means to be a meadow bird farmer, I introduce Klaas Oevering here already. From the moment he took over his fathers’ farm, Klaas has been actively engaged in promoting meadow bird farming in various ways. His care for meadow birds has guided his farming practices. First as a regular farmer, he explains: “I really wanted to show that it’s possible to take care of your meadow birds very well as a regular farmer”. But when Klaas noticed how other farmers in his neighbourhood, who farmed with meadow birds before, abandoned birds as soon as they encountered opportunities to expand their production, it made him think about the way he wanted to continue his own farm. He decided to transition from regular to organic farming. His main motivation for this was that it enabled him to increase his efforts to care for godwits and other birds. This was not an easy process, but “if you really want it then you always succeed somehow”. Together with his family, Klaas has also been actively engaged in promoting meadow bird farming for many years. He himself for example through his affiliation with the local agricultural nature collective, where he is a board member. Klaas and his family also present themselves as meadow bird farmers, for example through the sign they have placed in front of their farm this spring (see figure 2). To collect the stories of farmers in this thesis, I have conducted semi-structured interviews (Bernard 2011). This means that the interviews follow a set of topics, which I established in advance. I allowed my interviewees to direct the interview, to enable them to address the is- sues that they believed were important. In this way, the flow of conversation was mostly di- rected by the interviewee, although I sometimes asked complimentary questions to make sure my research questions were addressed. I recorded the interviews and transcribed them afterwards. All interviewees gave permission for the interview to be recorded, and for their names and stories to be presented in this thesis. I also informed them about the purposes of this study and whether they were fine with their name being published before they gave their consent. Because I wanted to focus on farmers that care for meadow birds on their farm, when selecting farmers to interview I looked specifically for farmers involved in meadow bird management. This was quite a puzzle initially, as this is a pretty rare category of farmers. Therefore, in my search for interviewees, my only requirement was their care for meadow birds and I was not very much concerned with things like age and gender. I managed to reach farmers in different ways. I got in touch with some interviewees via the agrarian nature collective they are member of (see Chapter 5). I mailed a couple of these collectives, and two of them brought me in contact with farmers that were interested in being interviewed. I also approached some interviewees directly by email, via the website of their farm, which led to one invitation. Lastly, I got in contact with two interviewees via other interviewees, who suggested some people that could be interested in participating in this study. The interviews were conducted late August and early September 2018. I met all interviewees at their farms at 10 am in the morning over 13 coffee. This was not specifically suggested by me, but a time they all proposed independently, as it is a time when farmers generally take a break from their work. All the farmers I interviewed were men. The stories in this thesis therefore also present the experiences of men, except for one case, where the farmers’ wife spontaneously joined for some parts of the interview, of which some parts are also used in this thesis. In some cases, farmers referred to their family, for example by using ‘we’ instead of ‘I’, and sometimes farmers explicitly mentioned that certain decision were made on the basis of discussion of the family. In this way, the farmers’ voice sometimes represents other voices too. Besides the farmers, I also conducted an interview with Jos Hooijmeijer, who is a conservation ecologis studying black-tailed godwits at the University of Groningen. I contacted him via email after which we made an appointment for an interview, which followed the same structure as the other interviews.

Figure 2. Sign at the farm of Klaas Oevering. The picture shows a godwit on its nest, surrounded by chicks. Further back stands another godwit and a northern lapwing, another meadow bird species. The text reads: ‘Or- ganic dairy farm / Family Oevering’. Used with permission of Klaas Oevering. 14

2. Situating the landscape

2.1. Towards a godwit ‘El Dorado’

2.1.1. Cultivating the land About 1000 years ago humans started to intensify their actions in the landscape in what now is the Netherlands in order to make it fit their purposes. Cattle were farmed already for several millennia before that time, but farmers grazed their cattle on natural grasslands. These grasslands do not resemble the meadows that define the modern-day landscape in any way (the left map in figure 3 shows a reconstructed map of the landscape around 800 AD). Around the year 1000 communities started to grow bigger, which led to an increasing demand for grazing land in the coastal areas. As a result, people started to cultivate the wetlands consisting of fens and bogs into meadows, suitable for cattle grazing (De Rijk 2015). Archaeological findings suggest that godwits and other wading birds already found a habitat around these fens and bogs (e.g. Prummel and Zeiler 1993). By 1500 AD the amount of cultivated land had increased significantly (see figure 3, right map) and although it is hard to conclude anything about the size of the godwit population at that time, it is likely that the population was smaller than it is today. These landscapes were characterised by high water levels and soils abundant of worms and insects suitable for godwits (Onrust 2017).

Figure 3. Paleogeographical reconstruction of the landscape in the Netherlands in 800 (left) and 1500 AD. The green areas in the right picture represent reclaimed land, mostly used for agriculture and human settlement. Source: Vos (2015). 15

When farmers first started to cultivate the land, it probably did not affect the godwit population much. Ploughing and mowing was done with the help of drought animals and simple technologies, or just by hand. If godwits initially moved to the meadows at all (there was still enough uncultivated land available as an alternative), farming practices remained of low intensity and therefore the wet soils that characterised their previous habitat were preserved on the newly formed meadows. The ways godwits lived at this time is up to speculation, but it is certain that their lives in the Dutch landscape were not entangled with the lives of humans to the same degree as they are today, and that, when their paths crossed5, it did not affect the population as significantly as it does now. Through time the amount of cultivated land increased (see figure 3 and 4) and farming practices intensified. Before 1800 large parts of the northern and western part of the country were already cultivated (see figure 3). Es- pecially from the 19th century, intensification of agriculture resulted in more and higher quality habitats for godwits and other meadow birds. In the Dutch inland – on the sandy soils – forests and other ‘wastelands’ were converted into ‘profitable’ farmland as well, to serve ‘human needs’ (Figure 4). God- wits took advantage of the new human-created habitats and expanded their populations over the country. Until far in the 20th century, Cultivated between 1800 and 1850 godwits were not just restricted to meadows, Cultivated between 1850 and 1900 Cultivated after 1950 as some populations still found a habitat in Urban area heathlands and peat. However, in the 19th and 20th century water levels were lowered Figure 4. Map of the Netherlands, illustrating the cul- (Thissen 1991), and these godwit habitats tivation of land from 1800. Large part of the northern and western part of the country were already culti- have disappeared. As such, human created vated before 1800 (see figure 3). Source: Atlas van grasslands are left as the only suitable habitat. Nederland. In considering developments of the Dutch landscape it is important to keep in mind that the cultivations that benefited godwits also led to ecological destructions as they went at the costs of other species. For example, not all bird species that once lived in the Dutch wetlands were able to adapt as well to human farming practices as godwits and as a result some species disappeared from the Dutch landscape (Beintema 1986, Beintema et al. 1995). In describing the positive effects of landscape changes on godwits, I do not mean to identify these as generally positive or life promoting. Moreover, while ecological changes brought about by the formation and management of these meadows turned out to be ‘lively landscapes’ for godwits, not all landscapes are lively, as Anna Tsing (2015) notes. In the remaining part of this chapter, I will explore the developments in the Dutch agricultural landscape in the 20th century that have caused the rapid changes in the number of godwits. My aim here is to explore how agricultural developments have changed the physical landscape, and how these changes have shaped godwits and their relationship to humans. In doing this, the function of the term ‘landscape’ is twofold. It describes the spatial manifestations of social

5 It is hard to say anything about how frequent humans and godwits interacted in this time. Findings of imitation eggs, resembling godwit eggs and believed to date back to 1000 AD, indicate that there was at least some connection between human communities and godwits at this time. Imitation eggs were used in traditional egg seeking, that nowadays only happens for Northern Lapwings, another meadow birds species (De Rijk 2015). 16 and natural relationships, but it also the describes how the knowledges, in which the current generations of farmers and godwits are situated, have been shaped over this time frame.

2.1.2. Fertilising the land From the end of the Middle Ages towards first half of the 19th century, the lives of Dutch farmers in the rural landscape changed only to a limited extent. It is likely that a farmer from the 17th century would have been able to run a farm in the 19th or early 20th century using the same methods without too many problems (Bieleman 2008). Between the 17th and early 20th century farms were family businesses, where the whole family helped with the work at the farm. Children were involved in a diversity of tasks from a young age and prepared to ultimately take over the farm or become involved in another farm somewhere else (Bieleman 2008). Once the farm had been put into the hands of a new generation, a retired farmer often stayed involved to provide asked and unasked advise, and take care of some small tasks around the farm (Mak 2006). Although the family constituted the heart of the farm, a farmer always needed some extra forces to do help with the hard work, for example to milk the cows or mow the land. There were some technological innovations over this period, but they were small and focused on increasing production and not on reducing labour intensity, as there was plenty of ‘free’ manpower available around the farm (Bieleman 2008). This structure made that farmers were not concerned much with saving labour costs, and in fact, dealt with labour very ineffi- ciently from a modernist perspective. Instead, farmers were driven by sustaining their lives and that of their kin, that would carry forward the history of the farm and its land into the future (Mak 2006). Around the end of the 19th century the consistency that had characterised the ways of life of Dutch farmers over a few hundred years started to change. While farmers used to be the driving economic force of nearby villages, as a supplier of both dairy and meat, as well as in providing work opportunities, from the second half of the 19th century, they became increasingly involved in the urban and global economy. Over the 19th century, the West-European population not only increased strongly in number but also became wealthier. Especially in the urban areas, people could afford a more luxury lifestyle and this translated into higher dairy and meat consumption. Because the Dutch agricultural sector had taken in a prominent position on the international market, the demand for farmers’ products increased (Bieleman 2008). In order to take optimal economic advantage of these developments, the Dutch state changed its attitude towards farmers. Where previously the state’s agricultural policy had been non- interventionist, at this time, around the end of the 19th century, it started to take a more active role to stimulate innovation, to increase competitiveness on the international market (De Haas 2013). The Dutch state tried, and succeeded, to situate farmers into a competitive environment, encouraging them to become market-oriented (De Haas 2013). This meant that farmers became increasingly focused on capital increase. In order to optimise their overall production, farmers specialised in profitable subsectors (Bieleman 2008). Consequently, around the turn of the 20th century a lot of farmers specialised in dairy farming, which then was one of the most profitable subsectors. The expansion of livestock farming also impacted the Dutch rural landscape as the higher numbers of livestock increased the demand for fodder. Much land was cultivated to benefit agriculture and through this, unintentionally new habitats for godwits were created. Although several innovations in farming practices already had been introduced on a small scale before, in 1895 state programmes were introduced for agricultural development that encouraged agriculture to transform quicker and on a wider scale (De Haas 2013). Some innovations that contributed to production increase were changes in cattle breeds, to produce milk more efficiently, and import of external fodder, which ensured that not all forage had to be extracted from the meadows. But most significant – both for farmers and for godwits – was the introduction of artificial fertilisers, which not only increased the yield of grass per

17 hectare of land, but also benefited soil life and insects, on which godwits could feed. Dutch farmers used fertilisers enthusiastically and in 1910 they already used 36 kg fertiliser per hectare, while the European average was only 7 kg (Van Zanden 1991). The amount of fertilisers spread on the land would continue to increase until well into the 20th century.

Figure 5. Aerial view of a meadow landscape in the Netherlands, characterised by high water levels and wet soils. These meadows provided a good habitat to godwits, especially when fertilisers were used. Source: Beeldbank Stichting Oud Obdam-Hensbroek. The developments I sketched here intensified towards the mid-20th century and resulted in an increasing productivity per hectare of land. Around World War II, agricultural practices in other countries were already mechanised to a great extent – especially in the United States – but in the Netherlands this took a bit longer as there was no pressing need to reduce labour. The social structure around the farm that I outlined above made helping hands widely available (Mak 2006) and, because land saving innovations already led to significant production increases, there was no urge yet to further expand this through machines. Besides, mechanisation was complicated given that the physical structure of the meadow, characterised by its high water levels and muddy soils, made the land inaccessible to heavy machines (Priester 2000). While the physical structure, that suited godwits and other meadow birds perfectly (see figure 5), remained practically untouched towards the mid-20th century, the soil was made more fer- tile. This not only benefited grasses, but also other plant species that in turn attracted numerous insects. Also animals living in the actual soil, like worms and larvae, flourished because of fertilisation. In this way, there was a lot to eat for adult godwits, feeding on a range of soil life and their chicks, feeding on insects. Gert Jan Sijtsma, a farmer I visited, whose love for meadow birds developed gradually, but now is very passionate about ‘his’ birds, mentioned that this made the Dutch meadow landscape into an ‘El Dorado’ for godwits and other meadow birds:

Gert Jan: [In my fathers’ time], the land still had trenches everywhere. All the land was like the old times, ditches lied around it. […] It used to be a paradise for birds […]. Smaller meadows, high water levels, and if you hear the people from those days, it was an El Dorado. The state interventions in the late 19th and early 20th century focused predominantly on im- proving farming techniques and as a result encouraged the formation of godwit El Dorado’s across the Dutch landscape. The states’ agricultural policy started to change around the 1930’s, when agriculture plunged into a crisis following the Great Depression (Bieleman 2008). At that time about 25 to 30% of the Dutch agricultural products were exported. Consequently, when the international markets collapsed due to the depression, the agricultural sector was heavily affected as well. As the Dutch state was determined to retain and further develop its prominent position in international agricultural trade, it started to intervene actively in product prices in order to stay competitive. Alternative responses such as extensification of farming practices or a shift of focus towards less competitive domestic markets were never considered an option (De Haas 2013).

2.2. Rationalising the landscape After World War II the approach by the Dutch state towards the agricultural sector started to impact the physical structure of the land. The first years after the war were dedicated to recovery. Like the rest of the Dutch economy, agriculture was heavily affected by the war (Bieleman 2008). Farms had been destroyed, production had decreased, and export rates collapsed. This led to serious food shortages during and after the war, not only in the Netherlands, but all over Europe. As such, food security for the Dutch population was the first priority in the recovery process of the country. Inspired by the model of the United States, the Dutch state believed that economic growth through modernisation would provide social pro- gress for everyone. As one of the main sectors of the Dutch economy, agriculture had a prominent role in these ideas (Andela 2000). From this, farming was strongly influenced by the ideas of modernisation, and in order to rebuild the sector, the state deemed ‘rationalisation’, ‘mechanisation’ and ‘intensification’ necessary. Thanks to the proactive approach from the Dutch state, agriculture recovered quickly. In 1950, food scarcity was no longer a problem and the volume and profits of the agricultural sector matched pre-war conditions (Bieleman 2008). However, instead of taking a step back, The Dutch state decided that further growth was necessary in order to retain its prominent position on the international market. Over the following decades, the state promoted further modernisation of the agricultural sector more and more forcefully, as will become clear throughout this section. The post-war modernisation project encountered its limits quickly, as growing farms were confronted with a lack of land, preventing further growth. In response to this, a structural policy was developed, in which the government actively steered the agricultural sector into a direction of intensification and scale increase. Figure 6. Relative price development of labour in agriculture, wheat The government imagined a and milk between 1950 and 1990. Source: Bieleman (2008). 19

Dutch rural landscape dominated by big farms with the newest technologies available. This vision was motivated by the belief that in this way the demand of labour in the sector could be reduced and enable more efficient and therefore higher milk production. As a result the problem of increasing labour costs in relation to milk prices would be solved (see figure 6). Increasing the milk price would have been an alternative solution, but as that would have threatened the prominent position of the Netherlands on the international market, the state did not consider that an option (De Haas 2013). As mentioned before, the natural structure of the Dutch landscape was dominated by wet meadows with muddy soils and therefore not suitable for heavy machines. So, in order to realise agricultural intensification and scale increase, the landscape had to be restructured, or in the discourse of that time ‘rationalised’. This took place through large scale consolidation projects. The first ideas of such a project already came up at the end of the 19th century. In 1899, The Association for Cadastre and Land Surveying (‘De Vereeniging voor Kadaster en Landmeetkunde’) handed over a report to the director-general of agriculture at the Ministry of Interior Relations, emphasising that important ‘economic and technological advantages’ were to be gained from land consolidation. The report concluded that the many small plots of land, with unfavourable shapes hindered efficient cultivation and a ‘rational development of the farming sector’ (in Van den Bergh 2004, p. 40-41). The first land consolidation projects started at a small scale in 1924. At this time, land was redistributed only for the purpose in shape meadows more efficiently (Van den Brink & Molema 2008). In this process, the structure of the soil – so important for godwits – was left untouched. This changed in 1954, when a new policy was developed in line with the state’s modernisation plans. Now, the projects became concerned with the physical quality of the land as well. A development plan (‘Ruilverkaveling- swet van 1954’) was formulated to modernise the structure of the rural areas in general (Van den Bergh 2004). New and bigger farms were built and roads restructured, to create an in- frastructure accessible to the new machines. Figure 7. Map of the Netherlands, illustrating the land With this process, the structure of the farm- consolidation projects carried out between 1924 and lands and the soil surface changed. I have de- 1984. Source: Atlas van Nederland. scribed how the waterlogged soil in particular drew the godwits to these landscapes and how this in combination with increased fertilisation from farming created a godwit ‘El Dorado’. But now, wet soils were considered inefficient as they hindered further intensification and production increase, both because they were unfavourable to mechanisation and because they could not sustain the weight of the increasing numbers of cattle (Bieleman 2000). Prior to the restructuring of the landscape in the 1950s, during autumn and spring the land was waterlogged and inaccessible to farmers. From a modernist perspective focused on production this was a costly loss of land. A last complication of waterlogging was that it slowed down the growth rate of grass, which reduced the maximal possible yield significantly (Bieleman 2008). The state decided to adjust the water levels over the whole country. In the Netherlands, the water level is centrally controlled by a governmental organ called the water board (‘Water- schappen’) and not directly by the farmers (Bieleman 2000). The natural rhythm of the land is characterised by high water levels in winter and spring and low water levels in summer. 20

Because of the aforementioned reasons – production loss – this rhythm was considered unde- sirable. To fix this problem an enormous drainage system was put in place that lowered the water level a couple of decimetres up to 3 metres, differing per location. A side was that in the summer when the water level was naturally low, the land became too dry. As a result, the water level in summer was (and still is) artificially elevated with water from rivers or lakes. Altogether, the productiveness of the land has been increased by reversing the natural water cycle of the land: grass grew quicker and farmers could enter and mow their land earlier (Paulissen et al. 2007). For godwits, that forage on wet soils, this was bad news, not only because they have a hard time penetrating the soil with their bills, but also because the worms on which they feed retract deeper into the soil, where it is still wet, out of a godwit’s reach (Onrust 2017).

Figure 8. Aerial view of a meadow landscape in the Netherlands after land consolidation, characterised by efficiently shaped plots and low water levels. Source: Beeldbank Stichting Oud Obdam-Hensbroek. Not only the water levels were considered an obstacle rationalising farming. The structure of the meadow surface was often uneven, leading to different growth rates of the grass while also making management a more time consuming job. The state aimed to decrease labour costs and from this, it considered the soil structure as inefficient and costly. To solve this problem, when land was consolidated, the surface was levelled as well (Bieleman 2000). Again, this had significant effects for godwit populations, that initially benefited from a diverse soil and vegetation structure (Onrust 2017). When plans had been laid out to rationalise the physical landscape, the state realised that in order to utilise the land optimally, the lives of farmers had to be ‘rational’ as well. Their ways of thinking had to be focused on profit maximalisation, which would translate into efficient and productive land management. To realise this, around the same time land consolidation projects increased in scale, projects of ‘regional improvement’ were started in some regions.

Here, extension workers, appointed by the government, were commissioned to educate farmers and their families about new techniques in order to modernise and rationalise their farming practices (Karel 2005). The state aimed for scale increase because large farms could reach a higher production per amount of land, with less labour and less costs than small farmers. These smaller farmers were seen as inefficient as they produced relatively few, with high amounts of labour. Therefore, to increase production further, the state believed that the number of farmers had to decrease (De Haas 2013). Farmers were not explicitly forced to stop. This happened through a more subtle process –especially between 1950 and 1985 – in which the introduction of new technologies was used to make it impossible for smaller farmers to sustain their farms (Priester 2000). The key here was that technologies enabled farmers to expand their businesses and, because the milk price remained pretty much stable while other costs increased, this was also necessary to survive. But for farmers this required a significant financial investment at first. Smaller farmers were not able to make these investments and therefore had to stop. Geert Mak (2006) points out that this led to two contrasting spirals. On the one hand, big farmers invested more, which enabled production increase, leading to higher incomes and in turn allowed for more investments, further production increase and so on. Small farmers on the other hand, were not able to make large investments and therefore produced less, resulting in a – too – low income, leading to debts and ultimately bankruptcy. In this way, farming became what Mak (2006, p. 121-153) has called a ‘hurdle race’. Implementing new technologies on their farm meant a new hurdle to take for farmers. With every hurdle, a number of farmers had to give up and drop out of the race, leaving the surviving farmers with less competition and, crucially, more space. Space is important here because, while technological developments enabled higher production, intensive farmers at some point were confronted with a lack of space. They had reached the maximum yield from their land and therefore needed more hectares to continue expanding their production. With every farmer that had to stop, new land came up for grabs to intensive farmers to further expand their business on. But with every stopping farmer also a ‘flight way’ through the meadow landscape came to an end. A farmers’ way of farming was not just businesses, but also a practice that had been shaped and passed on over many generations, through what Carole Crumley (2000) identifies as ‘social memory’. All of this happened around the farm, the centre of farmers’ livelihoods. When farmers were made to stop in the light of rural modernisation, a lineage of generations of farmers that had shaped the farm and the surrounding land, came to an end.

2.2.1. Mechanising milk Agriculture mechanised rapidly in the second half of the 20th century and I do not have space to go into all the developments here. Instead, in describing the way new technologies shaped the landscape and impacted farming practices, I will focus on two related innovations in the way milk was handled around the farm. Although the first milking machine entered the Dutch landscape just before World War I, it took until the 1950’s before it spread widely across farms. Because milking machines reduced the amount of labour per cow significantly – by hand it was an achievement if one individual could milk 10 cows per hour, but a machine easily reached 50 to 60 cows per hour – it changed the lives of farmers drastically (Bieleman 2005). Farming became a lot less labour intensive, but as farmers needed no help anymore, it also made the people around the farm disappear. The story of a farmer that Geert Mak (2006, p. 124) brings forward in his account of a village in the Dutch rural landscape in the 20th century illustrates this: “it used to be a hive of activity around the stable when the cows got milked. The cosiness around the farm, in a couple of

22 years that was gone”6. Before, farmers hired helpers at the farm to get some extra assistance, but now labour was mechanised they were not needed – and could not be afforded – anymore. After the milk machine was introduced, the milk tank7 followed quickly (Priester 2000). The tank cooled the milk and enabled it to be stored at the farm for a couple of days. This meant that the milk had not to be picked up in cans everyday anymore. Instead a truck would pass by two or three times a week and empty the tank. Milk could now be transported in larger quantities which made the transportation process more efficient and cheaper. The reduction of labour per cow and the possibility to store larger quantities of milk at the farm for longer periods of time, stood at the basis of further developments towards production increase at dairy farms. The state recognised this and stimulated the widespread introduction of both. It for example subsidised the purchase of milk tanks for the first 600 farmers, who functioned as an example to other farmers. Halfway the 1970’s most farmers had bought a milk tank, and the state introduced a policy8 to motivate the last farmers to get a milk tank before 1981 (Priester 2000). Because dairy companies had the responsibility to transport the milk from farm to factory, they had a lot to gain from milk tanks as well and therefore often required their farmers to install one on their farm. This led to protests from farmers that did not like external parties imposing measurements on them and not rarely farmers who were not able to make the investment saw themselves forced to quit. For farmers, acquiring a milk tank was a lot more than just a purchase, as becomes clear in the work of Geert Mak (2006), who sketched the radical changes on the farm that were required for a milk tank to function properly. Besides buying the actual tank, a room had to be build next to the stable to place the tank in, roads had to be restructured to enable big trucks from the milk factory to enter the farm. All this required large financial investments and to earn these back, farmers had to produce more and therefore often buy extra land as well. Together with other agricultural developments, the milking machine and milk tank had strong effects on farmers’ way of life. Work at the farm became less labour intensive, which meant that people helping at the farm before were not needed anymore and farmers ended up alone. While the reduction of labour through mechanisation made people disappear from the farm, it also stood at the basis of increasing cattle numbers, as more cows could be managed in less time. This created a spiral of increasingly intensifying farming practices. More cattle required higher grass yields, which was realised through increased use of artificial fertilisers and more land. This meant that more grass had to be mown on more land, leading to increasingly large mowing machines, making it possible to mow the higher amounts of land quicker.

2.3. Ways of farming in a productionist agriculture The race in which farmers found themselves from the second half of the 20th century meant that they had to start focusing on making money. This was a significant change as before farmers were predominantly concerned with the ensuring continuity for the farm (Mak 2006). The ways of life of farmers and their families centred around the farm, and the continuity of this place, providing a safe space both for the current generation as well as for those to come, was more important than maximising financial gain. But in the race that was created over the second half of the 20th century, money started to play an increasingly important role in the lives of farmers. This not necessarily replaced the aim to secure a farm and livelihood for further generations, but it meant that farmers realised this only by focusing on the financial market. In order to survive, farmers had to generate enough income, which in this race meant

6 Own translation from Dutch. 7 The milk tank was founded in 1951 in the United States, the first one reached the Netherlands in 1959 (Priester 2000). 8 ‘Melktankbesluit’, running from 1976 to 1981 (Priester 2000). 23 that they had to make large financial investments that required loans from banks. While farmers had been relatively independent before, both financially as in their farming practices, now their lives became increasingly entangled with different parties. In my conversations with farmers it became clear to me that their ways of farming are still strongly influenced by the agricultural system they find themselves situated in. From their stories, I identify two underlying mechanisms that makes farmers lose their autonomy in deciding on their way of farming. At first the milk price is kept low, forcing farmers to produce more in order to keep making enough money to sustain the farm. The second mechanism is related to the fact that farmers have become entangled with banks and several other external parties that try to influence their farming practices. Auke Stremler is a farmer who, together with his wife, ran a regular, production-oriented farm until about 10 years ago. At that moment they got stuck and decided to farm extensively to get the farm out of its critical situation. I will explore their story elaborately in Chapter 7. Here, Auke illustrates what role the milk price had in shaping his practices as a regular farmer: Auke: What did we experience in the dairy industry? All costs have doubled. Fodder got more expensive, energy supply got more expensive, external labour costs became higher. Everything has become more expensive. The milk price however, on which we depend, did not follow. So what do you do? You have to aim for growth. You need to expand in order to cut the costs. This means that you start producing more in order to keep the increased costs in control. But because the milk price doesn’t follow, it is necessary to get a lot more milk from a cow, in order to reduce costs. Auke describes that while all costs that are involved in running a modern farm have doubled, the milk price remained stable. Making a living is fundamental to a farm and for regular farmers the only way to do this is to follow the path towards production increase. This system has created a generation of farmers that are primarily focused on production increase and money making. Klaas Oevering mentioned that is goes deeper than just ways of farming, as also the attitude of farmers is affected: “Ways of thinking focus on efficiency, and that stems totally from the cost price [milk price] story. […] That is really ingrained.” Farmers are required to be efficient in their costs and that has created a way of thinking in which reducing costs on the farm is prioritised over other elements around the farm. Money is leading in the agricultural system. A dependency on money made farmers also increasingly dependent on external parties, for example through loans. In the money-driven reality of those parties, a good farmer is a farmer that produces as much as possible with as few costs as possible. This is exemplified by Klaas’ experiences: “ […] the people that visit me at the farm, they also keep hammering on that. The guy from the bank, the accountant and the fodder supplier. Everyone is always focused on efficiency.” Auke saw how this approach affected farming practices more broadly. “At a certain moment”, he explains, “a tendency arose, emphasising growth, production increase, that stuff”. Farmers, including Auke himself, felt they had to join in order not to miss out. According to Auke, this attitude of following the advice of others, made them lose their independence: Auke: And this has changed a lot in agriculture, because a lot of other people, from outside, influence you, how they think you should do it. That they decide how you should farm. And from that, a lot of farmers lost their way. Very odd. […] They [other people] want to earn money from you. […] So that has changed a lot in agriculture, and in the farmer. Different parties that became involved in agriculture tried to shape farmers’ practices. Auke feels that this led farmers to follow the advice of others and think less about the way they themselves want to run their farm. A farmer has become deeply ingrained in a network of different actors, and due to this, their own input in their farming practices has decreased. Put

24 differently, farmers lost their freedom on their own farm. Hans Kroodsma is a young farmer and chairman of the agrarian nature collective (see Chapter 5) in his area. In the last role he meets a lot of farmers in his area, some are engaged with meadow birds, but most not. He also notices that modern farmers do not decide much themselves anymore: Hans: That is something that irritates me the last years, that farmers actually do not do much at their own farm anymore. Or at least, they do a lot, but they get counselling for this and counselling for that, someone else knows how to do it better. You’re really specialising, and managing a little is not bad in itself of course, but […] I think that farmers should take back some control again. Now we are controlled by other people, and that becomes worse and worse, up to the smallest details. The farmer still sits here [in an office], he has to manage his people, make sure the cows are fine and that’s it.’ Hans describes how farmers have become like managers. Farming has specialised more and more, and as a result the difference is now made in the details. Farmers do no longer have the knowledge and rely on external experts, telling them how things ‘ought to be’ according to the latest fashions. Farmers are purely focused on production and to maximise this, they follow the advice of experts. In this way, an essential part of farming is lost, Hans elaborates: “For me that is the freedom of farming, that you try things out and see if it works or not. You yourself should be able to control that a bit more again, I think.” In following the advice of others, Hans witnesses how farmers do not really think about their own farming practices anymore and accordingly lose connection to their land: Hans: […] if you don’t enter the land yourself anymore, well you have staff for that, to mow or to get the cows inside, yeah, than you miss that already. And yeah, than that [experiencing the land] is not the most important anymore. And then you let it go a bit and then you also can’t see anymore how beautiful it is, so ultimately it disappears into the background. Hans sketches a situation in which farmers have increasingly become detached to the land, because they themselves do not engage with it anymore. Instead, they have moved indoors and became managers in an office. I find it particularly interesting how Hans explains this process of detachment from the land and its inhabitants as something that happens gradually, maybe even unconsciously. Not just the farmers have moved indoors, they have taken their cows with them: Auke: For many farmers, at this moment, it is very modern to keep the cattle indoors. That is convenience: we [they] feed them the same every day, ‘customised fodder’, they call it. And yeah, then they mow everything at once, so the external workers have to come only once. […] Much easier. Auke states that farmers increase their efficiency further by keeping their cows inside. The land now only functions to produce fodder for cattle, collected from the land by external workers, who visit on set times to mow. All these developments are aimed at only one thing: maximising production. I have illustrated how, for a large part, this approach is the result of a system that leaves farmers with no other options. Auke, who found himself in a rare position where he got the chance to choose another path, described how hard it was to him and his wife to break out of this system9. Similarly, Klaas pointed out that he believes the ways farmers think is shaped by the system. As such, farmers convinced themselves that proper farming should be efficient, an idea which came forward in my conversations with other farmers as well. For Klaas this is also related to the decline of godwits and other birds, because meadow bird farming is seen as inefficient. Other farmers see it similarly. Bote de Boer, whose story I will elaborate upon in Chapter 6, said that a lot of farmers he encounters see meadow birds on

9 I will discuss Auke’s journey in more detail in Chapter 7. 25 their land as “a source of loss”. In a system that revolves around efficiency, Bote adds, “you shouldn’t have too many sources of loss”. The ways of thinking that is brought forward here is accurately described by María Puig de la Bellacasa (2015) as productionism, which she defines as an approach where ‘a logic of production overdetermines other activities of value’. Such a focus on production, she continues, ‘colonises’ other possible relations, for example those with other species (Puig de la Bellacasa 2015). This logic paves the way to reduce other inhabitants of the land as irrelevant and worthless: expelling them from the land is justified when production increase can be realised. Currently this happens at a large scale in the Dutch meadow landscape, illustrated by the decline of godwits and other meadow birds. In the following chapter I will argue against this view by opening up to godwits and the diverse ways they live in and adapt to diverse landscapes. From this, I present the lives of godwits as meaningful, driven by a desire to make themselves at home in the world (cf. Van Dooren 2014).

3. Sky Shepherds

Flocks comprising thousands of godwits swarm around the rice fields of the Senegal delta, in West Africa. Excitedly moving through the landscape, the birds are getting ready to take off and start migrating northwards, to their breeding sites in Western Europe. The Senegal delta is one of the areas where godwits spend their non-breeding season, foraging on leftover rice kernels spilled by local farmers (Kuiper et al. 2006). I will follow the godwits on their way up north, and in this, I will represent the godwits as ‘sky shepherds’10. As we will see, every generation of godwits shepherd their species’ migration routes – or flyways (cf. Boere & Stroud 2006) – as they adapt to changing conditions in the landscapes they inhabit. This means that the flyways that godwits inhabit today are shaped by the work of countless of generations.

3.1. Flyways Over time, godwits populations have shaped different flyways (see figure 9). The way godwits shape their flyways is heavily studied, but much is still unknown. The lives of migratory birds challenge traditional scientific frameworks and as such biologists studying them are often left with more questions than answers (Piersma 2011). Throughout this chapter, I will illustrate the godwit landscape as detailed as possible by drawing on the work of biologists and ecologists, based on current insights, which consists of both well-established facts and of knowledge that is still being developed.

3.1.1. Evolutionary paths Before following the godwits on their journey northwards, it is worth to take a broader look at godwits’ migratory trajectories and how they come about. Environments have been changing all the time, be it climatic conditions or physical landscapes. This means that, over generations, migrating birds have been confronted with different weather conditions and ecotopes. They need to be flexible therefore in adapting their flyways to sustain their ways of life and that of future generations. Biologists have long focused on DNA in order to explain evolutionary changes. However it takes countless generations for any changes to be noticeable in a species’ DNA. Genetic evolution definitely takes place in all species, however genetic evolution cannot explain many of the adjustments and developments taking place in birds on a much shorter time frame (see Piersma 2011). Put differently, if genetic evolution were the only way to respond to environmental change, godwits would have been extinct by now, as their ecotopes have changed quicker than their DNA. Following this line of reasoning, biologists fig- ured out that there must be different forms of evolutionary processes at play (see Piersma 2011). Nowadays, a range of evolutionary processes are recognised that enable species to adapt without genetic changes. In godwits more specifically, it was found that new generations of birds developed different migration pattern than their parents (Verhoeven et al. 2018). This indicates that young birds do not inherit migration routes from their parents in any way, either genetically or ‘culturally’, through learning (Helm et al. 2006). Instead, changes in environ-

10 I borrow this term from Charles Foster (2016), who used it in describing the migration of swifts. 27

Figure 9. Flyways of the three populations of the black-tailed godwit that breed in Europe. Source: Kuiper et al. (2006).

28 mental circumstances motivated young birds to take different routes than their parents. Biol- ogists explain such adaptations through ‘developmental plasticity’, a concept that describes how individual organisms at an early stage in life develop characteristics based on responses to environmental conditions. Once established, these characteristics are irreversible (Piersma & Drent 2003). A consequence of developmental plasticity is that, as soon as an individual has developed a specific migration trajectory, its ability to change it is limited regardless of changing environmental conditions. Thus, in the case of rapid environmental change, even though developmental plasticity may be problematic on an individual level, on the species level, it allows godwits to evolve new flyways quickly.11 Developmental plasticity in godwits plays a role in migration in an individual’s timing of departure and establishment of a flight route. As a result, individual godwits have more or less constant annual schedules, in which – limited – yearly differences are mostly the result of weather conditions and synchronisation with other individuals. But, because the conditions that individuals are confronted with early in life resonate through their further lives, there are considerable differences between individuals (Verhoeven et al. 2019). The differences in schedules between individuals is illustrated by the fact that some leave West-Africa already in November while others hang around until early March. Another example is the routes godwits take. At present, practically all individuals stop around the rice fields in Southern Europe. Here, farmers harvest the rice from their plantation in September and October, and start ploughing their fields around December to prepare it for the next season. The December ploughing brings the rice kernels that were spilled during harvesting to the top surface. Many new generations of godwits have adjusted their routes to seize the opportunity of foraging on the rice kernels to refuel and prepare for the second part of their trip northwards. Over the last couple of years, there has been a shift in the distribution of godwits. Before, godwits most commonly used rice fields in Spain as a stopover but now they visit the rice fields in Portugal more regularly. Verhoeven et al. (2018) explain this change in terms of changes in the rice field landscapes and their composition which could provide a motivation for young godwits in deciding to take a different route12.

3.1.2. Skyward While, back in the Senegal delta, the flock rolls through the landscape, godwits vocalise excitedly. For other birds – mostly other godwits but sometimes also other, similar sized, wader species – these vocalisations are likely an invitation to join in (Piersma et al. 1990). As a result, the group grows bigger in the weeks ascending departure. Travelling in groups saves energy during the flight, so more birds means less energy spilled. Deciding whether to leave or not is believed to be an interplay between birds’ physical conditions and environmental factors (Verhoeven et al. 2019). This has two important consequences. At first, the birds synchronise their schedules in preparation of departure. Exactly how such synchronisation comes about is unclear, but it is likely that the birds’ vocalisations and har- monised movements play a role in attuning their rhythms (Piersma et al. 1990, Helm et al. 2006). Preparing for a long distance flight, requires for the bodies of godwits to undergo a significant transformation. A few weeks before godwits intend to depart from their staging

11 Although it might be tempting to describe an inability to change migration routes after they have been established as ‘unintelligent’, Thom van Dooren (2014, p. 158) notes in relation to imprinting in Whooper Cranes, it is important not to relate such developmental processes as a ‘black-and-white measure of intelligence or a lack thereof’, as even bird species that we think of as intelligent, such as crows, have similar developmental mechanisms. 12 Some Portuguese rice fields were managed with the goal to provide a habitat for migratory birds, making them more attractive to godwits than other habitats in Portugal and Spain (Verhoeven et al. 2018). 29

Figure 10. A flock of godwits at a Portugese rice field. Source: Onno Steendam in Bos (2010). site, they double their food consumption to build up a fat reserve for the upcoming flight. This means that, when godwits start their journey, they have doubled their regular body mass. How- ever, while such explosive growth requires a well-developed digestive system, these are re- dundant on a non-stop flight over thousands of kilometres. It actually unnecessarily adds to their weight and in this way increases the energy costs of the flight. Consequently, in the last days before take-off, their digestive system degrades, while the heart and flying muscles grow bigger, creating a body that is functionally entirely geared towards long distance travelling. On their flight, godwits reach heights of 5000 meters, where the air is thin. Enduring intense activities in such thin air for a couple of days in a row requires godwits to transport oxygen very efficiently through their bodies. To make this happen, the blood of godwits thickens, enabling them to take up more of the scarce oxygen (Van de Kam et al. 2016). For godwits in a flock, these physical developments should happen synchronously so that they are ready for departure at the same time. Secondly, the departure time of a flock of godwits depends on environmental conditions, and they have to negotiate to decide when the circumstances are sufficient. Anticipating environmental conditions is crucial as godwits must cross the wide-stretched and dry Sahara. The Sahara is a considerable hurdle for birds on their way up north, and as such it is worth to wait for favourable conditions. It is unclear how capable godwits are as meteorologists, but biologists are convinced that environmental circumstances, such as the weather, do play a role in deciding whether to take off for migration (Verhoeven et al. 2019). How exactly such knowledge is created and communicated among hundreds of birds is not yet known and puzzles scientists to date (e.g. Conradt & Roper 2005).

3.2. In the meadows

3.2.1. Welcomed by farmers For a meadow bird farmer the most important time of the year is spring, when meadow birds move to their land to look for a place to nest. The return of birds is an exciting happening to farmers, as is reflected in Auke’s words: Auke: It is astonishingly beautiful, when in spring, early March, the first godwits come, and a bit earlier the lapwings, yes than I think, “oh there they are again”’. […] We also have a lot of swallows … they arrive in April, last year it was 17 April, normally 13 or 14 April, and then I think “oh it’s spring again!”. At these moments, I think ‘that’s wonderful, isn’t it’. […] Sometimes in the morning, it’s like an enormous choir, a whole lot of music: “twitter twitter twitter”. Auke illustrates how the arrival of birds around his farm announces the start of spring: a new season starts. Although farmers have most work to do when birds are present in the meadows, birds are present in their minds (and therefore shape farming practices) throughout the year, Auke describes: Auke: If they come back again, actually you sometimes begin in the start of February sometimes. […] The preparations start then. So yeah… And now [at the time of the interview, the end of August] I have Natuurmonumenten [the landscape conservation agency that lets him land] calling me: ‘do you keep an eye on the land, because it has to be short when the winter comes’. So, then it is only the end of August. So, it always has the attention […] So, in that way it is always around. Meadow birds are only present in farmlands for a limited time every year, but to Auke (and other farmers) meadow bird farming is a year-round occupation. As soon as the birds have left their lands – I visited the farmers about one to one-and-a-half month after the last birds were gone – preparations start already to welcome them again next spring.

3.2.2. Breeding As mentioned, when godwits arrive in the Netherlands they often hang around in groups – often consisting of a couple of hundred birds – at staging sites close to water such as the Oostvaardersplassen or the coast around Friesland (Beintema 2015). When the time ap- proaches to start breeding, each bird moves to the site where it bred the year before, to meet its breeding partner. Godwits form pairs that last a lifetime, but they only see their partners during the breeding season. As soon as a pair has raised their offspring, they go their separate ways. Because of this, every year the males and females have to find each other again, which is why individuals return to the location they bred the year before. Although godwits continue to arrive at breeding sites over a period of about one and a half month in March and April, paired birds arrive shortly after each other, within just a couple of days (Lourenço et al. 2011). On average, the male arrives about three days before the female. This is remarkable given that couples often winter several hundred kilometres away from each other and do not meet up before they arrive at their breeding site. Most likely it has something to do with meticulously synchronised rhythms, but how exactly godwit pairs achieve this synchronisation is not yet known (Gunnarson et al. 2004, Lourenço et al. 2011). When two partners meet, they re-establish their bond through a ritual in which the male dis- plays a kind of dance in front of the female. It starts with the male approaching the female carefully, as if to ask permission to come closer, after which he starts his moves. He holds his flapping wings in the air while walking around her, always facing in the female’s direction. While he walks in circles, he pulls his legs up high – sometimes his feet reach above his tail. 31

After this section of the dance is finished, the male flies up to several tens of metres in the sky. When he reaches the highest point, he pulls his wings together and drops himself down to just above the ground, then flies up again in order to repeat his dancing flight a couple of times. When he returns to the ground a last ritual takes place, which can consist of a variety of dances, in which the female also participates. When finally convinced to mate, the female bends down as an invitation to the male to ‘hop on’. The prelude is long, but the act is short. The male’s cloaca (birds’ genitals) ‘kisses’ that of the female and then it is done. The male loses his balance and falls off the female’s back.

3.2.3. Nesting When pairs meet in the meadows, they do not start breeding straight away. They often reside in the meadows for a while before they start their breeding preparations. While most pairs arrive in March, they usually start breeding halfway through April. The reasons behind this are unclear. The arrival date of a godwit couple in the meadows and the timing of their breeding is not correlated – when a pair arrives early in the season, they do not necessarily breed earlier. This puzzles ecologists, as their studies show that it would be beneficial for godwits to start breeding quicker (Schroeder 2010, Kentie et al. 2018). The earlier eggs are laid, the bigger they are (and vice versa, the later they are laid the smaller they get). Bigger eggs translate into a higher mass of chicks at birth. A chicks’ mass in turn is positively associated with its survival chances (Schroeder 2010). As long-term studies have shown that on average godwits have not changed their laying dates over time – a study on a Danish population for example found that laying dates have not changed significantly since 1930 (Meltofte et al. 2018) – ecologists believe that godwits are not able to change their breeding schedules, or perhaps only to a small extent (Kentie et al. 2018). Although pairs meet at their previous breeding location and spend most of the pre-breeding time there, they do not necessarily build their nest there. While they reside at their meeting place, birds often fly around the area to check for suitable habitats (Van den Brink et al. 2008). Ecologists suggest that habitat selection might be a skill that is developed over a birds’ lifespan (Kentie et al. 2014), but exactly how a godwit chooses a site is unknown. However, godwits most likely prefer to breed in small colonies close to other pairs of godwits and related meadow bird species, so that they can collaborate in defending their nests from predators (Beintema 2015). The male bird makes several depressions in the grass, in each of which he builds a nest. When finished, he shows the nests to the female. At every spot, the male goes into the nest first, after which the female follows. Here, the male performs a little display, while the female watches and examines the quality of the nest. After she has considered her options, the female decides in what nest she wants to lay her eggs. Like most wader species, the size of a clutch is fixed at four eggs (Beintema 1995), with a combined weight that equals one third of her body mass, which the female produces in only five days (Beintema 2015). Both parents contribute in brooding the eggs – the female often during the day, and the male at night – with which they start as soon as the clutch of four eggs is completed. Because the breeding starts when all eggs are laid, the embryos develop synchronously. In the later stages, the chicks produce prenatal sounds, which contributes to their synchronised development as well. The parents also hear these sounds, and it sparks great excitement among them. As soon as their chicks have hatched, parents clean the nest. They pick up the egg shells and fly away with them, to dump them somewhere in the meadows (Beintema 2015). The new-borns need some time to recover from their efforts – it takes them about a day of work to break out from their eggs – but within 24 hours after hatching they are ready to leave the nest and discover the meadows (Schekker- man & Boele 2009).

3.2.4. Growing a new generation Godwit chicks are precocial – they are able to walk around by themselves from the moment they are born. It is worth exploring some of the biological context behind this term before moving on, as it will help to understand the situation godwit chicks are born in more pro- foundly. In describing the lives of chicks in different bird species, biologists range them over a scale from totally dependent to totally independent after hatching, most species fall somewhere in between these extremes (Schekkerman 2008). Species that are entirely dependent on their parents’ care after birth are called altricial. Fully altricial chicks are born without feathers and with closed eyes and poorly developed muscles – as such, they need the care of their parents, who keep them warm, feed them, and so on. On the other end of the spectrum are precocial species, where chicks are completely independent and as such are able to walk around, regulate temperature and forage from birth. Godwits are mostly precocial but also have some traits that characterise altricial species. Because most of their characteristics fit precocial species, biologists refer to them as such (Schekkerman 2008). For chicks that are born in the middle of a meadow and therefore are very vulnerable to predators, a high level of independency is crucial in order to survive. If the new-borns would not be able to move around themselves, but instead lay in a nest in the grass while the parents were out looking for food, a godwits’ life would not be a long one, as predators are looming around. After the chicks leave the nest they start running around in the high grass. As the godwit parents do not have to collect food for their offspring, they have time to watch the surroundings to keep their young safe. Driving through meadow landscape in spring, it is not an unusual sight to see a godwit parent on a pole, keeping an eye out on the landscape for possible threats. When the parents notice something suspicious, they raise the alarm, upon which their chicks will bob down and hide in the grass. The presence of humans in the landscape is seen as a threat, and as such godwits call alarm when humans come closer. Conservationists make use of this when they try to count the number of birds with chicks in an area. They count the number of birds sound- ing alarm calls and use this to deduce how many parents still have chicks in an area, which is communicated to farmers and other people that work to care for the birds. When parents do not call, they have either finished raising their offspring or they have lost them. As precocial chicks, godwits have to collect their own meals from day one, although in the first days, parents guide their young to suitable foraging spots. The chicks spend four to five hours a day running and picking around in the grass to catch insects. In the first stages of their lives, godwit youngsters are not yet able to keep themselves warm, which is one of the traits that makes ecologists identify them not fully precocial. Although running after insects all day is quite an intensive activity, it actually cools them down. This means that the newly hatched chicks warm themselves up every once in a while by returning to their parents and crawling under their bodies. By the day they get better in keeping themselves warm and after about nine days, they no longer need their parents’ heat source (Beintema 2015). Godwit chicks grow quickly, within two weeks their legs are almost fully developed, and they are able to run around the grass at full speed. After two more weeks, the birds are able to fly. Growing fast is advantageous, as it enhances the capabilities of the chicks to escape a wide variety of predators. Moreover, as a species, godwits generally breed in relatively northern landscapes where the number of insects explodes during short period in spring. The rhythms of godwits are synchronised with the insect explosion, and therefore this strategy works well – chicks take advantage of the abundance of insects, eat a lot and grow fast. However, this strategy requires a lot of energy, making godwit chicks also more vulnerable to food shortages. Farming practices have impacted the distribution of insects in meadows significantly, giving chicks a hard time to find enough prey. The negative impacts of intensifying farming practices on insect populations has recently been established by studies that received wide attention (e.g. Hallmann et al. 2017, see also Kleijn et al. 2018). Consequently, a lot of chicks do not survive, which according to ecologists is the main driver of the loss of godwits. There are 33 multiple aspects of farming that contribute to this, but to godwit chicks, the amount of fertilisers is currently most relevant and I will limit myself to this issue here. Ecologists have found that the amount of fertilisers farmers spread on their land influences the size of insects as well as their abundance. When the amount of fertilisers is relatively low, the number of insects increases while their size decreases. Overall however, the biomass (the combined weight of insects) increases, and more food becomes available. This is one of the factors that allowed godwit populations to flourish in the first half of the 20th century. When the amount of fertilisers increases further, not only does the size of insects continue to decrease, but the number of insects too, leading to a reduction in biomass. This is what happened later in the 20th century. The amount of fertilisers is measured in kilogram nitrogen per hectare. At the end of the 20th century, the use of fertilisers in the Netherlands peaked at about 400 kilograms nitrogen per hectare. After the negative effects of fertilisers on the environment were recognised, measurements were taken to reduce their use, but in 2017 the amount of nitrogen per hectare grassland still averaged about 250 kilogrammes13, while the EU-average is just below 50 kilogrammes.14 Such large amounts of fertilisers have strong negative effects for fast-growing godwit chicks. Ecologists have calculated that, when 50 kilogrammes of nitrogen are used per hectare, a godwit chick that is almost able to fly, has to eat 2000 insects per hour. At 200 kilogrammes, insects have become smaller and the daily amount of insects a chick needs to get satisfied increased to 4000 to 5000, which means that chicks have to catch more than one insect per second. Unsurprisingly, this is undoable, especially given the fact that with the increase of fertilisers the number of insect has decreased. Insect decline thus leads to starvation among godwit chicks. But the effects reach further than that. A chick foraging in a meadow full of insects is able to make itself comfortable, rest and stay out of sight in the long grass as soon as its stomach is full. A chick that tries to collect its meal in a meadow with few insects, on the other hand, has to keep on running through the grass in order get its stomach full. This makes the chick easier to find for predators, also because it is likely to be exhausted and not as well able to flee from predators as well-fed chicks. Especially chicks that are born later in the season, when the number of insects is naturally lower, have a hard time and basically these all die, irrespective of other circumstances (Hooijmeijer, pers. comm.)15. The timing of mowing has a strong effect on the survival chances of godwits as well. A couple of decades ago, meadows where mown for the first time somewhere between late May and early June – when most godwit chicks already hatched. Over the last decades, mowing has increasingly moved forward – both as a result of intensifying farming practices and changing weather conditions – and now most meadows are mown around the same time chicks hatch (Kleijn et al. 2010). Although most farmers try to save nests with eggs or newly born chicks, the survival chances in freshly cut meadows are very low. Predators recognise the clumps of grass that are left by farmers as the location of a nest, and in this way, find the eggs easily. Chicks that walk around short grass are an easy catch as well, because they have nowhere to hide. As will become clear in the coming chapters, this problem is also brought up a lot by farmers. But even without predators, chicks born in recently mown meadows have low chances to survive, as the number of insects decreases dramatically after meadows are mown. Although this effect only lasts a couple of days, it is detrimental for new-born godwits born in the middle of a freshly cut grass (Schekkerman & Beintema 2007). Altogether, these developments driven by the process of agricultural intensification that I described in the previous chapter, make that the number of newly born godwits that reach maturity is consistently too

13 www.agrimatie.nl/SectorResultaat.aspx?subpubID=2232§orID=2245&themaID=2282&indicatorID=2770 14 ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Agri-environmental_indicator_-_gross_nitrogen_balance 15 References to ‘Hooijmeijer, pers. comm.’ refer to an interview conducted at 11-11-2018 with Jos Hooijmeijer, who is an conservation ecologist studying godwits at the University of Groningen. 34 low to ensure a stable population. In 2018 for example only 6.500 chicks survived, whereas ecologists estimate that 13.600 would have been necessary for the population to not decrease further16.

3.2.5. Departure As soon as godwit parents are finished breeding they move to staging sites along the coast, where they gather in groups and prepare to fly southwards, to return to their non-breeding areas. Like the north-ward migration, individual godwits have different migration tactics and routes when they migrating south-ward. At least three different patterns have been identified (Hooijmeijer et al. 2013). Some individuals decide to fly directly from the Netherlands to West-Africa, while others take a pause in the rice fields of Portugal and South Spain before continuing their journey towards West-Africa. A last group of birds stops in Portugal and Spain as well, but for them this is the final destination, as they spend their whole winter here. While the great majority of birds always have spent their non-breeding seasons in West-Af- rica, over the last decades, an increasing number of birds decide to stay in Southern Europe17, which shortens the distance that individuals fly per season by 6.000 kilometres. How these decisions are made is unclear, but ecologists expect that the birds might be motivated by the increasing amount of rice fields in Spain and Portugal, while the amount of suitable habitat in the wetland of West-Africa is decreasing (Kentie et al. 2017). Either way, the fast increase illustrates once again how godwits are able to adapt their ways of life in just a couple of generations. In contrast to other species breeding in the meadows, godwits do not start a new nest if their first attempt has failed. As a result, they often migrate to their non-breeding sites soon after they lost their eggs or chicks. Because over the last years, godwit parents have an increasingly hard time to raise their offspring successfully, birds now leave the meadow landscape on average about a month earlier and in this ways also arrive in the West-African rice fields earlier (Hooijmeijer, pers. comm.). While birds that have bred successfully tend to arrive when rice plants are already mature, birds that failed breeding arrive when the new farming season has just started and the rice seeds have just been sown. This is a problem to rice farmers, as godwits eat the seeds, or damage the young plants by wading through the fields (Van der Kamp et al. 2008). There are stories about rice farmers who have killed godwits in reaction, but the scale of this is too small to affect the overall population. It illustrates however how godwits, through their flyways, connect different landscapes, not visibly connected from a human ‘earthbound’ perspective (cf. Reinert 2015).

16 https://www.vogelbescherming.nl/actueel/bericht/slecht-broedseizoen-voor-grutto. Accessed 14-04-2019 17 In the end of the 1980’s 4% of the godwits spend the winter months in Southern Europe, in 2011 this was 23% (Márquez‐ Ferrando et al. 2014) 35

4. Loss of godwits in a ruptured landscape

In the previous chapter I presented the story of godwits based on the efforts of conservation ecologists and other scientists to ‘become sensitive’ to godwits. Just like bird workers, I at- tempted to ‘inhabit’ the meadow landscape from a godwit perspective (cf. Lorimer 2007, Reinert 2015). Here I will shift my focus to look at the way ecologists and farmers relate to the godwit and the loss of godwits. In discussing humans in my thesis so far, I have focused on their role in changing ecosystems. I have looked at the ways human actions impacted the population of godwits in the landscape both positively and negatively. But in looking at the – imminent – extinction of godwits, it is important to not just analyse the human as a driver of this process, but also to look at the ways humans experience the loss of a species to which their lives are entangled (Rose et al. 2017).

4.1. Setting the debate Every spring, when godwits arrive in the Dutch landscape, discussions about changes in the structure of the landscape flare up in several media. People have seen the landscape changing over the last decades, and do not recognise the landscape or feel connected to it anymore. Recently, the term ‘landschapspijn’ (landscape pain) was coined to give name to the emotions that are felt. Godwits are seen as an essential part of the Dutch meadow landscape and their loss has become an indicator and symbol of what is wrong with the landscape as it is today. The debates mostly revolve around the role of agriculture in changing the landscape. This is not surprising, given the rapid intensification of agriculture over the last decades. Although the agricultural sector in general is criticised, discussions tend to place responsibility on farmers primarily. Their practices have the most direct and visible consequences on the landscape and its inhabitants, and as such, farmers are often portrayed as the main drivers of the problems. The following quote from a man that jumped up from the audience at the end of a panel discussion on the intensification of agriculture in relation to landscape pain, illustrates how fierce debates can get: Can I say a last thing? The farmer is still presented here as a kind of victim. That farmer, for decennia, from the 1970’s, has destroyed Friesland and made it clinically dead. That has been told by everyone for decennia, biologists and everyone. But it continued and continued. And up to today, nothing has improved! The godwits are just dying … Not a single flower is able to grow anymore, the whole province has been made clinically dead. The panel discussion which included many actors, a politician, an ecologist and others was filmed and broadcasted on Vimeo18. Although later on, the man would nuance his words and add that it is not just the farmers that do wrong, and that not necessarily all farmers are to blame, his words were honest and heartfelt. They come from a man that no longer recognises the landscape he loves so much. The man also notes that biologists have warned decades long

18 Taken from: ‘Voorbij de landschapspijn - Hoeveel hebben wij over voor het Nederlandse landschap?’ (2017-06-20) https://vimeo.com/222417485. Accessed on 24 March 2019. 36 for the ways farming practices affect the landscape, driving the decline of godwits and other life. The words spoken by this man illustrate how farmers are played out against biologists/ecologists/conservationists and godwits or nature in general. Such simplified categorisations create tensions between groups and create ruptures (cf. Reinert 2015) that can become an obstacle in working towards a ‘capacity for response’ (cf. Van Dooren & Rose 2016). Moreover, in both groups people are found who feel loss in relation to the decline of godwits, and contribute in the work done to save them. In this chapter, I will exemplify how some conservation ecologists and farmers relate to the loss of godwits. I have no time to go into this debate in full detail, but rather, I will draw here on a few examples, to illustrate that such responses – although often understandable given the emotions that are felt – can be damaging. I will start with conservation ecologists. My focus is on the way they represent godwits based on these findings. After this, I will turn to the meadow bird farmers I interviewed and look at how they define the decline of godwits. I will investigate what drivers of godwit decline the farmers identify, as well as how they experience the loss of godwits.

4.2. Ecologists as spokespeople

4.2.1. Rendering godwits visible Hugo Reinert (2015) notes that one way field workers represent their subjects is by making them visible through various media. In the context of godwits this happens too. As an example I will discuss an interview with Egbert van der Velde, a conservation ecologist, who in a local newspaper discussed both the suffering of the birds he encounters in his work and his own suffering in being confronted with this. This interview was published a few months before my interviews with farmers, and they had all read the article or heard of it. The photo that accompanied the interview set the tone (see figure 11). The picture shows Van der Velde holding a dead godwit – according to the caption the bird has been “mown to shreds”. The bird is held by the wings, its head hanging down, almost resembling a crucifix. The conservation ecologist explains how, in his work, he is regularly confronted with death: “I can hear it, when godwits lost their chicks. They cry […]”. He continues his story and shares how much it hurts him to find godwits, birds he has felt connected to from a young age, mown to dead by farmers: “I am 36, but I feel like an old guy, full of loss”. He goes on to state that meadows are a “green hell”, and “farmers and birds do not go together anymore”.19 The days after the initial interview, the comments section of the newspaper exploded with both positive and negative responses. A couple of days later, the newspaper commented on the debate the article had evoked by publishing an article with the header “Polarisation does not help the godwit”. A photo of a godwit on a pole, with the contours of a tractor in the background, accompanied the article (see figure 12). The caption of the photo read: “Godwit on pole, while in the background chicks are mown to death”20. Willem Spoelstra is a 64 year old farmer who loves meadow birds from when he was a kid and has also been involved in promoting meadow bird farming among other farmers. He has followed the discussions in the newspaper closely and sent in multiple letters himself. He found the writings very negative and, he says: “That frustrated me, and at a certain moment, it is better to put it into words”. Willem explains his main frustration: “All those scientists

19 Leeuwarder Courant 23 June 2018 20 Leeuwarder Courant 26 June 2018 37

Figure 11. Photo published together with the interview in the ‘Leeuwarder Courant’, showing the conservationist holding a godwit young that is ‘mown to shreds’. Source: Leeuwarder Courant, 23 June 2018. Figure 12. Article published in the ‘Leeuwarder Courant’. The header states ‘Polarisation does not help the godwit’. The caption below the photo reads ‘Godwit on pole, while in the background chicks are mown to death’. Source: Leeuwarder Courant, 26 June 2018.

[…], well everything that goes wrong in nature is the farmers’ fault”. But he sees things more complex: Willem: [Farmers] are a group to that is easy to get. And there is a grain of truth in it. Mowing machines are getting bigger, everything has to go fast, fast, fast. Yeah, that is because the farmer often stands alone, or he might have one helper, that depends on how big the farm is. But it is not like the old days anymore, when a farmer had 40 cows and four helpers. Now he stands alone, with 100 cows. That is the difference. And that is not because he likes it, but because he can’t afford any helpers from the income of the farm, that’s it. This concern is a reflection on the developments of agriculture in the Netherlands as I outlined in Chapter 2. Willem agrees that agriculture has a role in the decline of birds, but that it is too easy to conclude that farmers are the drivers of this decline. His words – “not because he likes it” – imply that Willem is not very happy with the situation of farmers either. Farmers are steered into a direction that leaves farmers with less freedom than before. As discussed already in Chapter 2.3, farmers lost the autonomy to choose alternative paths that would have kept their meadows hospitable to diverse forms of life that do not contribute to dairy production. Willem is careful not to relate the developments in agriculture directly to godwit loss, because although the situation farmers find themselves in is not ideal to him, “that doesn’t mean you can just wipe out godwits”. Instead, Willems’ point is that these changes made it harder for farmers to leave room for godwits and other meadow birds in their farming practices. For almost 20 years now, Willem has therefore led initiatives that promote awareness about meadow birds amongst farmers in the area, in the hope to increase their efforts in conserving them. Initially he noticed that his efforts had positive effects, but now he feels his message is less well received: Willem: Well, I have the feeling that, because of all the negative media attention, the enthusiasm has weakened among the members, unfortunately. And […] now a new generation of farmers arises, and well, because of all the negative attention and media, I notice that there are farmers that say “all this negative nagging, I quit”. The farmers Willem describes feel that they are unfairly blamed for the loss of godwits and as a result turn away from meadow birds. Other farmers shared similar experiences of farmers that were discouraged from making an effort to conserve birds, when they are described as the root of the problem. This shows how the ambition to render a subject visible, risks creating oppositions between groups of people that are inextricably connected to preserving godwits and other life in the landscape.

4.2.2. Representing godwits politically Not only do conservation ecologists render godwits and their suffering visible, they also represent the interests of godwits politically. This means that they make themselves ‘spokespeople’ for godwits and in this sense defend their interests in the landscape. In doing so, bird- workers give the godwit perspective a constitutive role in this landscape and from this suggest policy measures to shape a landscape optimal for godwits (cf. Reinert 2015). I will look at this form of representation here, on the basis of an interview I conducted with Jos Hooijmeijer, a conservation ecologist at the University of Groningen. Ecological studies clearly indicate that the decline of godwits is driven by poor chick survival. As discussed in Chapter 3.2.3., the number of chicks reaching maturity is structurally too low. The survival of adult godwits on the other hand, Jos Hooijmeijer notes, has not changed since the start of the 1980’s, when godwits were still abundant in the landscape. From this he concludes that the drivers of godwit loss should be sought in the Dutch landscape, and that the threat of other factors, like bird hunters in the south of Europe, are almost negligible. 39

For ecologists it is clear that intensified farming practices lie at the basis of godwit loss, as they have changed ecological relations in a way that made the landscape unfavourable to godwits and other birds. Jos Hooijmeijer describes the present Dutch rural landscape as “sterile”. It has become “a kind of zoo, where we have some flower pots with a couple of birds”. He and other ecologists therefore argue that the structure of the landscape as a whole needs to change in order to become suitable for godwits again. The current efforts in agricultural landscape management are the best that can be achieved within the existing system but to Jos Hooijmei- jer these efforts are only able to slow down the godwits’ path towards extinction: “the reality we face is that at regular farms, the decline is about 10% per year, and at the reserves and the farmers that do it really well it is 0 to 5%”. Anything else than a fundamental change in land use – for instance the forms of agricultural landscape management that happen now – is just “buying time”. The work that currently is done to save godwits, no matter how careful it might be, is simply not sufficient to stop godwit loss. Jos Hooijmeijer notes that, although farmers are often able to make godwits breed successfully on some parts of their meadows “about 80% of the land for chicks, that is under agricultural landscape management, is not suitable to chicks.” The structure of the meadows is not good enough for chicks to find sufficient food. So, while farmers might postpone mowing on parts of their land, which enables godwit parents to successfully hatch their eggs, these plots are often still unsuitable to young chicks. The grass grows too fast21, so when the chicks hatch it has grown too long for them to move through. As a result, parents often guide them to other parts of land to forage. But here the grass generally is too short, as it is not maintained especially for birds and therefore chicks are not able to find enough food and moreover they cannot to hide from predators. To prevent this, Jos Hooijmeijer points out, chicks need an interconnected sequence of plots where they can move around safely. Moreover, these plots should be rich in herbs that attract insects, providing chicks with sufficient amounts of food. The extent to which predators form a threat towards godwits is also heavily debated. As will become clear in the next section, especially some meadow bird farmers see predators as the main driver of godwit decline. There is consensus about the fact that the number of predators has increased over the last decades. But to ecologists it is clear that higher predation rates are the result of intensifying agricultural practices that changed the structure of the landscape and the relations in it. For example, because the water level in the meadows has been lowered, to allow for more efficient management (see Chapter 2.1.2.), the landscape became accessible to so called ‘ground predators’ like foxes and beech martens, not found there before. Because of the landscape changes, godwits now group together in the few places that are still suitable to them. Conservation policies also focus on these areas, and in this way, they rein- force the clustering of godwits. Ecologists point out that such an approach leads to a rural landscape that is stripped down of most of its life, except for a couple of carefully maintained reserves. This makes life very easy for predators, Jos Hooijmeijer explains: “so we create a couple of biodiversity hotspots and afterwards we get mad at the predators, because they find these places and go nuts”. Moreover, he continues to explain that the alternative prey that used to live in the landscape are already lost, so the ecological basis of nature is gone. Jos Hooij- meijer acknowledges that farmers are right in pointing out that predators have a large impact on the populations of godwits and other birds, but adds that they are not the root of the problem: “you can scapegoat the predators, that is very comfortable, because than you did not do it yourself […] but you need to ask why they can have such an impact”. For ecologists like Jos Hooijmeijer, the answer is clear: intensification of agriculture led to changes in land use,

21 Farmers are required to spread the manure from their cattle on their own land. This motivates farmers to spread more manure on their land in order to get rid of the manure and prevent a fine. As a result, the grass grow quicker and taller. 40 which made the landscape less friendly towards godwits on the one hand and more friendly towards species that predate on them on the other. The Dutch Society for the Protection of Birds (‘Vogelbescherming’ in Dutch) positions themselves in relation to predators on the basis of ecologists’ representation of godwits and other meadow birds. Their standpoint on the threat of predators towards meadow birds reads as follows: Predation can be a problem, but is not the main cause of the decline of meadow birds. This is stated by numerous scientific studies. The biggest problem for meadow birds is the vanishing of suitable habitat due to the increasingly intensified practices on the farmlands. In order to save meadow birds it is therefore an absolutely necessity that there will be more flower rich meadows where chicks are safe and are able to find sufficient food. […] In meadow bird areas of good quality where there is a lot of predation nevertheless, measurements can be taken that make sure that different predator [species] cannot enter the area. […] Vogelbescherming sees actively fighting native predators, like foxes and crows, as the very last step.22 Vogelbescherming recognises that predators provide a threat to meadow birds, but the real danger, they point out, comes from land use changes, driven by intensifying farming practices. The primary solution, therefore, should be changing the structure of the landscape which allows more suitable habitat for meadow birds. “Actively fighting […] predators”, mostly through culling, which is proposed by a lot of farmers and others, is not desirable and only an option in high quality habitats were other measurements to prevent predation have not worked.

4.2. Farmers’ perspective The fact that godwits and other meadow birds are in decline is uncontested among the farmers I have interviewed. All of them also acknowledge that the changes in the physical landscape as described in Chapter 2 play a role in the decline of birds. But how these landscape changes in the end affect the population of meadow birds is more contested. Over the last decades, farmers have seen that species like the fox and beech marten move into the landscape, as for example is illustrated by Willem Spoelstra, who is in his 60’s and has seen the number of predators increase over time: Willem: Those predators, well yeah, you can name them: the fox, the crow, the buzzard, the stoat – the beech marten!, because that also becomes an enormous threat here. When I was young, very, very seldomly I encountered a bird of prey: “wow a bird of prey!”. And watch it now, on every pole sits a buzzard. Beech martens did not exist here, foxes neither. And now foxes are everywhere. Or well, they manage to keep them under control here [through culling]. But the beech marten is an endangered, or no, a protected species. [… ] But they are everywhere. When I drive home at night from the village, sometimes I see them escaping left and right. And well, they plunder the whole night, right. They just pick the godwits from their nests. In his younger days, Willem encountered predators only rarely – and when he did so, it even sparked some excitement – but nowadays there are multiple predator species that he sees regularly. In all my conversations with farmers, the issue of predation came forward, and all farmers recognise that their numbers – and their threat to godwits – increased. Above, we have seen that also among ecologists there is no doubt that high predation rates have indeed become a threat godwit populations. But over the last years, predation has become a hotly debated

22 https://www.vogelbescherming.nl/over-ons/standpunten/standpunt-predatie-weidevogels. Accessed 16-05-2019 41 topic. As shown above ecologists emphasise that the rise of predators is only a symptom of changes in a larger and closely interconnected ecological network brought about by intensified farming. From this perspective, fundamental changes in farming practices and the structure of the landscape are needed to solve the problem. Most farmers, although they often acknowledge that landscape changes have a role in increasing predation rates, see predators themselves as the problem and propose solutions focused solely at reducing predators, mostly through culling. Because some ecologists represent godwits in the (local) media regularly, all farmers were familiar with them and their views. As shown above, because ecologists critique general farming practices as well as current forms of landscape management, the attitude of farmers who have a more distant relation to ecologists has become quite negative. Like Willem Spoelstra, whose views I brought forward in response to the newspaper discussions above, many other farmers feel that their efforts are not appreciated, even though they work hard to conserve godwits. Also Hans Kroodsma, who in his role as chairman of an agricultural nature collective meets a lot of farmers, brought up the negative effects of polarisation and sees how farmers due to this sometimes turn away from “that meadow bird stuff”. The farmers I visited and who work to conserve meadow birds often stress the same problems as ecologists. Gert Jan’s anal- ysis of the landscape is an example of this: Gert Jan: See, you create a habitat for meadow birds, and they all cluster in this area. And outside of this, it is a desert, that is how you should view it. So, the McDonalds is here. Everything that is a predator, is drawn to these areas. It is really straightforward actually. So, we need to hope that the meadow birds spread more, to reduce the pressure by predators. Gert Jan also sees that godwits are now required to cluster in small parts of land. This makes them vulnerable to predators, who undo his work to create habitats for meadow birds. But where ecologists propose to change the landscape fundamentally, Gert Jan sees this as unrealistic. According to him and several other farmers I talked to, the landscape has changed in relation to new ways of farming and this is just the way this is. He does not believe that the structure of the landscape will change fundamentally as “these times are gone”. Instead, for Gert Jan – and a lot of other farmers – the key to save meadow birds lies in reducing the number of predators directly (through culling). Some other farmers shared similar thoughts, and I noticed these farmers tend to describe them in terms like “dumb killers” that “plunder nests all night”, and senselessly “bite off the heads of 50 godwits”. In the way farmers represent these species, they become pests (cf. Woods 2000). Animals are always portrayed as pests in a specific context. Foxes and beech martens for example, were absent in the landscape up to a few decades ago, but now they are abundant, which for some farmers makes them out of place. Moreover, in many ways these predators refuse to fit in and challenge the farmers’ ordering of the landscape (cf. O’Gorman & Van Dooren 2016). For most of my interviewees, if predators are eradicated and more farmers are motivated to reserve some of their land and time to create habitats for godwits and other meadow birds, they will be saved. Gert Jan, for example is optimistic about the future: Gert Jan: If I look at how many projects there are […]. Everywhere suitable biotopes for meadow birds are made. […] But the farmer has to think about it. And as I say, the predation has to be handled. If the predation continues without limits, then the farmers’ motivation is gone in the end. To Gert Jan, and several other farmers I met, if more farmers think about birds and if predators are controlled, godwits have a future. As we saw above, ecologists view the isolated work that is done by farmers as insufficient and as just “buying time”. Moreover, they add that a large 42 majority of the land managed to save birds is not good enough for them to raise new generations in. Taken together, it becomes clear that ecologists and farmers have a shared goal – to prevent godwit extinction – but that their views about the way this is achieved are not necessarily shared. Parallels can be drawn here with Hugo Reinert’s (2015) study to the relation between conservationists and local communities in Norway working to save a particular goose species. The conservationists, in understanding the landscape from a ‘goose perspective’, created ruptures in the relation between groups of human stakeholders. A similar process is going on here in the conservation of godwits. Ecologists look at the landscape from a godwit perspective and, based on their findings, they propose policies that are most profitable to godwits – a radical change in land use. Most farmers on the other hand, consider what they can do for birds from their situatedness in the agricultural landscape, which is making their own land as hospitable to birds as possible. What motivates them in this, and how their work looks like, is what I will turn to now in the coming chapters.

5. Meadow bird farmers

In this chapter I will focus on the lives and practices of meadow bird farmers more closely. What has intrigued me in the interviews with the farmers is what motivates them to care for meadow birds. Where does their willingness come from to dedicate their energy and compe- tence to creating spaces for godwits at the cost of income? How does their work of care look and how does their concern for and dedication to godwits affect them as farmers living in a productionist agricultural system?

5.1. Views on regular farming Willem Spoelstra is a farmer in his 60’s, and over his lifetime he has noticed how farming practices changed radically and how this affected godwits negatively: Willem: When I was young, everywhere [the land] was mown by horse […], so that went at a snail’s pace. Well, how fast is a horse, about five kilometres per hour? So birds that wanted to move had a lot of time to fly away […], now a tractor passes by with 50 kilometres per hour that mows 9 meter at once, while the horse maybe mowed 1.5 [metres]. So that is an enormous difference. It used to be much slower back in the days, so the birds had more chance. Willem sketches the consequences of the mechanisation of agriculture to godwits. The way farmers managed their land before enabled godwits to respond to the farmers and move to a safe spot. The new technologies that entered the land in the process of agricultural intensification made it harder for farmers to look out for birds in the meadows and also gave birds less time to respond to approaching machines. Other farmers shared similar experiences. Bote de Boer for example, explained how the increasing size of mowing machines has consequences for a farmers’ relationship to meadow birds: Bote: When I was a young boy, I already found the presence of meadow birds [in the land] wonderful, but back then, in my experience of that time, there were [a lot of] meadow birds and they were always upset with the tractor driver. That were still open tractors, and almost everywhere were meadow birds, also with young. […] And then the meadow birds, they got mad of course, because the young were not yet big enough. And you saw them walking around, the young. The machines farmers used in the land were relatively small and open, which made that a farmer was in close contact with the birds when he managed the land. Bote describes that he saw them when he mowed the land, and as mowing machines were small, it was also easy to mow around the nests. But now, with machines that cover about 9 to 12 metres, farmers – or the external workers they hire – mowing the land often do not see the birds and their nests. And when they do, it is much harder to mow around the nest. For Klaas Oevering it is clear that the intensification of farming practices is the main driver of meadow bird decline. He also sees an undeniable correlation between those practices and the structure of the physical landscape: Klaas: So yeah, the deep drainage of water [which results in low water levels], reduces the food availability, right. In spring, the [meadows] are dry earlier. And it stimulates 44

the growth of grass, because the soil gets warmer. […] So the farmers they accelerated enormously. The amount that is taken off [grass yields] the soil has increased a lot. Ear- lier and faster and more and more often. And that bird still has the cycle he had earlier. Maybe it has adapted a little bit, a week or so, but it is not able to keep up anymore since a long time ago. Klaas describes how the current cycles of farmers and meadow birds clash. He illustrates this with his observations of farmers in the neighbourhood: “Sometimes we experience that a farmer has to mow around the same nest twice, because the grass has grown so much.” Be- cause intensified farming practices and changes in the structure of the landscape made grass grow faster, farmers now mow their land earlier and more often. Godwits cannot adjust to that, and as a result, farmers mow when birds are still breeding or their chicks are still very young. Also Bote de Boer sees this problem and he tells me that farmers nowadays mow every four weeks. Because of the amount of fertilisers farmers spread on their land, the grass grows so quick that in four weeks, the grass is long enough to be mowed again. Bote describes how farmers calculate this already at the start of the year: Bote: […] farmers make appointments at the start of the year, 1st of April, with contrac- tual workers: “you come then and then and then.” They have about four weeks in between. And then they say, “the first time it was a bit too long, the second time a bit too short, but well, we planned it like this, so that’s it” Farmers work according to fixed and rigid schedules, established at the start of the year. For birds trying to raise their young, the fast pace of farmers is critical, as Bote says, because “the schedule of a meadow bird does not fit in between that”. In this tight time frame, it is impossible for birds to complete their nests, Bote continues. After mowing, the land is fertilised, and then it takes a couple of days before meadow birds can move back to the land to build their nests: Bote: So a week after spreading it [the fertilisers], it [the grass] would have grown enough. So then birds started laying their eggs, that takes about five or six days, and then they start brooding. And then they need 20 days to breed. Well, before then, the mowing machine is back already. That is too late, too bad. The birds are too late. So, like this it does not work anymore. End of story. “Too late, too bad” – with these words Bote underlines the observation of Klaas Oevering that regular farmers have accelerated and their rhythms do not allow for meadow birds to finish their nests. But while these refer to regular farmers, who do not particularly care for meadow birds, Bote also sees problems when he looks at farmers that do work to save meadow birds. These farmers leave parts of the land untouched when birds breed there, but Bote explains that although “they have meadow bird management, and they also try their best, it is not enough to raise chicks. The plots are too flat, it is too dry.” As a consequence, he describes how the chicks are not able to find food, and are also often caught by predators (see also Chapter 3.2.3.). From this, he concludes: “my vision is, you need to do it with full focus, and exactly right”. Klaas Oevering made a similar observation. He sees that also some regular farmers think about birds while mowing – they do not want to kill them – but that this is not enough to give chicks a reasonable chance to survive: Klaas: Very often I see, and I get a little depressed when I see that, I see a whole plot of land, about 40 hectares, and everything is mown. […] And then I see some clumps of grass in which apparently a nest lies. That is very nice of that farmer, but if the chicks hatch, where should they go? There is nothing to eat. Either they die of hunger, or they need to cross a completely empty piece of land towards hopefully a flower rich grassland somewhere near. But well, as soon as they get there, there are so many birds of prey and

I don’t know what else. Moreover, that chick is probably weakened, because it has no food on that empty land. That is hopeless, despite the good intentions of that farmer. Klaas illustrates here how even though some regular farmers feel connected to birds, and therefore try their best to save them, in the end do not do enough to actually create a habitat that is enough for chicks to survive. The chicks are born in a clump of grass in the middle of an empty meadow. Subsequently, in their quest for food, chicks are often taken by a bird of prey. Other farmers I interviewed shared similar observations. Although for some others, this problem could also be solved by eradicating predators from the landscape, Klaas sees that more careful meadow bird management is needed to give godwit chicks more and their predators less chance. I will now move on to explore more closely how the work of meadow bird farmers looks like.

5.2. Agricultural landscape management In the current agricultural system, regular dairy farming is only rewarded through milk production. Other ways of farming that are less focused on production generally reduce yields and thereby a farmers’ income from milk (although there are exceptions to this of which I will give an example in Chapter 7). To compensate for the reduced income of meadow bird farmers, subsidies have been introduced that reward different forms of landscape management. Most of the farmers I met stated that the option to apply for subsidies contributed to their decision to experiment with meadow bird management on their land. Their love for godwits and other meadow birds was there already, but before it was hard to do a lot for them, because it led to production and therefore financial losses. Since the introduction of subsidies financial losses are – at least partly – compensated. Willem Spoelstra has been actively involved in promoting meadow bird management among farmers since the year 2000, when the first substantial subsidies started. He noticed how subsidies opened farmers up to meadow birds: Willem: The state made subsidies available, and they looked for farmers […] to participate in this. And that is how it grew. […] So then we organised promotions and information and excursions in order to make farmers more aware, like “isn’t this something for you to participate in?” […] A lot of farmers, or maybe even most of them, were interested, also because subsidies came available to postpone mowing or increase the water level. […] A lot of young farmers said: “[…] Is this a lapwing or a godwit?” For me that was logical, that it was the one or the other, but it was like that. Thanks to the subsidies, Willem has seen an increasing interest in meadow birds among farmers. Some farmers, like Willem himself, have always been engaged with meadow birds, and form this, it was self-evident to care for them. Other farmers however, did not know much about meadow birds and were initially not interested in them, but because of the subsidies that came available, farmers like Willem managed to get them on board. Since 2016, subsidies are distributed by agrarian nature collectives, which operate on a local level and are regulated nationally by BoerenNatuur, an umbrella organisation for agrarian collectives.23 In 2016 about 6.300 farmers were members in an agrarian nature collective, and thus in one way or another involved in landscape management. Farmers interested in landscape management become member of the collective in their region and apply for subsidies there. In total 40 such agrarian nature collectives are active nationally. Klaas Oevering is board member of one of the collectives, and describes the different ‘packages’ that are relevant to meadow bird farmers:

23 BoerenNatuur roughly translates as farmers’ nature. More information about their role in agricultural landscape management can be found here (in Dutch): https://www.boerennatuur.nl/wat-doen-we/agrarisch-natuur-en-landschapsbeheer 46

Klaas: There is light management, which is brood management, which means thinking about the broods. And then it varies from postponed mowing, in [early] June, until late, about 22 June, or herb rich grasslands, where only ‘ruige mest’ and ‘stromest’ [mild fertilisers that support a diverse range of herbs] are allowed. And high water level and ‘plas-dras’, that are small ponds, or pools in the land. And then there is ‘greppel-plas- dras’ where there are ditches [‘greppel’ in Dutch] in the land which are filled with water. There is a whole range of possibilities. Klaas describes the different management options from least to most demanding. The most basic packages concern leaving space around the nests, followed by postponed mowing, which tries to work around the clash of schemes between farmers and birds that has emerged over the last decades. High- effort management packages include changes in the structure of the meadow, for example by creating a species-rich vegetation or elevating water levels. The more demanding management packages are, the more they reduce the yield of grass. Therefore, the sum of the compensation is established per package, based on estimated loss of grass yield. From this, high-effort management packages receive higher compensations.24 Farmers that receive subsidies are controlled regularly, to check if they live up to the work they have com- mitted themselves to.25 The compensations farmers receive for their efforts are often a financial necessity for them to be able to continue their practices. Because the subsidy system pre- scribes forms of management that, if conducted properly, are rewarded financially, it shapes farmers’ meadow bird practices. Most farmers are very dependent on the subsidies and hence the system determines what farmers can and cannot do in their work for meadow birds. This frustrates some famers as it makes them feel restricted in their care for birds. Gert Jan, for example, criticises the way his efforts are controlled. He thinks the inspections are focused more on controlling whether farmers stick to the rules, and not on the actual effects of his work on meadow birds: Gert Jan: I have signed for packages at the collective. So I have ‘plas-dras’, ‘herb-rich’ and ‘postponed mowing’ and they come here to check “did he mow before this date?”, “does he have the plas-dras?”, “is the water high enough in the ditches?”. That is what they check. But they do not check how many birds there are. They don’t care about that. It is crooked, but well. To Gert Jan the number of birds he has on his land is sign that he does his job as meadow bird farmer well. Instead, he feels the inspections are only about whether or not he sticks to the conditions he has signed for when he applied for subsidies. Hessel Meindertsma has just retired and passed on the farm to his son, but he still is involved in the farm. At the moment of the interview his son is on vacation and he takes care of the business. From the moment Hessel took over his dad’s farm it was self-evident to him to take meadow birds into account in his way of farming. Like Gert Jan, Hessel experiences the inspections on his land as rigid. He describes that he had a package for postponed mowing on some parts of his land, but then the birds decided to breed somewhere else on his land: Hessel: In April, you had to specify the plots that you didn’t mow before 1 June, or 15 June, I don’t know exactly anymore. But well, so you passed that on [to the agency], and stick to it. But, at a certain moment I took a look, and I wanted to mow the plots next to it, around 15, 20 May, but I noticed a lot of birds on this plot, and the other plots

24 For example, in 2019, postponed mowing until 22 June (a relatively light form of management) is compensated with 731.30 euro per hectare and land that is waterlogged between 15 February and 15 June (‘plas-dras’, a demanding form of management) is compensated with 2,403.37 euro per hectare. See (in Dutch): https://sudwestkust.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Be- heerpakketten-SWK-OG-ND-Water-2019-2-2.pdf 25 The checks are carried out by the Dutch food and consumer product safety authority (Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenau- toriteit, NVWA). 47

[which would be mown in June] I noticed were quiet. So actually, it should be reversed. But that was not allowed. Because they said “we can’t control that”. Hessel explains how policies focus on controllability, and thereby lose touch with the practical relation between meadow birds and farmers. Hessel’s example stems from a couple of years ago and he adds that some things have changed since then, but in his experience the system is still rigid. “Controllability is the crux of this whole thing”, he says. In their work, farmers continuously need to respond to changing circumstances, be it weather or birds. But in trying to make the acts of farmers controllable, circumstances, like the behaviour of birds, are treated as predictable. This also has consequences to the way birds are perceived. Instead of subjects that possess agency and have a will on their own, irrespective of that of the farmer, in conservation efforts meadow birds are made into passive objects (cf. Plumwood 2006). Meadow bird farming in this way, becomes a matter of following prescribed guidelines, irrespective of contextual differences. But as Henry Buller (2012) points out, ‘in movement lies agency’. Moving around, humans and other animals define themselves and appropriate a space as their own. Through their movements, godwits and other birds define the meadows as ‘theirs’, irrespective of human schemes. Over and over again in my conversations with farmers, I have been reminded of birds’ agency. Every spring, it is a surprise to farmers on what parts of their land birds will breed. Bote de Boer observed that the godwits that breed on his land seem to coordinate their distribution among each other: “One plot is filled first, then the other, and then the rest”. To what plot godwits move first to start breeding differs from year to year. He described that it seems like they have a meeting: “where will we nest first?”. Also Klaas Oevering has to adapt his practices to the decisions of birds. Just like most farmers, he tries to motivate them to breed in certain parts of his land to keep his work for birds manageable. He does this by making these plots more attractive to birds, for example by keeping the grass at the right length when they arrive, while cutting the grass of other plots short. Although this works to some extent, Klaas concludes: Klaas: Nature is not easily guided. What is a good plot [for birds] in one year, can be a bad one in the next year. There are also surprises. Some meadow birds are opportunistic, they sit in a part of land where they have never really been before. And then I think “huh?!”. Considering Klaas’ experiences, good meadow bird farming is a close interaction between farmers and birds, that involves careful attention from the farmer to the acts of birds, and to plan management in response to this. But as it is now the subsidy schemes revolve around controllability and neglect that, as Klaas observed, “nature is not easily guided.” Policies around meadow bird farming need to leave room for context specific circumstances and for the interaction between birds and farmers. Meadow bird farming thus means improvising, but as some farmers experience, policies around subsidies limit the possibilities to improvise. In this context, the experiences of Gert Jan are telling. He has had some unpleasant experiences with the agency that checks his conservation work: Gert Jan: I have herb rich land […]. And only certain [kinds and] amounts of [fertilisers] are allowed there and then their idea is that [with this], there will be more herbs in the grassland. […] But the soil here is clay, so the soil becomes [nutrient poor], but you don’t get a lot of flowers in the meadow quickly. But that is their idea. […] So then this guy comes [for a check], and then you have those plants, well, they’re not there, and then they think I have secretly spread artificial fertilisers. Gert Jan feels that inspectors work according to generalised schemes, and are not well informed about his actual situation. As a farmer, Gert Jan likes to experiment on his land, by chance Gert Jan just sowed herbs himself and as a result, he still passed the check. But this 48 attitude affects his motivation and while he tells this story, he gets increasingly agitated. He wants to tell me another example that happened a while ago: Gert Jan: I also had [subsidies for] high water level. And then the NVWA [the authority that checks the farmers] comes to check, with a centimetre: ‘is there enough water?’ They almost stumble over the young birds, but they don’t care about that. They need to measure the water level and otherwise they retract the subsidy. Gert Jan feels that his efforts of actual conservation work for the birds are not recognised, and that he is only judged on the basis of predetermined, quantifiable rules. A bit later during our conversation, he would show me pictures of some pools he made in his meadows (‘plas-dras’). He tried to make them attractive for some other birds species (plovers) as well, by making a couple of small islands in the pool, which he subsequently covered with shells. His eyes start to shine as he tells me how the experiment worked out exactly as he hoped, and shows me a picture of a common ringed plover on one of the islands. But then he straightens his face and adds that he got a rap on the knuckles by the inspector, who told him “those islands, that is not ‘plas-dras!’”. These negative reactions to his efforts disappoint Gert Jan, and although he has not been pe- nalised yet – he has never received a fine – it does affect his motivation, and he frequently tells me “I don’t want to be treated like this”. Gert Jan feels that his work to save birds is not appreciated by the agencies, whose attempts to keep the work of farmers controllable limits him in his freedom as a meadow bird farmer. As a result, Gert Jan tells me, sometimes he thinks about continuing meadow bird farming without subsidies. Other farmers shared similar thoughts as Gert Jan. While it would result in significant financial losses, they would get more freedom in return, to experiment with and to farm in relation to birds.

5.2.1. A farmers’ encounter with predation I have discussed the way farmers see the threat of predation in Chapter 4 already. Here I bring the story of a farmer that has experienced predation on his land, in order to illustrate the impacts predation can have on a meadow bird farmer. About 20 years ago, Gert Jan had a very dramatic experience with predation. In that year, he had a lot of birds nesting on a part of his land, mostly godwits and redshanks (another meadow bird species), which in total comprised of about 30 breeding pairs. To allow the birds to finish their nests safely, he left the whole part untouched. In order to disturb the breeding birds as little as possible, he did not enter that part of his land as long as the birds were there. When he had not heard any birds for a while, he got suspicious and started to wonder if there could be something wrong. He went into the land anyway to check the nests and found that all 30 of them were plundered: “Everything was eaten by a fox, or a stoat […] and the parent birds lied next to the nests, dead. Half eaten…”. Gert Jan describes his feelings: Gert Jan: It is frustrating, very much. It is taken from you, everything is just predated. And then, over the following years, you see that the population does not return anymore, or very difficult. Right, because the parents are all killed […] and they won’t return, it has to start all over again Looking back, Gert Jan saw how this event affected the population of godwits and redshanks on his land over the following years. After a population has been killed in a meadow, new generations need to find their way back here. As godwits preferably breed in the same habitat every year (Chapter 3.2.1., see also Groen 1993), it can take a long time before a substantial population has formed again. The frustration of Gert Jan with predators is therefore understandable. Although this was an incident, be it with significant impact for himself as well as for the birds around his land, predation is something he is confronted with every year, and he

49 will never get used to it. Because he puts so much work in keeping the birds safe, Gert Jan experiences it as very frustrating to see predators undo his efforts.

5.3. Seeking motivation Farmers generally found it hard to answer questions concerning their motivation to put effort in conserving meadow birds at the cost of income. One farmer pointed towards his heart and said “it’s right here”, while another said “they just belong here, a spring without birds is a lost spring.” Others referred to their work as a hobby, they just love to engage with the birds. Contemplating these answers, it occurs to me that for these farmers, meadow bird management is self-evident. The birds have always been part of their lives, they belong to the landscape, and in this way, it is a given to provide them a place on their land. One aspect that was brought up by some farmers in response to questions related to their connection to birds, was the tradition of egg seeking, which they explained, has been practiced in the Dutch rural landscape for a long time. For centuries, people on the countryside have been seeking eggs of lapwings in spring. Lapwings are another meadow bird species that is biolog- ically not closely related to godwits, but both species generally occur in the same habitats (Roodbergen 2018, Both et al. 2005). Hessel Meindertsma still remembers how he started egg seeking in the 1960’s, when he was a kid: Hessel: […] we started egg seeking when we were 5, 6 years old. And then we brought them to the poulterer and you got money for that. I think I was 6 when I found my first egg, and well, then you jump for joy off course. And at that time there were a lot of professional seekers, that sought eggs to make money. So on a day, they tried to acquire a hat full of eggs. […] And yeah well, that was big business, there were people that earned more from egg seeking than what they earned from their boss. […] Especially in the first weeks, that went down pretty quickly [afterwards] because you could seek between early March and 19 April […]. Egg seeking was a lively happening in those days. But since a couple of years now, it has become illegal to take the eggs home, because like godwits, lapwings are rapidly disappearing from the landscape. As a result, the tradition has decreased in popularity. Also Hans, a young farmer, used to go egg seeking as a kid. Whereas other farmers were careful to relate their experiences in egg seeking directly to their farming practices, Hans explains that it stood at the basis of shaping his farming practices: “I think that egg seeking ultimately […] made that I am interested in nature and biodiversity at my farm.” From this, he is also concerned about the decreasing popularity of egg seeking: “[…] if you don’t have the basis anymore, of the birds and the love for them, well at a certain point, it doesn’t matter anymore of course.” As a result, he is concerned about the future, he sees that young people nowadays have lost their interest in the tradition, and in birds in general. He agrees with the ban on egg seeking in some ways, his father told him that at some point, people used to collect 100 eggs a day and “that is too much, so you don’t want that either.” However, he continues: Hans: But maybe, you should allow egg seeking again, although it is actually a bit par- adoxical, because you look for the eggs of the creatures you want to protect, that is a bit hard to explain. […] But yeah, I think it should be allowed again, but with some re- strictions. As Hans explains, it is a dilemma, to which there is no easy answer. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to discuss the considerations involved in the ban of egg seeking. My focus here is rather with the way egg seeking cultivated a connection between egg seekers and meadow birds from a young age, that, in the case of farmers motivated them to care for godwits and

50 other meadow birds26. Hans shared his experiences about the art of egg seeking, and how it connected him to the birds as well as the land: Hans: […] for me, it is purely that […] feeling of walking through the land, and seeing everything and the excitement of finding that egg or not. […] And a lapwing, hanging there, and that tries to fool you, where his nest is or something, yeah that is something exciting and beautiful […] and then you really want to find one [egg]. You just have to be in the land to experience that. Hans describes here that egg seeking involves a close interaction between him – the egg seeker – and the lapwing. While he tries to find the eggs, the bird tries to defend its nest and fool him about where it is. For me, the relation between the egg seeker and the lapwing as Hans describes it resembles an interaction of ‘becoming-animal’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986, Lorimer 2007). Such an interaction involves, as Deleuze and Guattari write ‘to participate in movement’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986, p. 13). Henry Buller’s (2012) work indicates that, although we do not share a verbal language to meadow birds, through an interaction as described by Hans, we are involved in a ‘shared corporeal communality’ where we can exchange ‘forms of expression’ that foster a recognition of the other. This recognition, can form the basis for an ethical engagement to the other. Seen in this way, egg seeking might cultivate a feeling of responsibility towards lapwings and meadow birds in general. This feeling might be hard to put into words for farmers, but it motivates their care for the godwits and other meadow birds. While egg seeking from an early age might have influenced the farming practices of some meadow bird farmers, for other farmers their engagement with meadow birds might have different roots. A farmers’ way of farming is the result of a history that goes back multiple generations and therefore, every farmers’ path, or ‘flight way’, is unique. After being edu- cated into a certain farming style, farmers continue to evolve their practices throughout their lives, until they are, hopefully, passed on to a further generation. Ways of farming are therefore not fixed, but rather constantly changing. In order to do right to this, in the next two chapters I will elaborate on the stories of two farmers in more detail to explore the histories of their current farming practices, as well as their connection to meadow birds.

26 Although egg seeking at some point got a bit out of hand, its contribution to the current decline of lapwings was still very limited. Eggs were only collected early in the season, and after this, lapwings were still able to start a new nest. (Beintema et al. 1995)

6. Botes’ oase

Bote de Boer encounters another problem in relation to subsidies. His story stands a bit apart from those told by other farmers, and I find it worth expanding on Bote’s personal story more deeply, as I think it gives valuable insights into the way of thinking in agriculture and agricultural landscape management. During our conversation it becomes clear that Bote’s farming practices shifted more and more to meadow birds over time. At present, he could even be considered as more of a ‘meadow bird farmer’ than a dairy farmer. According to his own estimations, on the 50 hectares of land he own, there are 200 breeding pairs of meadow birds, of which 75 pairs are godwits. These numbers are outstanding – other farmers I met had between 7 and 30 godwit pairs on their land – but according to Bote, the large population of birds on his farm is partly the result of the fact that no one else in the area seriously engages with meadow bird management. Bote grew up on the farm of his parents, but moved to another one farm not far away from that of his parents. He bought it from a retiring farmer who also cared for meadow birds, and because of this, left as much land as possible untouched by land consolidation projects (see Chapter 2). Thanks to the efforts of the previous farmer, a couple of Botes’ plots are still ‘old’ meadows of the type that were once widespread throughout the Dutch meadow landscape: Bote: […] they are very curved, the ditches are one meter deep and the ‘ekers’ [the parts of land between the ditches] curve towards the ditches and as such it almost impossible to manage it. But then a land consolidation project was running here and we had to use the money we got from that […]. The farmer that lived here before flattened some parts, and we did that with another two plots of land. In the first year, those parts were full of meadow birds. Then we flattened it, and then everything was gone, all birds moved towards the 16 hectares of land that were still very old. So we saw a redistribution of the meadow birds on the land within the farm. Because when we flattened the land, meadow birds took off to our other plots of land. […] So then we stopped flattening the soils. These types of meadows are now very rare because of land consolidation. Bote noticed meadow birds prefer this type of land and his affection for meadow birds motivated him to leave the remaining plots of ‘old’ meadows untouched. Later on in our conversation, Bote would explain again how these old plots are almost impossible to manage, it takes him a day to mow four hectares of such land. After the labour-saving developments in the second half of the 20th century (see Chapter 2), farmers that manage their land in this way have become very rare, and often are seen as old-fashioned and inefficient. It is interesting to compare Bote’s labour-intensive process to the way intensive farmers mow their land. It is not uncom- mon for intensive farmers to use machines that cover about 12 meters in breadth and drive through the land with a speed of 14 kilometres per hour (Melman et al. 2016), which means they could roughly mow 16 to 17 hectares per hour. I have described earlier how labour-saving developments have a central role in the decline of meadow birds. Bote also sees the decline linked to these developments. In Botes’ experience almost no other farmer in his area contributes significantly to meadow bird care and therefore, he explains, his land is the only place where birds can breed relatively safely:

Bote: Actually, it is like this: if you have this table, than we are still a stamp in a kind of desert. Because, for that bird, everything in the area is a desert, only this is a stamp on which they can [breed]. On his stamp of 50 hectare, Bote reaches astonishing numbers of meadow birds. Most of these birds only breed on half of the land, which he prepares especially for birds. But nowadays it becomes increasingly hard to combine his effort for meadow birds with a profitable farm. Bote has seen meadow birds disappear from the landscape and from this, his affection to them grew stronger. Through his painstaking attention to birds, Bote gradually learned more about their lives, and he dedicated increasing amounts of his time and space to welcome birds to his land. He described how it affected his way of farming: “we increased our focus on meadow birds. We went into it more intense, increasingly intense”. His devotion to birds went together with a decreased milk production and because Bote’s efforts are only partly compensated through subsidies – as will become clear further on – he now finds himself in a situation where he suffers significant financial losses, making it unsure whether he can sustain his farm. During our conversation, Bote laid out in detail how his situation as a meadow bird farmer has changed. As soon as Bote recognised that flattening his land was unfavourable to meadow birds, he decided to leave the rest of his land untouched. Around the same time, he saw an option to apply for subsidies to cover the financial losses of maintaining habitats for the birds. In his area an agrarian nature collective was set up, where Bote could apply for subsidies. He reserved some parts of his land for agricultural landscape management for which he receives subsidies. This meant that he was not allowed to enter the land between 1 April and 23 May. As a relatively extensive farmer, this also fitted his farming practices well, because he never finished mowing the other plots before 23 May anyway. In short, landscape management fitted Bote’s farming system well at this time. In those days, around 2004, people in the area were not really aware yet that meadow birds were declining rapidly as they were still spread throughout the landscape. In this way, regulations around meadow bird management were not very strict and mowing was allowed when some birds still had chicks: Bote: When I could mow on 24 May, I saw a lot of chicks that weren’t able to fly yet, walking through the grass. […] But because I took part in bird management consciously, I decided to mow half of the plot first and the other part a week later. Botes’ decision to mow half of his meadows later, gave the chicks the chance to move to the other side of the plot and hide there. As the decline of meadow birds in the landscape continued, more intensive conservation regulations were established and Bote started to implement these on his meadows as well. Bote: Little by little we got more insight, and then we said “well then we should also create a ‘plas-dras’ in the land”. […] So we created a very high water level, the water is so high that the ditches between the ‘ekers’ are completely filled. In this way, we got some water everywhere in the ditches. […] And the ditches are not like a deep furrow, but they have a gentle slope and in this way, on both sides of the water you get a strip [of soil] soaked with water. […] So we got those muddy strips everywhere, and the birds loved that and then the whole shebang exploded completely, and enormous numbers of redshanks, oystercatchers – plenty of godwits of course! – came here. Bote’s investments in meadow bird care were rewarded, at least by the birds, that moved to his meadows en masse. But his intensified care for meadow birds in response to their declining numbers brought him in financial troubles. Bote wants to do well for meadow birds, but year by year it has become harder to combine his efforts for birds with regular farming practices: Bote: So yeah, 23 May has become 15 June, and the other 14 hectares, where the cows [graze] has become 22 June, so all together, the grass has become that very long stuff, which doesn’t contain anything anymore. And that is our forage supply for the winter 53

and that is not what it used to be anymore. And that is actually… last year, the cows had to eat silage already from half September, until half April, so that is half a year. And that is… in that way, for half a year, we almost have no milk. […] with that ‘23 May management’ as it used to be, I could cope with that pretty well, our cows produced good amounts of milk. And now we have the same cows […] but now we have that grass, poor in proteins but rich in fibres, so they can’t eat much of it and it is poor in protein, so they get low amounts of energy, too few protein and then, yeah, the milk production is low of course. And we try to compensate that with feedstuffs, but that helps only sparingly. So that is what happens. If you do it properly, this is what happens. Bote’s care for birds has been at the cost of that what he is paid to do primarily: producing milk. Regular farmers, he notes, produce 30 litres per cow in the winter, while he only reaches 20 litres. “You should see it like this”, Bote continues, “it is as if I have Ferrari’s in the stable, and give it fuel that makes the motor spin properly, but they only go 30, and not 130.” He calculates that with his amount of cows, as a regular farmer, he would be able to produce 200.000 litre milk per year extra, which translates into 70.000 euro. The subsidies he receives fail to cover his losses. Bote explains why this is: “The compensation is based on ‘you miss this amount of kilo dry stuff’, […] just the yield of grass. But it doesn’t take into account the loss of milk.” As described, the grass Bote gets from his land in June has a different structure than that mown earlier in the season and this leads to lower amounts of milk per unit grass for his cows. As a result, only 30.000 euro gets subsidised and Bote loses 40.000 euro on a yearly basis. María Puig de la Bellacasa (2012) describes care as a ‘vital affective state, an ethical obligation and a practical labour’, a sentiment that is fitting to Bote and his family. While the agricultural sector – shaped for a large part by the state – abandoned godwits and other meadow birds, Bote refused to follow the same path. Instead, Bote decided to intensify his work of care for meadow birds further. Puig de la Bellacasa (2012) reminds us that care for others is not necessarily rewarding and this also holds for Bote. The costs brought forward so far are merely financial. But Bote’s precarious situation is more than just a financial inconvenience. This became especially clear to me at the several occasions when Bote’s wife Astrid joined the conversation. She was cooking in the same room during some part of our conversation and was clearly touched the situation they find themselves in. In what is to follow, I will present a couple of the moments where Astrid jumped in. I here decided to leave the actual conversation as unedited as possible. In doing so, I break with the way I presented the conversations in this thesis so far, but it allows me to let all three participants – Astrid, Bote and myself – speak and bring forward the dynamics during the conversation more clearly. The first instance Astrid joined the conversation was when Bote had just explained how their current situation leads to a loss of 40.000 euro per year: Astrid: It actually comes down to the fact the we have to much land for birds and well, as a result, milking becomes hard, and you have to throw a pile of money ehm… you have to let go of actually. And that, I mean that… would we be the last generation, well, then you would say, well ok, I can take that, it’s like that. But yeah, like this, you can never pass a farm on to your son, if you let go of 40.000 euro, I mean that… Bote: No, that doesn’t work. Astrid: So that really is a very big concern Bote: See, his friends, they buy a new tractor every ten years. And well, five years later a new [trailer ?], you name it. Yeah, it’s not like that with us. Sjoerd: Does that also mean that meadow birds for young people, or the new generation are not…

Bote: Well off course, you need to have an income, right. You should be able to make living. Otherwise, you’re not doing it. […] Astrid: Well, I always say, and that sounds very negative, but we are going down by our own success. That is… my husband sees it a bit differently, but I feel it like that. Astrid touches on a crucial point here, which is that of generations. All farmers I have talked to were born as farmers, and most of them had children destined to inherit the farm when their parents step back. In this way, a new generation of farmers continues to the work on the land that has been shaped by their ancestors. Within these lineages, land might have been ex- changed – as for example has happened on a large scale in the 20th century – and families possibly moved to different farms – as Bote did – but there is still a certain continuity. Bote loved birds from a young age and bought a farm from another farmer that did so too. The state of the land he inherited from this farmer, has contributed to shaping his current farming practices. It illustrates how diverse forms of knowledge flow from generation to generation through what Carole Crumley (2000) refers to as ‘social memory’. Bote and Astrid plan to pass on their firm to their son at some point, but they want to leave him with a healthy farm. With a yearly loss of 40.000 euro, the farm is far from healthy. With the current system, the meadow birds on their land will be affected anyhow, Bote explains. If they shift focus to creating a farm that is economically healthy, this means that their land becomes less friendly to birds. But reducing the habitat for meadow birds on their land is a sensitive topic for the family. I noticed this particularly, when we talked about possible changes in farming practices that would reduce the space for birds on their land: Astrid: You can’t chase them away, right?! Bote: Sometimes, we think about going back to two plots […] But no, the colony gets too big here. […] And now we see, there where the cows walk, there seven pairs of godwits started breeding, in the plot of two hectare. Well, yeah… and then they sit there, and then we think, well we have to do our best for them again as well. You know, that is… Sjoerd: It feels as a duty? Bote: Yeah, that is a dilemma. That is a dilemma. See, another farmer does not have that problem. […] Astrid: Yeah… It is… It looks so beautiful, but it is really not fun anymore. I really don’t find it fun anymore. Bote and Astrid were clearly emotional when they imagined themselves being forced to ‘chase away’ the birds from their land. They think about reducing the amount of land that they manage for birds, but, as Bote describes, birds have their own plans over which he has very limited control. Godwits for example started breeding at one of the plots that he had reserved for more intensified farming. If Bote and Astrid would not change their current way of farming, they are unlikely to be able to pass on the farm to their son and instead they would have to sell the land and for the birds, Bote explains, this option is likely to be even worse: Bote: We see often, a farmer that still has some meadow birds, and didn’t flattened his land yet […], that sells the business and it [the land] goes to two intensive farmers and they flatten everything in one year and it’s gone. It’s done. I saw that here behind with a farm last year and like that, everyone knows a farmer in their neighbourhood where it went exactly like that.

Sjoerd: And they [farmers that buy the land] don’t know it’s bad for meadow birds? Bote: Oh yeah, they know that. […] They invest a million [euro] and they want to earn that million back as quick as possible. And the meadow birds have to figure it out. And if you think like this, yeah then… it’s done. See, the system is all about money. If the farm was sold, the work by farmers like Bote to keep their land hospitable to birds, might be undone within a year. Machines are brought to the land to transform its old, inefficient, curved structure into a smooth surface, ready to be managed efficiently. Bote finds it hard to say whether the new owners really do not care for meadow birds, or if they have no other choice financially – most likely it is a bit of both. The exact motivation does not matter much to the birds, when they return to their land in spring, they find their habitat has vanished. From Bote’s story so far, it would seem that no one cares about his meadow birds. But this is not true. Meadow birds are very much alive in the minds of people connected to the rural landscape. Accordingly, Bote and Astrid also get a lot of praise for the work they do for birds: Astrid: Everyone thinks it is very beautiful, wonderful… Bote: Everyone thinks it wonderful. Sjoerd: Who is everyone? Bote: The people from the village, the people from Bolsward [a town close by], the bird watch, they are ly-ri-cal. The [scientists from the] University of Groningen, the munic- ipality [local politicians] Astrid: The province [regional politicians] and everyone! Bote: Everyone loves it. But if you bring up, this is the problem… how do we have to continue with this… Sjoerd: Then they don’t know either? Bote: No… Well I know, just put that 40.000 euro per year on the table. But well… Astrid: [cynical] Yeah, but that is not allowed, because than it’s support. Though a lot of people, including politicians, show their support, this comes in words and little else. Moreover, as enthusiastic visitors are about the meadow birds, they only visit in spring, when their land is a bird oasis. A bit later in our conversation, Bote has come back to their situation in the winter, when the milk tank is only half full, Astrid jumps into the conversation again, and cries out emotionally: “And then, no one comes by, [to tell] that it is so beautiful! No! You shouldn’t make it prettier than it is, because that is how it is!” When the birds are gone, the people are too, and Bote and Astrid are left alone in their financially miserable situation. This kind of ignorance clearly hurts them. While loads of people praise the work they do to save meadow birds, very few are interested in the situation they find themselves in as a result of their work of care. Moreover, a lot of people look down on the fact that they receive subsidies. This is what Bote and Astrid hear too: Astrid: Well, but I know… A lot of people, also farmers, think that we make a fortune from the birds. Sjoerd: Profit from it?! Astrid: Yes, we hear that regularly! That we profit a lot from it! Bote: People think that! Sjoerd: Why is that? Astrid: Because it is subsidised! 56

Bote: They think that, because of the compensation, we receive more than that we lose. But they forget that in the winter, we don’t have a full tank of milk. Yeah, but should I make them wiser? […] People [non-farmers] think it too: ‘but that farmer gets subsidy’. Yeah… [sighs] that is a drop in the ocean. I have been able to explain that to you in a couple of hours, but you can’t explain that to everyone. Astrid: A while ago, there was a farmer here, and he also said that. And that time I decided to say it, because it really became too much. I said: “it costs us at least 40.000!” […] And I said: “I really don’t like it, those comments all the time!”. [He replied]: “But then why don’t you stop with it? Just stop with it. Because you’re not going to do something when it costs you 40.000, right?” So, you see how the situation is. The experiences of Bote and Astrid give insight into the dominant way of thinking in Dutch agriculture. The sector is very competitive and all about creating a profitable business model in relation to low milk price. As such, it assumed that farmers receiving subsidies are either ‘bad’ farmers or just use it as an extra source of income. For many conventional farmers, it is beyond comprehension that anyone would run a farm that loses money every year. Another farmer I talked to, Auke Stremler – whose story I will explore more deeply in the next chapter, criticises this system, and feels it is important to give farmers their freedom back, to allow them to farm in a profitable way without having to focus on production only. Not only would this solve Bote’s situation, but it would also motivate more farmers to farm meadow bird friendly: Auke: if every farmer would receive 10 cents extra for their milk, right, so for example a farmer that produces 500.000 litre milk, receives 50.000 euro extra per year, than they definitely want to do something for meadow birds, they get really happy then. He’s appreciated for what he does and gets paid for that. In such a way, the balance in the business model has to come back a little and then you also can make better agreements with farmers. […] [We should] not totally go back to the past, but the farmer should be in balance: nature and farm. Auke believes, and I will explore this more deeply in the coming chapter, that when farmers do not have to focus purely on production, many of them would be happy to leave more space on their land for, as he calls it, nature. This would mean that farmers like Bote are not forced to sacrifice themselves to care for birds because other farmers do not. Birds will spread more evenly across the landscape, allowing Bote to focus on milk production a bit more, while also increasing his income.

7. Aukes’ transition

The ways of thinking that underlie the developments in the Dutch landscape over the 20th century depart from a ‘monological’ relationship with the land (cf. Plumwood 2006). In such an one-way relationship, people use the land to provide them resources, but disregard elements of the land that are believed not to contribute to the production of these resources. Plumwood (2006) points out that monological relationships in agriculture are ecologically irrational because ultimately they weaken the web of life around the land that stand at the basis of farming. Although farmers do not express themselves in these terms, their experiences brought forward in Chapter 2.3. illustrate how they are caught in a productionist agricultural system, where the only function of the land is producing as much forage as possible. The story of Auke Stremler will guide me in exploring how (productionist) farmers relate to their land, what it entails to break with this approach and what alternatives are possible for agriculture more broadly.

7.1. Composing with the land When Auke Stremler inherited the farm from his father he started as a regular farmer. Like most that eye a career in farming, Auke went to an agricultural school where he learned that production was key: “the first thing you get: nutrition. Feed cows differently. Production. […] the state also aimed for that.” From this education Auke was set for producing as much as possible on the farm. In 1984, when his father still ran the farm, a part of the farm burned down in a fire and in rebuilding the farm the family decided to invest in expansion. In doing so, they prepared the farm for higher production and make it viable for a long term towards the future. Since then, Auke describes, his agriculture has been focused on efficiency and production: Auke: We used to have the German Black Pied cow. A beautiful and broad cow, dura- ble. Grazing nicely in high nature grass, that stuff, was the best and covered the costs. But yeah, what happened? We want more! We want higher production and more milk, so we crossbreed with Holstein-Friesian cows [a breed that produces milk more efficiently]. Auke explains that this approach resulted in changes in nutrition and cows and as such in the landscape. Auke went along with these developments and was well able to maintain his farm for some time. But at a certain moment he felt that he was reaching the limits of this way of farming. The overall costs involved in farming doubled over time, but the milk price remained the same. Throughout his career this has forced him to stay focused on increasing his milk production and farm expansion. But now, the farm produced the maximum amount of milk possible from the land they owned, and it did not generate a high enough income to sustain the farm. Auke and his wife saw themselves required to invest in expanding their farm again by buying more land and more cattle. But because there was no land available in their area, there were no options to expand and they got stuck. At that moment, they heard that some land next to theirs came available for rent. A landscape management agency that owned the land was looking for a new farmer to manage their meadows. An alternative path opened up: instead of further intensifying their practices, Auke and his wife could rent this land for a relatively low price and farm it extensively. Auke tells me 58 that he initially was not interested. He had conformed his way of thinking to the productionist sector in which he was situated, and farmed accordingly. From this perspective, he initially felt this kind of land would not be of much use. But as the farm had reached the limits of its production capacities, something had to change. He and his wife thought about it again, and after conferring with the agency and another farmer who had already transitioned his farm, they decided to accept renting the land rather than investing in more cattle and higher production. Auke tells me about their decision: Auke: For us it was a decision about, in what direction do we go? You stand on a T- junction, on a road: you go left or right. But what is the right choice? At that moment, you make the choice to go into the direction of nature, we go in the direction of extensive agriculture and we’re going to do it differently. At that time […] there was no one that told us “you should do that!”, because it was totally not common to do that. Everyone went into the direction of scale increase. Also the financers, advisors, lobby groups, they all said: “you should grow!” So yeah, we have had some headaches about that, will everything turn out right? Auke and his wife got a bit lucky as they found themselves in unusual and coincidental circumstances, but it also took courage to seize on the opportunity and go against the tide by choosing for extensification. Not all farmers find themselves in such circumstances, and many choose – or are pushed into – the opposite direction. Once this path is taken, Auke explains, it determines a farmers’ practices for a long period: Auke: As soon as you build that bigger stable, you have to get the cows. In fact, you are constantly holding the bill in your hand. And for us, we would not have been able to do this [farm extensively], if we already made investments in the direction of growth. Now we have 80 [adult] dairy cows, but if we would have aimed for growth and we had to milk 150 cows, than it would not have been possible to farm with nature. As soon as the investment in farm expansion is made, farmers are locked into a farming style focused on production. They have invested a lot of money and therefore have loans and mort- gages, which needs to be earned back. Based on his own experiences Auke tells me that in this situation, farmers become totally focussed on extracting as much from their land as possible in order make enough money. As a result, everything in the land revolves around production, to which all else is subordinate. According to Auke, this does not mean that things that do not contribute to production are just discarded. He himself, has always thought about meadow birds for example, also before restructuring his farm, and he sees that other farmers in his neighbourhood do the same: Auke: There are no farmers here that just does something here. No, they think about it [meadow birds]. […] [But] it does not have the priority. If they are there, you take them into account, in its broadest sense […]. But they do not step it up, in order to investigate other possibilities […] to give the birds more options. Auke recognises that farmers try to think about the birds in managing their land, but they do not implement the more drastic measures to make the overall structure more friendly towards them, which would increase the chance for new generations to reach maturity. This contrasts with the observations of some other farmers, that felt most of the farmers in the neighborhood did not think about meadow birds at all. The farmers I visited lived in different areas however, and it is well possible that in some areas farmers do more for meadow birds than in others. But although Auke believes that the farmers in his area do their best, he remarks that it is not enough and that production is still prioritised. Aukes’ situation is different from the other meadow bird farmers that I have met, who finance their meadow bird care through subsidies. Because Auke farms land owned by landscape management agencies, which is relatively cheap, he has reduced his overall costs. Moreover, he 59 recently got certified as an organic farmer, which also enables him to focus more on birds and the landscape in general: Auke: So now we actually have become extensive farmer[s]. Now we went a step further and we also go in the direction of organic agriculture. Because […] if you stay a regular farmer, with a regular [milk price] and you manage so much land as nature, you won’t make ends meet. You won’t manage. Just in terms of cost efficiency and milk price. So it requires, if you engage with nature this intensively, that you receive a higher price for the milk. As an organic dairy farmer, Auke now receives 10 to 14 eurocents more per litre milk. As a result, the pressure to produce became lower, and the structure of his meadows changed. Be- cause Auke is no longer required to aim for maximum yields, he stopped using artificial fertilisers – which is also required in organic farming – and sowed different kinds of herbs. This created a diverse vegetation which, as he saw, made the number of meadow birds increase on his land: Auke: We now have more meadow birds than before, and that is just because the importance of production is lower. So […] there is more variation in the land, more grasses and also herbs. Then you get more insects and that attracts meadow birds, also to raise the chicks. And now we spread more [organic] fertilisers, and that also attracts more birds. The fact that Auke’s way of farming is not in the first place focused on production almost in itself opened up the land to meadow birds. Extensive farming practices create meadows that have a more diverse structure. Less productive plants – in terms of milk – like herbs have a chance to grow as well, which is favourable for a higher diversity of insects. These meadows support more diverse forms of life in general, and therefore also benefit meadow birds. In the process of extensifying his way of farming, that ultimately led him to become an organic farmer, Auke had to unlearn what he has learned in a productionist setting. He had to learn what not to do anymore and open up for alternative perspectives. Despret and Meuret (2016) describe learning as a process of paying attention, involving ‘a transformation of ways to feel’ that open up for new ways of inhabiting the world and relating to other life in the land. This process is well illustrated by Auke. He describes that in reorienting himself to farming he found himself being in his land more often, and although some parts of his labour got more intensive, it also got more rewarding. As Auke no longer looks at the land purely from a productionist perspective he discovered it anew: “You’re always working in your land. But you also get energy from that. And you observe a lot, what happens in your land. So yeah, there’s a lot you get back for that.” Auke’s new way of farming made that he found himself in his land more often, which changed the way he perceived it. He learned to observe life in his land with more attention and through this, entered into new relations with life in his land. In relation to meadow birds, for example, Auke told me that he got more time for them and in this way “developed an eye” for their ways of inhabiting the meadows. He found that meadow birds have their own plans, but made peace with the fact that: “you have no clue how that works”. From his new relation with the land, instead of making the birds fit into his plans, Auke has the capacity to adapt his farming practices in response to birds and enable them to inhabit the land in their way. From Auke’s story emerges a process of mutual transformation of him and the land. In the 10 years that Auke has extensified his farming practices, not only has he transformed his land, but through his new way of inhabiting the land he also allowed himself to be transformed, to see new things and the adapt his practices in response to this. Despret and Meuret call this process of mutual transformation ‘composing’ with the land. Auke moved away from an one-directional, productionist way of farming, that only revolves around realis- ing as high yields as possible and now allows more space for nature on his land. The forms of life that have come back over the past 10 years, also transformed him as a farmer, made him 60 change the way he looks at the land, which again made him change his farming practices even further.

7.2 Opening up the land After Auke opened up to the life in his land, he wanted to share his experiences and open up the land to others as well. He feels this is necessary, given the heated discussions in newspapers (see Chapter 4.1.). Auke tells me he feels such debates lead to nothing: “It is better if we together, collectively, communicate with each other, about how we can find solutions”. Auke believes that it is important for farmers to connect more with others, and be transparent about their ideas and practices, as it will make people also able to discover the story behind the products they consume. To provide an opening for this, Auke’s wife opened a store at the farm, where they sell their own products: Auke: we see that here, if people visit, sometimes to buy cheese and meat, people like to see where it comes from. And then you take them with you [into the farm], let them experience it. […] We have to be open more, as farmers, in our actions. […] But we see that, if we make people experience more, we also get more understanding for everything. […] we can share more with people. Auke sees that, as soon as people come at the farm, to buy some products, people automati- cally become more broadly interested in the things the happen around farm. They want to take a look at the land, and see where the cows are. And while showing the people around, there is possibility to open up a dialogue, exchange experiences about farming, explore differences and bridge the differences: “In that way, we take away the discussion, like ‘the farmers does this, the farmer does that’, but instead we can discuss more with each other, make concessions together […] So we have to bring people together a bit more.” Instead of discussing things over newspapers, which, as Auke sees it, does more harm than good, Auke tries to cultivate understanding between people by bringing them together on his farm. Auke sees that the enthusiasm with which his efforts are received. He also notices that people spread the word to others, who then also come by to visit, and telling me this he also exclaims: “Well [slams on table] that is such easy advertisement!” At the moment, Auke also plans to make people experience meadow birds on his land. He does this with the same incentive. He wants to make people experience meadow birds on his land, to show how meadow bird care looks like. In this way he wants to make people see why it is important to create a form of agriculture that support this care. Making this happen requires some improvising, Auke explains: Auke: It is a difficult thing, because if you take a group of 20, 30 people in the field, at a certain point, they don’t see anything anymore, because the birds thinks, “there is a whole crowd of people coming, bye”. If I go into the field alone, or Bauke [his son] […], then you see them all, they think “oh there’s Stremler”. No really, the birds are not that crazy, they know about people. But we want to do that differently, we have a trailer which we use to transport our cows, I put hay bales in there on which the people can sit and then we drive into the field. Then the birds will stay on their place as they think “Oh there’s Auke with his tractor, that is fine”. And then we take a binocular and then we watch, make the people experience what’s living here. Auke is experimenting, both with his land as well as with connecting his land. He believes he have now found a way, to connect people and birds on his land, which illustrates the careful attention he has cultivated in relation to birds. Where Auke used to be in a monologue with the land, he has now instigated a dialogue. This started with him opening up to the land. But now he also opens up the dialogue with other people, that he invites to his farm. 61

8. Discussion

On my way home after one of the conversations I have had while interviewing farmers for this thesis, I contemplated the rich story a farmer had just shared with me. Farms passed by on both sides of the road guiding me through the landscape, when suddenly it struck me that with every farm I passed, I also passed a story just as rich as the one I had just heard. Although the stories of most farmers will not revolve around meadow birds, each of these farms represents a story of its own, shaped by the generations of farmers that have passed through. Immediately thereafter I realised that not only the farms, but also the meadows, with their countless – nonhuman – inhabitants provide the basis for a myriad stories of beings that try to make themselves at home in the world (cf. Van Dooren 2014, p. 146). As exciting as this light-bulb moment was – it opened up a new landscape to me – it was also daunting, because I immediately realised the limited scope of the thesis I was going to write. The stories I was about to address only concerned a very small and biased selection of the multispecies gathering the landscape represents. In writing this thesis however, I have come to realise that telling the stories of some, opens up to the stories of others. In telling the story of godwit loss, I was also drawn into the decline of insects and the increase of foxes and beech martens. It made me explore how the dominant, productionist agricultural sector contributed to the loss of autonomy for farmers in this system, and how the ways of farming that this system pushed farmers into shaped the landscape as it is now.

8.1. Storying the landscape Through an ethographic storytelling (Van Dooren & Rose 2016) inspired by Thom van Doorens’ concept of species as ‘flight ways’ (Van Dooren 2014), which understands species as ‘intergenerational achievements’, this thesis has illustrated how the ways of life of godwits and farmers are entangled in the Dutch meadow landscape. Godwits move to the meadows every year to breed and bring forth new generations, while farmers, working to sustain their farm to keep its history alive into the future, shape the meadows in which the godwits breed. Godwits and farmers are situated in a landscape that has been and continues to be shaped and maintained by lineages of farmers who, through their work in the land created a habitat that turned out to be beneficial to godwits. When, from the beginning of the 20th century, farming practices started to change, this also affected the population of godwits. At first positively, because cultivation of new agricultural land increased the quantity of habitats and intensification of land use, which made that more food came available, increased the quality of habitats. From this, the population of godwits in the Dutch meadow landscape increased enormously, up to 120.000 breeding pairs around the 1970’s. In the words of one farmer, the landscape became a godwit ‘El Dorado’. From the 1950’s, further intensification was deemed necessary, in order to position the Neth- erlands in a dominant position of the international export market. In order to realise this, the land as well as farmers had to change. Large scale land consolidation projects changed the structure of the soil, which made the meadows accessible for large machines but less favourable to godwits. Land management intensified in various ways and mechanisation of farming practices made that more cows could be farmed with few to no help from others. Willem Spoelstra saw this process of scale increase and labour saving happen over his life as a farmer 62 and describes how it affected the lives of farmers: “it is not like the old days anymore, when a farmer had 40 cows and four helpers. Now he stands alone, with 100 cows.” Based on the stories of farmers in this thesis I have identified that agriculture from the second half of the 20th century has developed into a productionist system, which pushes farmers to focus on production increase. This happens for example by keeping milk prices low, leaving farmers with few other options than to keep on investing in expansion and intensification in order to make enough money to sustain their farm. In their stories farmers have indicated that other farmers lose the freedom and willingness to take the interests of other, non-human inhabitants of the landscape into account. Klaas Oevering for example stated that “ways of thinking focus on efficiency”, which, according to him “stems totally from the cost price [milk price] story.” As a result of this, he sees that farmers are not able to or do not want to give meadow birds a place in their ways of farming. Bote de Boer added to this that meadow birds are a “source of loss”, of which farmers in this system cannot have many. In an agricultural system like this, farmers become totally focused on production, by which, María Puig de le Bellacasa (2015) noted, relationships that are not directly related to production get colonised. The rich amount of other stories that are situated in the landscape, such as those of godwits, disappear into the background or are totally ignored. These developments made the overall landscape less suitable for godwits and as a result the population decreased – and continuous to decrease – rapidly. Currently there are about 31 to 38.000 pairs of godwits left in the landscape. This main cause of this decline is that birds are unable to raise chicks successfully. The structure of the grassland is not good enough, which makes that chicks have less opportunities to hide and often cannot collect sufficient food. As a result they suffer from starvation and are an easy catch for predators.

8.2. Participants in godwit loss Conservation ecologists studying godwits and the meadow bird farmers I interviewed broadly identify the same drivers of godwit loss. Changes in the structure of the meadows and the farming practices in these meadows made the habitat in these meadows less attractive to godwits. Moreover, in recent years, the number of species that predate on godwit eggs and chicks has increased rapidly in the landscape. All sides agree that this contributes to the decline of godwits as well. However ecologists, in studying the landscape, recognise that the increase of predators is a result of a landscape that has become ‘sterile’, and therefore they see predator increase not as a separate problem but as one of the result of intensified farming. In this way, ecologists propose that in order to save godwits, fundamental changes in the landscape are needed in order to save godwits in the long run. The work that is currently done by meadow bird farmers, is just “buying time”, as Jos Hooijmeijer put it. While a couple of meadow bird farmers agree with this, most of them saw things differently. The solutions ecologists propose are unrealistic, Gert Jan Sijtsma and other farmers tell me, because “these times are gone”. Instead, according to farmers like Gert Jan the solution is to convince more farmers to think about the birds, for example by postponing mowing on some parts of their land and create a high water level at some other parts, and through this create more suitable habitats. When together with this the predators – most notably foxes and beech martens – that kill godwits and other meadow birds are eradicated from the landscape godwits will flourish. From these differences in views, the relationship between conservation ecologist and farmers is tense. Conservation ecologists studying godwits feel emotionally connected with the birds and try to address the decline of godwits in the landscape by rendering their loss visible in several media (cf. Reinert 2015). I presented an interview with a conservation ecologists that emotionally called meadows the “green hell”. He continued to say that farmers and meadow 63 bird will not go together in the future anymore, because farmers mow the birds to death. In the experience of some farmers I interviewed, such statements are short-sighted and counter- productive. They see that other farmers, previously interested in meadow bird conservation, as a result of these representations do now turn away from the birds. It creates what Hugo Reinert (2015) has called a ‘ruptured landscape’, in which tensions are created in the relationships between different groups. Because both farmers and conservation ecologists have a role to play in saving godwits, these ruptures hinder constructive solutions that can turn the current trend of decline. While in the agricultural system I have outlined godwits are generally reduced beings without meaning, which can be expelled from the land in favour of production increase, in the polarised discussions, as presented in media, parties tend to reduce each other to simplified caricatures. Through this thesis, I tried to counter such reductions and bring some of the stories – those of godwits and meadow bird farmers – in the landscape back to life. It is an attempt to move beyond the view of birds and farmers as fundamentally opposed to each other and instead illustrate how their lives have been entangled for countless generations and how even now, although farming practices have negative impacts of godwits, there are also farmers that feel connected to the birds and work hard to create habitats for them. In telling these stories, I have sought to give my subjects agency and present their lives as meaningful. This opens up to a new way of inhabiting the meadow landscape, as it challenges the notion of humans as the only ones that have an interest in this landscape. As a result, the stories in this thesis reconnect the reader to the forms of life they are entangled with through their own ways of life and from this, cultivate a responsibility towards them. Deborah Bird Rose (2018) succinctly put the task that follows from these stories: “We can participate well, or we can participate badly; but we can't opt out of participation, because we can't opt out of reality.” In this light, my work here can be read as an invitation to participate well. In conclusion, I will now explore an opening for this.

8.3. Experimenting in response At this moment the flight ways of godwits, are kept alive by the work of meadow bird farmers that keep parts of their land hospitable to birds at the costs of production. Their work is made possible by a subsidy system that compensates farmers financially on the basis of the grass yields their efforts cost. Despite these compensations, several meadow bird farmers face financial problems as a result of their work. The story of Bote de Boer, that I presented in Chapter 6 made this painfully clear to me. Although Bote manages his own land, his situation cannot be separated from the landscape as a whole. The large number of godwits and other meadow birds that he provides a place for on his land, do not have many other places to go to, as the area as a whole has become inhospitable to them and therefore many birds seek refuge on his land. Because others did not, Bote saw himself required to care for meadow birds more and more. Ultimately, his love for meadow birds and his refusal to abandon them led to the financial misery he now finds himself in. Despite the subsidies, Bote has to cope with high financial losses as a result of his care for birds, and his situation is unsustainable in the long run. He plans to pass his farm over to his son at some point, which forces him to reduce his care for birds, because otherwise there might be no farm to pass on anymore. This would mean that another farmer, that probably does not care for birds buys his land, and his work of care is undone. From Bote’s story emerges a picture of meadow bird farmers that, in their conservation work for godwits and others birds, are ‘gardening in the ruins’ (Tsing 2015, Van Dooren, 2014, p. 116). They try the best within their capacity, but their circumstances are far from ideal and they themselves have very little say in changing the larger structures that shape these circumstances.

In conclusion then, I want to provide an opening to a ‘capacity for response’ (Van Dooren & Rose 2016), that allows farmers like Bote to continue their work without having to sacrifice their wellbeing and that supports the lives of both farmers, godwits and other meadow life. I base this ‘capacity for response’ on a thought that I believe came forward in different contexts in the stories this thesis presents. Several farmers have shared their interest for experimenting in their land, but they have also illustrated how this is discouraged in several ways. Hans Kroodsma, for example, shared that modern farmers often follow the instructions from external advisors and have workers that mow their land for them. In this way, Hans elaborated, they do what they are told and also lose connection with the land. However, for Hans “the freedom of farming, [is] that you try things out and see if it works or not.” But modern farmers, driven by production increase, lose the desire to experiment as it is likely to reduce yields. Also Gert Jan Sijtsma illustrated how his experimentations in creating a habitat for birds on his land were discouraged. Not by the agricultural sector, but by the policies related to the subsidies he receives. By experimenting with islands on the water pools on his land, he managed to attract a bird species that, according to him, would otherwise not have settled on his land. However, he was almost fined for it. Such stories illustrate how farmers have lost the motivation for and freedom in deciding on their own way of managing the land. I have heard many examples of farmers that illustrate that experimenting on their land is discouraged in one way or the other. But the story of Gert Jan made me realise that meadow bird farming for a large part is experimenting in relation to birds. The story of Auke also made this clear to me. After he transformed from an intensive, production-oriented farmer into an extensive farmer, he got more room to experiment with his land and his birds. In this process he learned more about the lives of birds and discovered new ways of farming in relation to them. Auke feels that if other farmers get the opportunities he has had, they may transform in the same way as he has. To Auke, this does not require big, structural change: “if every farmer would receive 10 cents extra for their milk [per litre], […] than they definitely want to do something for meadow birds, they get really happy then. He’s appreciated for what he does and gets paid for that.” In short, if farmers do not have to focus on their finances all the time, Auke believes, they get the chance to open up to meadow birds and other stories in the land. What Auke proposes can provide the start of a new and more widespread form of meadow bird farming, based on what Despret and Meuret (2016) have called an ‘experimental cosmoecology’ that involves learning to become attentive to “the in- finite ways of being affected and of affecting, where no one may know ahead of time the affects one is capable of or the kinds of forces and entities that will constitute landscapes and worlds with us.” Auke’s own journey has shown that this is possible.

8.4. Resonating calls I continue my drive home, pondering over what stories in the meadow landscape will be carried forward into the future. It is late summer and driving through the landscape, the meadows I encounter are silent. The godwits are gone, but not permanently – not yet. About a month ago, the last godwits gathered, circled up in the sky, and left, on their way to spent their winters in southern rice fields. But despite their absence, I feel that godwit calls resonate through the landscape, by the work of meadow bird farmers and many others. Work stemming from a deeply felt connection to godwits and driven by a desire to help godwits to continue their flight ways through the diverse landscapes they are entangled with. Efforts by people who try to participate well in a landscape of loss.

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Interviews Klaas Oevering, Idzega 24-08-2018 Auke Stremler, Jorwerd 30-08-2018 Bote & Astrid de Boer, 06-09-2018 Hessel Meindertsma, Birdaard, 07-09-2018 Jos Hooijmeijer, Groningen, 11-09-2018 Gert Jan Sijtsma, Westens 12-09-2018 Willem Spoelstra, Hallum, 13-09-2018 Hans Kroodsma, Janum, 17-09-2018