Vandana Shiva in the Netherlands
This past Monday and Tuesday nights Vandana spoke at two places in the Netherlands, first in Zeist (near Utrecht) and then here in Amsterdam. Wow, what an amazing woman. She’s a brilliant person, and very well spoken. It was really a pleasure to hear her speak. There are a number of videos on the Internet of her speaking, and if you’ve never heard her, I suggest having a look at some of these.
Top on her agenda at both venues was to discuss farmer suicides in the Indian Punjab region, the ongoing tragedy that’s one of the most serious in modern history. This combined with the fact that of the roughly 1 billion people in the world today who are hungry, half or 500 million work in the food production and preparation industries. There is really something messed up in the priorities of today’s world if the people who give us our food are so poor.
Vandana is very good with facts and statistics, and I took several pages of notes. She discussed things like GMOs, patents, world trade issues and human rights. Most people who are regular readers of this blog will have heard a lot of these things before either here or elsewhere, so I won’t cover them now. I’ll probably mention some in future posts, and indeed some are so important they deserve an entire post to themselves.
She took a few shots at the Netherlands too. For example making fun of the new government’s decision to eliminate the Environmental Ministry, or the fact that the amount of land equivalent to roughly 3 times the size of the Netherlands is used outside the country to grow the soy and grains necessary to feed the animals here. She mentioned the Dutch were involved in intercepting ships at sea transporting generic (so-called ‘counterfeit’) medicines from India to other countries.
Zeist
The symposium in Zeist was really very interesting, not just because of Vandana herself, but by who attended and how it was organized.
When Tom Wagner visited last year I briefly entertained the possibility of trying to organize something for him here, but the community of people who might be interested in attending something like that is so disorganized and everyone has their own opinions and alliances, that I quickly decided getting a group of people together here would be impossible. I’ve approached some of these people in the past for various reasons, and it nearly always happens that we quickly decide we don’t have anything in common and go our own ways. Part of the problem too is many people in the Netherlands don’t like having anything to do with people from other countries, which of course to most of us is a strange concept. It’s a fact for example that I have almost no regular readers of this blog in the Netherlands. On any given month I might only have 5 or 10 local readers, but 10,000+ from other countries.
What was interesting was no one name seemed to be associated with organizing the visit by Vandana Shiva or the symposium, rather it was a consortium of mostly large businesses and organizations. No expense was spared, and quite a lot of money was spent on it all. As well as paying for Vandana Shiva’s visit, they served us dinner cooked from organic and locally sourced ingredients, local organic fruit juices, organic wines. The costs we all paid to attend did not cover all their expenses, that’s for sure.
A very broad range of people attended, including at least one identifiable representative of a Monsanto owned seed company. There was at least one academic from the University of Wageningen. The symposium itself was hosted after hours in a bank lobby, and there were a number of venture capitalists and investment companies present. There were farmers and plant breeders. There was one very passionate grower of organic flower bulbs. There was a member of the EU Parliament. It was a bit of a funny situation because when we registered, we had to state our affiliations, and they printed this on our name tags. Some people were walking around with the title ‘consumer’ or ‘gardener’.
Everyone was there to talk very seriously about the future of agriculture in the Netherlands and the world. There were some very heated debates!
Towards the end the question was posed to the panel and the audience, if you had 10 million euros to fix agriculture, how would you spend it, and it’s clear a number of people were looking to that question for real ideas to be implemented. There weren’t really a lot of clear answers to that question however.
The following evening in Amsterdam Vandana had a very good answer when she was asked where she would like to see more money spent. She suggested school gardens and community gardens. She offered the challenge that in the next decade we should not let a single small farmer fail, and money should be spent to that end.
Amsterdam
Vandana’s talk in Amsterdam was of course also fantastic, but the venue was a little lacking. First Vandana gave her talk, then someone from the University of Wageningen gave a presentation that essentially promoted modern agriculture. Afterwards, there was supposed to be a debate between the two.
Vandana’s talk was in English, and the other person spoke in Dutch. The debate was supposed to be in English. There was really a lot of language conflict. At one point there was a brief discussion in Dutch, Vandana asked for a translation, and she was told it was too typically Dutch and she wouldn’t understand. I think that was very rude, and it left Vandana in a position where she may have felt people were telling secrets around her.
What this all meant was too much of my evening was taken up by a presentation promoting the Green Revolution, and the debate that followed was too unfocused. I think Vandana ended up being slightly insulted.
The talk was held in a place called De Rode Hoed or ‘The Red Hat’. Vandana picked up on the name and mentioned it was also the name for open source software.
Genes not Patentable
This is old news, now from more than two weeks ago, but the US justice department has decided naturally occurring genes should not be patentable.
Really??
It’s kind of strange this news sort of came and went with hardly a comment from the blogging community. This is just the opinion of the US justice department, and might not hold, but it has could have wide ranging ramifications including in the area of genetically modified crops.
The article linked to above is mistaken, in my opinion, when it comes to what it says on GM crops. It says they would not be covered by this decision, because the genes they use are man made and not naturally occurring. I wasn’t aware we were to the point of being able to create artificial genes, at least as far as genetic engineering of plants, but maybe someone will put me in my place if I’m wrong on this… As far as I’m aware all research into plant breeding, transgenic or otherwise, involves genes found in the wild.
This could be really big news, or it might be nothing. Anyone have an opinion? Wild speculation maybe?
Just Fair Market – Dublin
Just Fair Market - Fairly Fantastic Fare
I came across this farmers market in Dublin a little while ago, and I keep meaning to mention it here. I noticed them because they link here, so I can see it in my log files.
Besides featuring local Irish farmers and independent food shops, here are a couple of things that make this market look really interesting:
- Every weekend one or more stands offers cooking lessons.
- There’s an information point, offering advice on what’s good to buy and why.
This really goes beyond what I normally see at farmers markets, and I think it’s neat. It shows a unique commitment of engagement with their customers.
If you’re in Dublin, I hope you’ll pay them a visit. Then please come back here and leave a comment telling us what you think!
I Amsterdam
Expats coming to the Netherlands, beware!
The city of Amsterdam recently launched a new ‘brand’, called I Amsterdam.
This is a registered trademark of the city, and is supposedly used for companies or other organizations that present the city in a good light. In particular an important part of the marketing efforts are to attract so-called knowledge workers to the city, and help with their relocation by promoting businesses that can assist them with things like housing, banking and the like.
Beware of Racism!
An important part of the history of the Netherlands is after WWII a large number of migrants came here to help with the reconstruction of the country. These migrants kept coming, and in recent times turned into more educated knowledge workers. In fact, in light of the fact there were large numbers of knowledge workers the governments has significantly cut back on educational spending and let immigrants fill the gaps, causing other problems I won’t get into here.
The view has always been maintained that those coming to the country are doing so to serve the native Dutch and their descendants. In other words, knowledge workers come here to create jobs, and these jobs are for ethnic Dutch.
The demographics are now such that about half the city’s population is not ethnic Dutch, and if you move here you will also not be ethnic Dutch.
There’s a long running custom for ethnic Dutch to only hire or offer promotions to other ethnic Dutch. In fact, to hire or promote someone who is not ethnic Dutch is considered to be taking a risk. This might create discontent in the workplace, a clash of cultures or attract complaints from customers — much in the same way it used to be with black workers in America.
There is no such thing as affirmative action or reverse discrimination here, and certainly not in the city government! The vast majority of city workers are ethnic Dutch, and nearly all of those in positions of importance are. Most city contracts go to companies who only hire ethnic Dutch. Certainly for the purposes of this new marketing logo, if you do business with the companies involved, you will see they are almost all exclusively staffed with ethnic Dutch.
If you do business with them, you will be leaving out the half of the city that is not ethnic Dutch.
Housing
This is a good example, and since I am not ethnic Dutch and am offering an apartment for rent, let me explain a little bit how this works.
Largely speaking, there are three kinds of housing in Amsterdam. There’s social housing, where you have to meet certain income, employment and pre-existing residence requirements. There’s free sector housing, which is more expensive and easier to find. Now there’s this new category called Short-Stay housing, especially intended for expats.
There’s lots of grey areas in housing, for example people who have social housing illegally subletting it to expats for a huge profit, or landlords illegally renting out social housing as free sector. Lots of people will worn expats about ‘illegal’ housing, but actually there’s nothing to worry about. There are no penalties for you to rent and live in illegal housing. The risks are almost exclusively for property owners. If you find yourself in the wrong kind of accommodation, you may have to move out eventually or pay a higher than expected rent, you might find yourself swamped with a bit of red tape, but there are no other risks.
The one issue for some is if you are non-EU and living here on a residence permit renewed on an annual basis, you will need to register your residence with the city and be allowed to live wherever that is. This is easy. If you fall into this situation, ask your potential landlord if you’re allowed to register? If the answer is no, you have to look elsewhere. Your landlord will not want you to try to register if you’re not allowed to, and it will create a lot of problems for them if you do. If you aren’t required to register because of a residence permit, it’s no problem to come to an agreement that you won’t register, if this is what you want to do.
There is nothing illegal about renting an apartment from me or any other private party! Most places are okay to register with the city. If you rent from me, you can certainly register if you want, no problem.
Short Stay housing was created because there are a lot of empty apartments in the city now that don’t meet the requirements of free sector rental housing, and can’t be sold because the real estate market is too depressed. Licenses were granted to large housing corporations to use this excess housing as ‘Short Stay’ housing, in limited numbers so the market would not fill up with expat rentals, bringing prices down. These licenses were granted ‘per unit’, with entire apartment blocks considered as a single unit, meaning the cost for someone like me with a single apartment was unrealistic, and only pre-existing housing corporations would qualify.
If you move into an official ‘Short Stay’ rental, you will get housing licensed by a city government dominated by ethnic Dutch, with the intention of keeping it in short supply in an otherwise flooded real estate market with artificially high rents, as well as with the intention of benefiting ethnic Dutch owners running a company who only hires ethnic Dutch workers.
This isn’t the right kind of housing for expats!
Whatever you do, and however you find housing, the best thing to do is avoid official Short Stay housing and official housing companies. If you’re looking for housing, leave a comment on this post and I’ll try to offer the most current advice I have at the moment.
Work Ethic
One of the things that happens with the active promotion of ethnic Dutch is one of the most atrocious work ethics I have ever seen. Nothing is a better example than when the city was licensing taxis in a similar way as the new Short Stay housing! By searching on TCA or Taxi Centrale Amsterdam, there are probably lots of stories on the Internet, but basically the city turned all of their taxi drivers into thugs.
The taxi drivers all knew they had a right to drive their taxi, pretty much charge whatever they wanted and could do what they wanted because the city had given them a permanent license and weren’t issuing new licenses to others. This basically meant they were ripping off any tourist who entered their cabs, charging whatever they wanted, and many became involved in organized crime. For a time it was known if you wanted pirated software, you could buy a CD from most taxi drivers. Many would transport drugs on request. It was a real mess, and it took a long time to sort out. Nowadays, the taxis aren’t nearly as bad, certainly nothing to be afraid of, but there are still a few bad drivers floating around and taxis are still best avoided if possible.
Later I’m going to do a post on my recent house renovations, and the story is similar with this.
Any time you do business with a completely ethnic Dutch company, you risk the same sort of work ethic and desire to charge the highest price for the least amount of work. By the way, this is often the case with ethnic Dutch people trying to buy goods and services too. Since employment is harder to come by for non-ethnic Dutch, as a rule they are much more motivated and honest.
I’m not in anyway encouraging anyone to discriminate the other way, and refuse to do business with ethnic Dutch, but rather use common sense.
If you’re an expat coming to Amsterdam, beware half of the city is like you — from somewhere else. Look out for and pay attention to them! Look for colored skin, a funny accent or native English speaker. The day will come where you expect the same from others.
If you come here and work for a foreign company, it may take a long time before you notice it, because you’ll be working in a pretty sheltered environment. It’s also normal when you come here to look on everything with a positive light, and for example justify this kind of discrimination on the basis of a lack of appropriate language skills. The truth is with something like language skills, the expectations are generally just so high, that no non-native speaker is good enough. Almost no one learns to speak Dutch as a second language without an accent. It can take a long time living here before you see just how undeniable the discrimination is, but you’ll see it eventually.
A desire to purchase goods and services from non-ethnic Dutch is really the most important first step to ending the discrimination that goes on here.
Garden Pictures November 2010
Above is what Tim Peters perennial rye looks like now. I haven’t been worrying too much about the weeds, assuming they will soon either be killed off by frost or choked out by the rye. The rye plants have been developing crowns, and all growing pretty strong.
This is the yacón corner of the garden. Yacón is very sensitive to frost, and we’ve already had some light frosts, so you can see they are dying back a bit. On the left is a new variety for this year with purplish leaves, New Zealand Yacón, and on the right my unamed brown rooted variety. In the back out of sight I have a few of the red rooted Yacón Morado plants growing too.
Also suffering from ground frosts is my one surviving mauka plant Frank sent me a year ago. Frank sent me 4 cuttings, which I kept indoors through the winter and planted in the spring. I almost killed them with neglect several times, and while I’m glad I tried it once, I’m not planning to try it again this winter. I just don’t have the space or resources to keep live cuttings through the winter indoors. I can’t wait to try the root of this however, after the tops are killed off by frost.
