If you recall,  as I learned when I arrived in Arizona earlier this year, David Attenborough was pointing the way towards a new attitude to nature. Part of this project involved the Dutch.

The Dutch are smart. The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated places on earth. Their land is filled with mainly family home farming operations. There is really little land left over for more farming, Therefore, they have to be smart. As David Attenborough said,

“Dutch farmers have become expert at getting the most out of while at the same time every hectare of farm land. Increasingly they are doing so sustainably, raising yields tenfold in 2 generations while at the same time using less water, fewer pesticides, less fertilizer and emitting less carbon! Despite its size the Netherlands is now the world’s second largest exporter of foods! It is entirely possible for us to apply high tech and low tech to produce much more food from much less land.”

It is difficult to deny that Dutch farmers are smart. As I learned from one of my Dutch clients, before I became a recovering lawyer,  Dutch farmers manage to have intensive livestock operations while minimizing the impact on their environment.  Because their country is  small they cannot waste land.  Intensive livestock operations emit a lot of unpleasant   odours and chemicals. At least in Canada.  Yet Dutch farmers have such operations right next to residential areas largely without complaints from the residents. They have learned how to manage farm odours, and chemicals, and not just carbon emissions. In Canada we do this by using more land and keeping neighbours apart from each other. We should try to be smarter instead. Like the Dutch.

Attenborough also said “we must learn to produce food in new places such as indoors within cities. Even in places where there is no land at all.”  For example, we must learn to farm vertically. Or produce food in the ocean. Some farmers are already doing this. More must do that. The smarter we get the more burgers we can eat.

Attenborough also said, “As we learn to farm smarter, we can reverse the land grab we have been involved in ever since we began to farm, because we have an urgent need for all that free land.”

This really is a new attitude to nature. It requires us to be smarter.