‘We are not setting out to make existing fashion more sustainable, but to develop totally new materials that are “acceptable” from the word go,’ says Kim Poldner, who leads the Circular Fashion Lab at Wageningen University & Research. ‘Materials that use hardly any water or environmentally harmful chemicals, and are biodegradable when discarded.’

The exhibition, a slimmed-down version of which will be on display in Wageningen in September and early October, starts where conventional fashion, including the use of biocotton, hemp and flax, leaves off.

Poldner, who works in the Management Studies Group and is fascinated by sustainable entrepreneurship in fashion, organized the Arnhem exhibition in collaboration with the local University of the Arts, ArtEZ, as part of the WUR centenary.

‘A lot of things are still under development and not ready to go into production yet, but if we work with the big fashion labels, innovations can be fine-tuned and scaled up.’ More than 80 Wageningen MSc students collaborated on the exhibition, says Poldner, developing the materials together with fashion and textile designers.

‘They researched things like whether you can dye materials with plant and bacterial pigments, or the potential of fruit waste. During the opening weekend, the students were walking around in lab coats to talk to visitors about their research.’

Completely biodegradable material

Iris Houthoff, who has a Wageningen MSc in Biotechnology and now teaches Bioprocess Engineering part-time, has been involved in the exhibition. ‘Hides from the leather industry travel great distances and the tanning process produces a lot of wastewater. I am aiming at a new type of leathery material that can be produced locally, does not pollute, and is completely biodegradable once it is written off,’ explains Houthoff. To this end, she founded a Wageningen-based company called Mylium.

Thanks to a student competition for inventing new, valuable products using regional waste flows, she identified fungi such as Reishi mushrooms that grow on waste timber. ‘Fungi are nature’s circular motor, and it is high time we tapped into that force. They break down waste material and convert it into a strong fruiting body and mycelium. At Mylium we are studying different production methods for producing ‘lengths’ of mycelium, but we can also get the mycelium to grow directly into the form that is required.’

After harvesting and drying, the mycelium needs to be conserved with a coating to prevent it drying out, keep it flexible and scratch-free, and make it durable. ‘It doesn’t have to last 30 years like leather, as long as it is completely compostable and leaves the soil healthy.’ For the exhibition, Houthoff made the straps for sandals by designer Luc Aarts. ‘A lot of people think the material feels nice, and resembles both cork and cotton,’ says Houthoff. ‘I don’t know where Mylium will be in five years, but we should be able to produce shoes, watchstraps and car furnishings.’

100 billion garments sold

Conventional fashion companies are increasingly aware of the massive environmental impact of the fashion industry, says Poldner. Cotton, for example, is a water-guzzling crop on which huge amounts of artificial fertilizer and pesticides are used. And the pollution and generation of waste is only increasing thanks to the ever faster rate at which fashion trends change. According to figures from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s report A New Textiles Economy, the number of garments sold worldwide doubled between 2000 and 2015, going from 50 billion to 100 billion.

According to a study by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, the average Dutch person’s wardrobe contains 173 items, 50 of which have not been worn for over a year. More than 70 percent of that clothing soon gets cast off and is then burnt or – even worse – dumped in landfill. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation calculated that the fashion industry’s annual total CO₂ emissions are equivalent to those of all the world’s aeroplanes and ships. ‘The fashion industry is the most polluting branch in the world after the oil industry,’ says Poldner.

Agreement on safe factories

‘But the branch has now drawn up a lot of guidelines for reducing the environmental impact and promoting better practices such as the use of biocotton. And the accident in the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh in 2013 opened the broader public’s eyes to the labour conditions in the fashion industry,’ she says. The disaster cost 1134 people their lives and left over 2000 seriously wounded. In the aftermath, more than 200 international fashion brands signed an agreement on safe factories.

As well as students, creatives and scientists with an out-of-the-box attitude, there were multinational fashion chains and established designers present at the exhibition. Viktor & Rolf, for example, made a series of garments out of the online store Zalando’s unsold remnants (deadstock). African designers developed new fashion out of cast-off clothing shipped from Europe to Africa. Jeans company G-Star exhibited new, sustainable dyeing processes.

Virgin cotton

The exhibition covers the recycling of textiles too. This issue is coming in for more and more attention in the conventional fashion industry. Beside direct reuse through exchange of clothing, second-hand shops and clothes libraries, there are more and more initiatives targeting the reclaiming of worn-out textile to spin it into secondhand yarns. ‘At the moment, if you recycle cotton you always need some “virgin” cotton on which to spin the short, weaker second-hand cotton fibres,’ explains Martien van den Oever of Wageningen Food & Biobased Research.

‘We are now researching whether hemp and especially flax fibres are suitable substitutes for virgin cotton fibre. Hemp requires no water and no pesticides. Flax does require a few chemicals, but on the other hand the fibre is naturally much finer than hemp.’ Van den Oever is helping to improve the cultivation of hemp for fibres, too. ‘We have realized we need to harvest it earlier. The yield per hectare is then smaller, but the hemp fibres are much better suited to use in textiles.’

Another tricky issue for recycling cotton is the fact that cotton is rarely used in its pure form these days. It often contains elastane, polyester and polyamide. ‘Because we don’t have techniques for separating the fibres, these mixed fabrics currently get rejected for reuse. But once we can separate the cotton fibres from the synthetic ones, we can spin them into new yarns and make high-value textiles from them’, says Van den Oever.

Kim Poldner applauds these developments. But her dream is for her research on business models in fashion to lead to a breakthrough with innovations in areas such as fungal fabric and fruit leather, both in startups and in big chains. ‘I hope that in 10 years’ time we shall be wearing more clothes we have designed ourselves, made of plant material we grew ourselves: clothing that fits perfectly, thanks to 3D body scanning and printing, and which can be thrown in the organic bin when we discard it.’

Wearing circular-economy fashion

At the opening of the academic year in September, WUR President Louise Fresco gave a good example by wearing circular-economy fashion. Fresco wore a vegan dress made of deadstock silk and printed with waste ink. Her scarf was dyed with the help of bacteria and she sported one of Iris Houthoff ’s mycelium watchstraps.

www.wur.eu/sustainablestyle

It’s a clear message, based on 10 years of research and a 12,000-page report. Cancer researchers all around the world combed the scientific literature in search of links between nutrition, exercise and the risk of cancer in humans, animals and cells. Then Imperial College London processed the mountain of data from all the researchers. After that, a panel of independent experts – who weren’t involved in the research themselves – assessed the data and drew up the new guidelines. Kampman chaired the meeting in May at which the World Cancer Research Fund drew up the guidelines.

The World Cancer Research Fund already published guidelines 10 years ago. What are the main changes?
‘Actually the guidelines have pretty much stayed the same. Luckily, because otherwise scientists would have a problem. The main thing is that certain recommendations have become more forceful because the evidence for them has become stronger. Especially the recommendations that have to do with obesity, such as the consumption of fast food and sugary soft drinks.’

‘The recommendation on alcohol has been sharpened up too. In the previous guidelines the recommendation was to drink in moderation, whereas now the advice is: don’t drink any alcohol if you want to prevent cancer. Ten years ago, the harmful effects of alcohol were weighed up against its preventive effect: alcohol was believed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

‘But in the meanwhile several studies have contradicted that claim of a protective effect. Alcohol really is one of the most carcinogenic substances we consume. It leads to DNA damage and causes many kinds of cancer, including breast cancer, the most common form among women.’

Is the relation between other foodstuffs and cancer as direct as that?
‘Luckily there are not many substances that are present in our diet in such high concentrations that they cause damage to our DNA, making them carcinogenic. Others besides alcohol are the acrylamides in potato chips and fries. But big manufacturers have largely cut those out of their  products. Then there are other substances in food that raise the risk of cancer. There is haem iron in red meat, for instance. If you are exposed to too much of that, the gut wall sustains damage, raising the risk of colon cancer.

‘And there are substances that boost the growth of a tumour cell that has already formed. Too much fatty tissue around the organs, for instance, can lead to chronic inflammation that stimulates tumour growth. That is why the guidelines also say: avoid overweight. Because overweight is associated with 12 types of cancer, such as bowel, pancreatic, breast and uterine cancer.’

Which types of cancer are the most sensitive to what you eat?
‘To find that out you have to look at the attributable risk. What percentage is explained by diet and exercise? For bowel cancer, it is 40 to 50 percent, for breast cancer 30 to 40, and for pancreatic cancer 5 to 10 percent.’

‘The writers of the report did the sums on those attributable risks for the four main types of cancer – lung, bowel, breast and prostate. They found that 30 to 40 percent of all the 100,000 Dutch cases of cancer per year could be prevented if the Dutch ate a healthy diet and got more exercise. If the Dutch didn’t smoke, we’d also prevent about 30 percent of cancers.’

And does it help to eat fruit and vegetables?
‘It is hard to measure the effect of fruit and vegetables. Surveys don’t work very well because people often forget what kinds of fruit and vegetables they have eaten. And we don’t have a good indicator for measuring fruit and vegetable consumption in the blood.’

‘Some of my colleagues say that fruit and vegetables don’t help prevent cancer. But that is a dangerous statement. There is a clear link between fruit and vegetable consumption and a lower risk of head and throat tumours among smokers. And people who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables consume fewer calories, lowering their risk of becoming overweight and therefore their risk of cancer. So there definitely is an indirect link between fruit and vegetables and cancer.’

The guidelines apply to cancer patients as well. Do a healthy diet and exercise help when you already have cancer?
‘That remains to be seen from the studies that are now being done. My sister-in-law got breast cancer about 10 years ago. She asked, ‘What now, Ellen? Is there any point in a healthy diet now?’ I had no idea; up to then I had only done research on nutrition and the prevention of cancer. It turned out there was hardly any scientific literature about it, so I started a study. 

‘We now have three large studies running, in which we monitor cancer patients, looking at their diet and lifestyle. The first focuses on bowel cancer patients, the second on breast cancer patients, and the third on patients whose genes mean they are at very high risk of all types of cancer. Other recent studies show that more exercise can reduce the risk of a recurrence of the cancer. Hopefully in a few years we’ll find out whether a healthy diet can enable us to live longer with a better quality of life.

‘On the basis of those results we would like to start an intervention study among cancer patients. Then we won’t just study the relation between their diet, their lifestyle and the course of their illness, but we shall influence it as well.’

‘In a pilot study last year, we studied whether tending a vegetable garden changed the course of the disease for the better. I have a vegetable garden myself, and I thought it would be very good for cancer patients too. They get exercise, they make vitamin D (which cancer patients are often short of) because they are out of doors, and they meet fellow sufferers. And with a bit of luck, they eat the vegetables they grow too. The initial results seem promising. Then we also want to find out why coffee protects against bowel, liver and uterine cancer. Which substance could be responsible for that?’

An awful lot of people don’t know that there is a link between diet, obesity and cancer. And even when they do know it, they hardly make any changes to their diet or behaviour. Giving up alcohol is especially taboo.
‘Yes, for a lot of people that is a difficult message. But there are all sorts of ways of making sure the Dutch start living more healthily. It’s important that we inform doctors, for instance, and that they communicate the often unwelcome message: “maybe you could try to lose weight and drink less”. Research shows that consumers have a lot of faith in doctors.’

‘But the consumer’s environment will have to be changed too: less advertising for alcohol and fast food, cheaper fruit and vegetables, a tax on sugar and fat – measures like that. You shouldn’t put all the responsibility on the consumers. They need help.’

Interesting ideas, but who is going to take the lead? 
‘In the Netherlands, the ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sport is working on a national prevention agreement, in which cutting obesity, alcohol consumption and smoking is central. The contents and the approach will be established this year together with stakeholders – from health insurance companies, patients’ associations and hospitals to representatives of the food industry. I think the draft plans that were leaked, for subsidizing sugar-free products and discouraging bargain prices for alcohol, are rather feeble. I doubt whether we shall solve the overweight and alcohol problems that way.

‘Anyway, I shall do everything in my power to inform consumers. I recently gave a talk on diet and health at a science café in Wageningen. To my great surprise, the room was full of young people. They were well educated young people, mind you. It would be good if we could reach less highly educated young people too, because they stand to benefit the most in health terms. The period in which they enjoy a good quality of life, free of disease, is 20 years shorter for them.’

http://www.wur.eu/nutritioncancer

Background image: Shutterstock

All this nature is a familiar sight to the commuters who speed along the dyke between Lelystad and Almere, but their grandparents can still remember when the large sea bay known as the Zuiderzee dominated the area. ‘In the bed of the IJsselmeer and the Markermeer, there are still bacteria that are familiar to us from the saltwater coastal environment: these are lakes in transition,’ explains Piet Verdonschot, leader of the Freshwater Ecosystems group at Wageningen Environmental Research, and professor at the University of Amsterdam. ‘All kinds of things go on underwater that we still don’t understand. This is a unique ecosystem.’

Flooding and famine

After the flooding around the Zuiderzee in 1916 and the famine of 1918, the Dutch parliament embraced plans drawn up by the engineer Lely to create the Afsluitdijk and then polders. The dyke was complete in 1932 and the Wieringermeer polder was then quickly pumped dry on account of the acute shortage of farmland. The extensive IJsselmeer polders followed later.

It was agricultural engineer Roel van Duin, director of the IJsselmeer Polders Development Authority and professor by special appointment in Wageningen, who led a change of course in the late 1970s. Since then, agriculture has no longer been the sole priority and cycle paths, recreational green spaces and woodlands have been created. It was Van Duin too who saw the potential of the Oostvaardersplassen as a habitat for birds.

Immediate economic utility took more and more of a back seat. And people were starting to question whether the Netherlands still needed additional farmland. The Houtrib dyke between Lelystad and Enkhuizen was completed in 1976, separating the Markermeer from the IJsselmeer, but the plan to create polders out of the Markerwaard area was put on the back burner and then scratched for good in 2003.

A lagoon in the Markermeer

Nature, on the other hand, was now centre stage. And to provide additional impetus for that, nature organization Natuurmonumenten instigated the creation of the Marker Wadden, a lagoon of artificial islands in the Markermeer. Work started on this in 2016, and ecologist Piet Verdonschot is now doing a study for the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality on whether these islands with their shallow shorelines are increasing the Markermeer’s capacity to support water birds.

‘To answer that question we first had to get to grips with how the Markermeer’s ecosystem worked,’ explains Verdonschot. Postdoc Mariëlle van Riel took samples of the soil life of the Markermeer at more than 80 locations. Research is also being done on the extent to which water plants thrive in the muddy water, and the fish are being studied in partnership with Wageningen Marine Research.

‘In two years we hope to have a good idea of the food web. Initial findings are that the birds that eat water plants and soil creatures do fi nd enough to eat, but that the fish-eaters only fi nd half the amount they need at present.’

Sewage water from Amsterdam

Fish stocks changed dramatically after the closing of the IJsselmeer in 1932 and the desalination of the water. But the rich fishing grounds remained, largely because of the phosphate-rich river and sewage water from
Amsterdam that flowed into the lake. That pipe closed in the 1980s, and the Marker meer has undergone a second transformation since then. ‘A major nutrient source for the ecosystem disappeared,’ says Verdonschot. One of the effects of that was a reduction in the food supply and a decline in fish stocks.

The Marker Wadden were intended to give nature a push in the right direction. ‘The Markermeer is a bowl of water between dykes, more like a bathtub than a lake,’ says Verdonschot. ‘Natural shorelines would make a world of difference. You need shallow zones where water and marsh plants grow, and where fish can spawn and take shelter.

‘But the most important thing is that organic material washes into the lake from those shores, and provides a source of new life. Our initial estimates suggest that the Marker Wadden are working out well, but that at their current size they only produce 1 to 2 percent additional material. The area is too small.’

The ecologist sees more future in plans to connect the Oostvaardersplassen and the Lepelaarsplassen at Almere with the Markermeer. ‘The lake would then gain a large riparian zone, which could boost that percentage gain considerably,’ says Verdonschot. He would also like to see big fluctuations in the traditionally stable water levels. Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management Cora van Nieuwenhuizen decided this spring to authorize a fluctuation of 20 centimetres so that an extra freshwater buffer can be built up in the summer. That is necessary in order to protect the north of the Netherlands against longer periods of drought.

BIGGER FLUCTUATIONS

Verdonschot says 20 centimetres is not enough. Nor is he very keen on a low water level in winter and a high one in summer. Nature would benefit from the exact opposite, he thinks. ‘I expect that the Marker Wadden islands won’t get flooded enough, or it will happen at the wrong time of year. It is not feasible to increase the fluctuation in the Markermeer; the piles on which Amsterdam is built couldn’t cope with that.

‘If you ask me, we should build a new dyke around the IJ waterway and get rid of the Houtrib dyke. At the moment, that dyke is being reinforced, but what purpose does that really serve now? Without the dyke, the wind will have more impact on the water level, and the interaction between the IJsselmeer and the IJssel River will be restored.’

Jeroen Veraart, who coordinates IJsselmeer research at Wageningen University & Research, notes that the IJsselmeer region has gained importance as an intersection of different interests: both lakes are Natura 2000 areas, fisheries operate there, water recreation is a big economic factor and there are plans to build housing and wind turbines along the shores. Not all these ambitions are mutually compatible.

Veraart sees a lack of a coherent vision on developing the region. ‘Of course there is a joint regional agenda, but that is largely a product of the creation of the polders. What often happens in the end is that ministries and provinces each make their own plans and only look at the long-term vision after that.’

But in May, 60 government bodies, lobby groups and citizens’ initiatives did decide to improve their collaboration in The IJsselmeer 2050 Agenda. This is the first time such a broad coalition of organizations has rallied behind the ‘Blue Heart of the Netherlands’ in areas including water safety, nature, fisheries and recreation. There is also broad agreement on reinforcing and transforming the Afsluitdijk between the IJsselmeer and the sea between the end of this year and 2022.

Billions of fish

I met Ben Griffioen at the brand-new Wadden Centre at Kornwerderzand on the Afsluitdijk. Every day, superfluous water is pumped into the Wadden Sea here, just as it is at Den Oever on the North Holland coast. ‘Millions, and maybe billions of fish that want to migrate from the sea to fresh water are attracted by that influx of fresh water,’ says Griffioen.

‘For strong swimmers such as the sea trout or the salmon, that migration is feasible, but most of the fi sh cannot cope with the strong current. A fl ounder larva is not much more than two little eyes staring at you. Under natural conditions, they just get swept in on the incoming tide.’

The ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management has an obligation under the Water Framework Directive to make sure these migratory fish can access fresh water. To this end, a kind of elevator for fish has been installed at Den Oever, and experiments are going on with more fish-friendly ways of pumping water into the sea. Work will start next year on the crowning glory: the Fish Migration River, an opening in the Afsluitdijk for migrating fish to swim through.

From salt to fresh water

‘The idea is to recreate a tidal flow on a small scale, specifically to help the smaller fish to migrate from the Wadden Sea to the IJsselmeer,’ explains Griffioen. These fish will pass through a 10-metrewide gap in the Afsluitdijk on the incoming tide, into a meandering channel that runs for four kilometres before flowing into the IJsselmeer. The Province of Friesland has designed that channel to create a gradual transition from salt to fresh water.

‘On our advice, there will be a bed of sand and gravel so that the speed of the current varies; for the smaller species especially, it is important that they can rest when the tide goes out, and find shelter from predators. Narrow passages with a lot of turbulence are taboo, because a lot of fish hate them. It’s our job to think from the fish’s point of view.’

Griffioen expects a colourful variety of fish in the channel, from local sticklebacks to long-distance swimmers such as the eel. The fish migration river could be the salvation of freshwater fish, thousands of which currently land in the Wadden Sea every time water is pumped into it. ‘They survive for a little while in the freshwater bubble; perhaps some of them will be able to swim back along the Fish Migration River.’

Snack bar for birds

Some professional fishers are sceptical about the Fish Migration River, calling it ‘a snack bar for birds’, but a bigger influx of glass eels and flounders could work out well for them too. Although banned in the IJssel River, eel fishing is still allowed in the IJsselmeer. There are poles with eel traps every few hundred metres along the dykes, and mitten crabs are caught in them as well. The cast net fishing is less eye-catching, and involves kilometres of metres-high nets that hang in the water like curtains to catch bream, roach, perch and pike  perch.

Fishing quotas are determined by the minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. They are based on Wageningen research on fish stocks, explains Joep de Leeuw of Wageningen Marine Research. ‘To estimate numbers we fish with a trawl in the autumn. We supplement the information we get with catch data from the fisheries themselves and on the size distribution and the age breakdown of the main species. All that information is used to decide how much fishing to allow, so that it is sustainable,’ says De Leeuw.

‘For fish with a long lifespan, these models work fine. We can estimate the impact of fisheries quite accurately,’ he adds. But that does not apply to small fish with short lifespans, such as the smelt. ‘We don’t know exactly what determines the population growth.’ Early in the spring these little fish set off en masse to spawn at the coast. There they are fished using smelt traps and sold to Spanish consumers.

Smelt fishing

‘That is a season of two to three weeks, but this smelt fishing can boost fishers’ incomes significantly,’ says De
Leeuw. ‘Fishers think not catching them is wasteful. Their argument is that the fish die after spawning anyway. We question that. We are seeing a lot of older smelt too, now they have no longer been fished for the past
few years. We don’t know what the respective roles are of fisheries, fish-eating birds and the weather. These are not unsolvable questions but it would cost a lot of money to find the answers to them.’

If the ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality authorizes smelt fishing, that decision is based on the fish stocks and fisheries legislation. The fisheries still have one more bureaucratic hurdle to jump, though. They need an exemption from the nature conservation law because they work in Natura2000 areas established for water birds.

They have to apply for that exemption to the provincial governments, which test whether terns and cormorants are still able to find sufficient fish to feed their young if fisheries catch some of them too. Because you cannot be sure about that, no licences have been issued in recent years, or they were withdrawn by court order after objections from the Society for the Protection of Birds.

Hard to justify

Wim Zaalmink of Wageningen Economic Research understands that it must be difficult for fisheries to observe all the rules. ‘Last year the ministry required them to catch 36 percent less roach and bream. You can only do that if you fish with fewer or shorter cast nets. But then the fishers catch fewer pike-perch too, which are their most lucrative fish. Whereas the pike-perch stocks are fine at the moment. That is hard to justify.’

Professional fisheries in the IJsselmeer and Markermeer lakes make up a modest sector, says Zaalmink. A total of 60 licences for a certain number of nets or traps are issued to over 30 companies, which have a turnover of over four million euros a year between them. In this profession, people are attached to their traditions. ‘When the fishermen set out they still say, “we are going to sea”,’ says Zaalmink.

‘Smaller fishermen do other jobs when times are hard, in construction for instance. But they want to go on fishing come what may. There is a strong sense that they have a right to pass this occupation on from one generation to the next. But the fish stocks are a strong argument for rationalization. In the past there were arrangements for buying companies out but now the EU sees that as unfair state support.’

There is a good living to be made for a limited number of fishers, thinks Zaalmink, as long as they adapt to the focus on nature. ‘And it’s fine for them to branch out too, running boat trips to the Marker Wadden, for instance, or reaping water plants.’

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Background image: Hollandse Hoogte

There are several kinds of fungi, such as oyster mushrooms, which are capable of breaking down lignin. They colonize straw and other plant matter with a network of fungal threads, thus breaking down the lignin and making the valuable carbohydrates available for the growth of the fungus. By adding these fungi to straw and stopping the process just before the fungi appear, feed is obtained that is more digestible in the rumens of the ruminants.

Perfectly edible

Laboratory research reveals an 85 percent increase in the digestibility of wheat straw. ‘Actually, in nutritional terms, we are turning it into grass. We are upgrading low-value biomass into a highly usable animal feed,’ says Hendriks. ‘Goats find it perfectly edible, at any rate.’ Hendriks hasn’t tried the mouldy straw on cows yet.
‘They eat a lot more. We don’t have the capacity for that level of production in Wageningen.

In the Netherlands you have to make major investments: we do our tests indoors, at 24 degrees and high humidity. In Asia you can just do them outdoors, as the fungi are more in their element at high temperatures. What is more, there is plenty of rice straw available there.’

The process is easy for small farmers to carry out too. Once the fungi have done their work after four to six weeks, the farmer can store the processed straw in a closed, airtight barrel. ‘The fungi produce acids that conserve the product. Pack the barrel, stamp it down, put the lid on it, and you can keep it for years if you need to,’ says Hendriks. And a farmer can use the fungi from the previous batch for another portion of mouldy straw.

Indonesia and Vietnam

Hendriks’ colleague John Cone is currently doing tests in Indonesia, applying the technique in rice cultivation on a small scale. And in September, with support from the Victam Foundation, a PhD student will start research on semicommercial application of the method in Vietnam.

Part of his research will be to test an alternative to the processing method Hendriks uses in Wageningen. ‘Before we let our fungi loose on the straw, we sterilize it to get rid of competing fungi,’ explains Hendriks. ‘That is probably overkill. He is going to see whether you can also disinfect the straw adequately in water in an oil drum that you paint black and that heats up in the sun.’

There is interest in using the Wageningen fungi in other countries too, and even on completely different waste products. In Thailand there have been experiments with the waste from sugar cane. And two Iranian researchers brought their own research material with them to Wageningen: leaves and other waste from the date palm. ‘Our fungi were up to that too,’ says Hendriks. ‘The Iranians took the fungi with them to do further research, and they are now working on two publications.’

Hendriks sees plenty of scope for improving the breakdown of lignin. Adding extra substances that the fungus needs to make enzymes speeds up the process by 30 percent. He also hopes to introduce genetic improvements in collaboration with fungus researchers at Wageningen Plant Research.

‘Next autumn Nazri Nayan will graduate with a PhD for a thesis on the enormous variation in the capacity to break down lignin in one of our species of fungus. That suggests that there are is a lot of potential for breeding the fungi and making the process faster and even more efficient.’

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In three years’ time, it hopes to introduce products such as nutritional supplements that can combat obesity. The company is using the bacterium Akkermansia muciniphila for this. This bacterium improves the intestinal barrier function, so that harmful substances that ultimately cause obesity are less likely to be absorbed by the body.

The ease with which the initial capital was arranged contrasts sharply with the problems De Vos had in getting funding for the research that led to the discovery of the bacterium. At the time, the Microbiology chair group professor wanted to look for bacteria that grow on materials our intestines produce themselves, such as mucus.

‘I had a feeling there would be some useful species among them, but we had no evidence of this. That’s why it was really difficult to find funding for this research on the digestive system. I submitted the research proposal three times.’ It was only at the third time of asking that the funding was granted and his PhD candidate Muriel Derrien could get to work. In 2004, this research resulted in the discovery of the bacterium Akkermansia muciniphila.

Barrier against substances that cause obesity

The Akkermansia bacterium produces a protein that other bacteria lack. This proteinimproves the intestinal barrier function. After the bacterium has been administered, the intestines let through less of the toxic substances of the kind that ultimately cause obesity. It is not yet clear how strong this effect is. Administering the bacterium also helps prevent intestinal inflammation and may work against hepatic steatosis (fatty liver) too. The bacterium is found naturally in many people but overweight people often have a deficiency.

Safe for humans

Four years after the discovery, De Vos started a collaboration with the Belgian professor Patrice Cani, now at UCL, to get a better picture of the bacterium’s health eff ects. The bacterium turned out to reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes in mice after they had been dosed with it. Later, the Belgian research group found that the bacterium could be used safely in humans too.

The bacterium did not work when sterilized, but it did when pasteurized. ‘That’s what made us realize a protein is probably causing the effect.’ Proteins become denatured and lose their effect when exposed to high temperatures. De Vos is very pleased that the bacterium still works after pasteurization. The bacterium does not need to still be alive and that makes it much easier to use in food products.

They are considering nutritional supplements and powders, for example, as well as yoghurt drinks, nutrition bars and personalized medicines. The first nutritional products based on the bacterium are expected to be ready for market in around three years, but that is far from definite.

A large and growing problem

There are still many uncertainties surrounding the conversion into actual products. For example, it is still not clear exactly how usable the bacterium is in people with medical conditions. ‘We therefore deliberately looked for an investor who will be prepared to give the company more cash later on,’ says De Vos. That was the French investment fund Seventure, which manages over 600 million euros for companies including Danone and Novartis.

The additional research will mainly be carried out in the vicinity of Brussels, where A-Mansia has its offices. That is because UCL in Belgium has more experience with preclinical trials and medical applications. ‘Another part will probably be carried out in Wageningen and possibly the US as well,’ says De Vos.

The potential target group for A-Mansia is huge. Being overweight is a significant and growing problem worldwide. Figures from Statistics Netherlands show that almost half of all adults in the Netherlands are overweight and almost 15 percent are obese. A-Mansia’s future products combined with a healthy diet and more exercise could help fight the flab.

www.wur.eu/obesity

Background image: Shutterstock

It is good for the soil, fixing nitrogen from the air; it is an attractive landscape feature; the protein-rich seeds can replace imported soya in meat substitutes. And the flowers are indeed very popular with bumble bees, who are having a hard time of it in the Netherlands. Two thirds of the 29 species in the country are vulnerable, threatened or extremely rare, and some have disappeared entirely. ‘We know that a number of rare bumble bees love to forage on lupin. The pollen of lupin is an important nutrient for their offspring.’

Fijen is a PhD candidate in the Plant Ecology and Nature Management chair group at Wageningen University & Research. He hopes to round off his PhD research on the influence of bumble bees and hoverflies on seed production in leeks in May next year.

‘I am studying the main factors for seed production in five different varieties of leek. Besides the quality of the plants, which you can influence with fertilization and irrigation, everything points to pollination, especially by wild pollinators such as bumble bees.’ This provides good arguments for better nature conservation and for doing more to ensure wild pollinators have a good life.

Sweet lupin as a snack

Fijen launched a crowdfunding campaign this summer in order to be able to follow up his PhD research with a study on the role of bumble bees in pollinating lupin. The less bitter ‘sweet lupin’ is cultivated on a modest scale in the Netherlands – a total of 40 hectares in 2016 – partly as green fertilizer, partly as livestock feed, and partly for human consumption.

The crop is not very popular due to variable and unpredictable yields. The first move towards expanding the acreage of the crop would be to improve yields, says Fijen. The second would be to make lupin better known among consumers so that demand grows for these nutritious beans to put into burgers, soups and salads, and as a snack.

‘Research has been done on breeding lupin in order to increase yields or protein content, but not on pollination,’ says Fijen. ‘Whereas that can be important for the yield.’

‘So I want to look at the contribution of bumble bees to the pollination of the three varieties of lupin grown in the Netherlands, in comparison with that of honey bees, which farmers usually use at present. Insects that want to access the pollen of the lupin have to get through a kind of flap mechanism in the flower. Honey bees are just a bit too light for that.’ Fijen needs about 15,000 euros for field trials in Wageningen. ‘Then we can sow next spring and the crop will flower in June.’

Cultural heritage

By improving lupin cultivation, Fijen hopes to bring biodiversity and agriculture a little bit closer together. ‘The decline of bumble bees is partly because we’ve lost so many flowering crops in the Netherlands over the last few decades: lupin, beans, buckwheat and flax are hardly grown any more. They constitute a form of cultural heritage actually. What’s more, a lot more vegetables are now grown in greenhouses.’

There is already plenty of scientific evidence of the importance of wild pollinators such as bumble bees and hoverflies to agricultural crops. ‘But those studies are not always relevant at the farm level. Most of them are short studies conducted in small fields without taking crop rotation into account. That makes it difficult to persuade farmers to do more for biodiversity. Besides, it is not like artificial fertilizer: you can’t just open a bag of wild pollinators and spread them around.’

If bumble bees turn out to be crucial to lupin yields, growing more lupin in the Netherlands could create an all-round winwin situation with a more flourishing bumble bee population, more stable lupin production and higher yields. Not to mention a lower ecological footprint thanks to higher production of plant-based, locally grown protein to replace imported soya.

Background image: Mirjam Hommes

Jansen is specialized in refugees and migration, and regularly visits refugee camps. This summer he was in Zaatari, a large camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan. For his PhD in Wageningen (2004-2011), he stayed two
years in Kakuma, a refugee camp in Northern Kenya that houses refugees from South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Congo and Uganda.

In Northern Kenya, a lot of people live in poverty, suffering recurring food shortages and having to deal with violent cattle rustlers,’ says Jansen. ‘The refugees in Kakuma get protection, healthcare and education. There are facilities such as a braille school, wheelchair basketball and a safe house for women. Of course, nobody stays in a refugee camp for fun. But sometimes families from the area move to this camp so their children can go to school.

Flower bed in the desert

Jansen is primarily interested in the way a refugee camp develops. In the course of time, more and more shops spring up, as well as roads, schools, hospitals, sports fields and sometimes even universities. Jansen talks about how power relations, judicial structures and a youth culture emerge. ‘In Kakuma, which has existed for over 25 years, a second generation has already been born. The camp was intended as an emergency facility, but it has turned out to be less temporary than that. People are building a life there.’

By way of illustration, he describes a refugee who had fought in South Sudan. ‘In Kakuma he became an English teacher, and earned a pittance teaching at one of the four secondary schools. He had a wife, a child and two cats, and he watered his garden every day, a tiny flower bed in the desert. The temporary situation had become normalized for him.’

A park in a camp

Jansen is working for the Association of Dutch Municipalities, which is involved in Zaatari with the municipality of Amsterdam, on an evaluation of their projects in refugee camps such as the development of the public spaces by creating a park and a nature trail. ‘Public space could be planned better in order to meet the needs of people in normalizing camps. Aid organizations often see that as a luxury, besides necessary facilities such as food, water and medical care.

But a park is more than just a green place where people can meet up and where new initiatives are launched. It also offers possibilities for harvesting and storing water to cope with droughts and flooding. So aid in the form of urban planning contributes to the development not only of the camp but also of the region.’

Overloaded reception regions

According to UNHCR estimates, as of 2018 there are more than 68 million people who have been displaced by war or natural disasters. This figure covers both internal refugees and those who have fled abroad. As many as 85 percent of all these refugees are put up in developing countries.

‘Many regions are becoming overloaded,’ says Marian Stuiver, Metropolitan Solutions programme leader at Wageningen Environmental Research. ‘There is not enough food, the diet is not varied enough, there is not enough work, and water and firewood are scarce. There is environmental damage, natural resources are being depleted, and there are no waste disposal systems, for instance.’

It is high time, in Stuiver’s view, that Wageningen expertise was deployed for migration-related issues. ‘It is one of the biggest problems of our time. There is growing urgency and therefore also political pressure in the West to help make regional reception possible.’ In 2017, Stuiver took the initiative of organizing the annual Changing Routes event.

The mechanisms of migration

In 2017, Stuiver took the initiative of organizing the annual Changing Routes event. At this day event, scientists, policymakers and people from aid organizations can discuss the developments around migration flows, make new plans and form new collaborations. ‘We hope to work out the mechanisms that cause migration’, says Stuiver.

Stuiver emphasizes it is in everybody’s interests that projects have real impact because there is a lot of money involved in aid to refugees – governments and other organizations often pump millions of euros into it,. She is working on a broad research agenda on refugees and migration, and on various projects such as the development of a sustainable campus for both Jordanians and Syrian refugees in Jordan (see inset).

In the same region, Wageningen is involved in projects related to water management and horticulture. Last spring, the ministry of Foreign Affairs funded the building of four demonstration greenhouses for growing tomatoes in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, with the aim of saving water and creating jobs for refugees.

Helping with the harvest

Horticulture experts at Wageningen University & Research developed low-tech greenhouses that enable local farmers to manage with less water. About 15 enthusiastic farmers are involved in the project, and their colleagues are being introduced to the new methods in the demonstration greenhouses as well. ‘The idea is that these farmers will hire refugees to help them with the harvest,’ says team leader Caroline van der Salm.

She works in Jordan too, on a similar project: here, medium-scale horticulture businesses in the Jordan Valley are themselves investing in slightly more advanced mid-tech greenhouses. Half their costs are refunded on the condition that they employ refugees. The project will generate 600 jobs, two thirds of them for Syrian refugees.

Wageningen is also working with aid organization ZOA on setting up two training centres for flower cultivation, for Syrian refugees in Jordan. This project is financed by Australia. ‘The training courses will mainly be for women refugees and refugees with a disability, to increase their chances of getting work,’ says Van der Salm. Het team advises on how to set up the centres.

The effects of emergency aid

Thousands of kilometres away, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Wageningen development economist Maarten Voors is studying whether aid really works – in this case, basic emergency aid for the people in the east of the country who have fled in the face of violence by rebel groups. These refugees usually take shelter with family, friends or strangers in villages one or two days’ walk from home, explains Voors.

They have had to leave everything behind and their host families are often extremely poor. So the United Nations hands out vouchers to the poorest refugees, with which they can buy things like mosquito nets, mattresses, buckets and soap at a special market. Only the poorest 10 percent of the villagers get these vouchers.

‘We are studying the impact of this emergency aid,’ says Voors. ‘That is incredibly relevant; after all, we are talking about millions of people every year. The non-profit organization International Initiative for Impact Evaluation is funding the field experiment. A random selection of 70 people get the extra aid, and 70 others, who are equally poor, do not. A mobile research team questions and studies both groups straightaway and then again six weeks later. They look at mental and physical health and social integration. ‘You might wonder, for instance, whether the goods cause conflicts, or whether people in fact share them,’ explains Voors.

The study has been going for a year and has covered 31 villages. The provisional results suggest that the health of the people who got the goods is no better, and infant mortality has not gone down. ‘Perhaps six weeks is too short to see changes in that,’ says Voors.

The emergency aid does mean the recipients have more to eat. ‘That could be because they can spend more of their budget on food,’ explains Voors. ‘It also seems as though the emergency aid has a positive effect on social integration. But the biggest positive impact was on the mental stability and resilience of the people who received the aid.’

Climate migration

It is not just war and violence, as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that force people to flee their homes. According to the Internal Disaster Monitoring Centre (IDMC), in 2017 there were nearly 11.8 million new refugees displaced by conflict and violence, and nearly 18.8 million displaced by natural disasters. Ingrid Boas of the Wageningen Environmental Policy chair group studies the interaction between migration and climate change. ‘Most studies show that climate change is not a primary motive for large numbers of people to trek long distances, and that climate migration is largely local,’ says Boas.

She was awarded a Veni grant by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research in 2016 for her research on climate-related migration and the influence of modern communication technology. In 2017, Boas spent five months in Bangladesh, which suffers from rising sea levels and flooding caused by increasingly powerful cyclones. She spoke to residents of affected areas about their decisions to stay or to leave, and mapped their escape and migration routes.

When the danger subsides after a cyclone, people usually return and rebuild their houses, Boas tells me. ‘Whether people migrate depends on their social networks, how much money and resources they have, and other factors such as environmental and political problems. A lot depends on the local government, and on questions such as whether the money for repairing dykes disappears or whether a better dyke does actually get built.

When flooding leads to salinization and erosion, local residents can be forced to leave. Boas: ‘In such cases, a lot of people gradually move away from the coast, sometimes just a few metres at a time. Others move to another island or a nearby city.’ Modern telecommunications play a role in this. ‘On their mobile phones, they ask family or friends who already live in the city to look out for housing or work for them.’

Understanding and influencing refugee flows

Wageningen researchers want to gain a broader understanding of the motives of people who end up packing their bags. ‘When ecosystems change in an area, or there is not enough water or food, crises can blow up, conflicts escalate, or people may move away,’ explains Bertram de Rooij of Wageningen Environmental Research.

With a view to being able to predict refugee flows better and perhaps to influence them, he and his colleagues have been asked by the ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality to develop a new methodology. They are going to see how they can link data about conflicts, climate, water and natural resources with existing economic and agrarian models for harvest forecasting, food security, production and trade.

‘Once we have a better understanding of the interactions between the various factors, governments and organizations such as the United Nations can intervene more effectively in regions that are under pressure. Then you could perhaps make sure that people are directed towards places that have been designated and prepared in advance. And maybe sometimes you can even prevent people needing to migrate.’

www.wur.eu/migration

Background image: Bram Jansen

Quinoa is at home on the hot dry highland plateaus of the Andes. The crop even grows around Lake Titicaca, whose banks are white with piles of salt crystals. ‘In the course of evolution, this crop has adapted remarkably to salt, drought and strong sun,’ explains Van der Linden. ‘Other crops sorely need those characteristics now, as an adaptation to climate change. In countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam, for instance, the rivers are lower in the dry season, so that seawater penetrates the delta and the salt front moves inland. The irrigation water from the river gets saltier and saltier too, seriously aff ecting the rice harvest.’

Working out particular characteristics 

Van der Linde’s research group, Abiotic Stress, is working out quinoa’s particular physiological characteristics with a view to building these into other crops. ‘We have gradually formed an idea of the main genes involved, in things like salt transport and storage for instance.’

Quinoa also makes smart use of its stomata, as revealed by infrared cameras fl own over the crop on drones. Drought-resistant plants close their stomata in time to limit evaporation. In order to monitor the position of the stomata even better, work is now being done on a trial installation with robots in which the camera readings are analysed automatically.

The quinoa research fi ts into a long tradition. Plant breeding has always been a Wageningen subject area. The Institute for Plant Breeding was founded in 1912, which makes it six years older than the university itself. ‘Two highly successful wheat varieties, Wilhelmina wheat and Juliana wheat, were bred in the early 20th century, and that was ground-breaking,’ says professor of Plant Breeding Richard Visser.

Thanks to the new varieties, wheat yields went up from about 2000 to 2700 kilos per hectare between 1900 and 1920. ‘Because of that, the farmers’ resistance to the academics from Wageningen melted away.’ From around 1930 to 1950, two thirds of the area planted with wheat in north-west Europe was planted with Wageningen varieties. Nowadays, up to 12,000 kilos of wheat per hectare are harvested.

Selecting and cross-breeding

The aim of plant breeding is to develop new varieties by selecting and cross-breeding plants with suitable characteristics. In the past, this was a matter of time-consuming selection by hand of the plants with the best characteristics for crossbreeding. After cross-breeding the seed was sown in order to find the best breeding results among the descendants. Nowadays, the search for desirable characteristics involves a lot of technology.

In April 2018, the green light was given for the construction of a new research centre which will include greenhouses with robotdriven cameras and sensors for measuring the differences in plants’ characteristics under a range of different conditions. Wageningen is working with Utrecht University in this Plant Eco-phenotyping Centre (NPEC), a 22 million-euro project. Van der Linden: ‘Using phenotyping you can select a group of offspring with a desirable characteristic very precisely, and then you can look for the underlying genetic characteristics within that group. Those genes can be tracked down ever more quickly and cheaply.’

The sequencing of genomes enables plant breeders to focus their work more precisely. As early as 1983, Wageningen scientists sketched a gene map of Arabidopsis thaliana, the model plant of the plant sciences, and in 2000 its complete genome was sequenced. In 2011, Wageningen plant breeders and other research groups around the world published the complete genome of the potato. The genome of the tomato followed in 2012. Since then the breeding of these and other crops with sequenced genomes has moved up a gear. Programmes that used to take 50 years can now be completed within five years.

Drought, heat and diseases

According to Visser, plant breeding is both an art and a science. To conquer the market, new varieties need to be better able to withstand diseases, drought, heat and salt, and to give better yields. Yields are going up by an average of 1.5 percent every year. Varieties are also under development that can fix nitrogen from the soil, that don’t cause allergic reactions among consumers, and last but not least, that taste better.

‘For years, Wageningen breeders marketed new varieties themselves,’ says Visser. ‘Since the 1960s, the business world has taken over this role. To avoid undesirable competition, Wageningen started concentrating on crops that were not yet being bred commercially, such as quinoa, hemp, flax, marigolds, elephant grass, strawberries, apples and pears. The big commercial successes were the Elsanta strawberry and the Elstar apple.

‘We also give growers a lot of plant material in a ‘semi-finished’ state for them to continue cross-breeding. Potatoes, for example, that have been cross-bred with related wild species with resistance genes, as well as tomato and lettuce material. Resistant varieties are crucial. Take lettuce, for instance. In the shops it all looks the same but there are new varieties every year because the resistance to disease of the older varieties has been overcome after a year. If there is a random mutation in one in a million fungal spores, and you’ve got hundreds of billions of spores flying around your greenhouse, in no time you’ll have thousands of mutant fungi attacking your crop.’

Seedless grapefruit

Since the 1940s, breeders have been looking for new plant characteristics by inducing mutations in the genetic material using radiation or chemicals. This kind of mutation breeding led in the US to the seedless grapefruit, for instance, a mutant that would not last long in nature but is very popular with consumers. A disadvantage of mutation breeding is that the mutations that occur are totally random.

At the end of the 1990s, molecular-biological techniques were developed for changing DNA in a targeted fashion, thus speeding up breeding programmes considerably. For potatoes, for example, which have four sets of chromosomes, complicating crossbreeding, and for strawberries, which have eight sets. And for apples, which only start flowering after five or six years and can therefore only be cross-bred then.

So in traditional cross-breeding it can take 50 years to cross an apple five times. With a special gene construct for early flowering, in the laboratory the apple plant now produces a mini apple within a few months, and this can be used for testing for resistance genes. In the final phase of the research the gene construct for early flowering is then outcrossed by classical methods.

Research on S genes

Exciting new territory is being explored by Yuling Bai in her research on Susceptibility genes, or S genes, as a new source of resistance to pathogens such as fungi and viruses. ‘Some pathogens make active use of certain plant genes to penetrate the plant,’ she explains in her office, which is full of bouquets as she has just been appointed personal professor of Plant Breeding. ‘If you switch off that kind of S gene, infection doesn’t recur.’

A subsequent research question is then whether the plant can do without that gene. Bai solves this by making some small changes in the gene instead of switching off the entire gene. A change might be made to part of the promoter, for example, which is what the pathogen uses to switch on the gene. ‘Then the pathogen doesn’t stand a chance. Removing just one or two base pairs can suffice to fend off a fungus or a virus.’

What is remarkable is that a number of these S genes are ubiquitous in the plant kingdom. But only some plants suffer if their S genes are switched off. It is no problem to switch off a particular S gene in the tomato to make it resistant to fungi, while the same intervention in the same gene in barley hampers growth.

A new technique, CRISPR-Cas, makes it possible to change DNA very subtly. Wageningen microbiologist John van der Oost received a Spinoza grant of 2.5 million euros in September for his contribution towards making this technique usable in practice. With CRISPR-Cas, plant breeders can change a characteristic more precisely than ever, using protein scissors (Cas9). This can modify one or more genes at a particular location in the DNA.

That way, breeders in the laboratory can equip an existing variety with a new characteristic within a few months. Meanwhile, after years of debate the European Court ruled in July 2018 that varieties obtained this way are to be designated genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and may therefore only be marketed after extensive safety research.

Characterize genes

‘In the search for desirable characteristics, our methods of measuring are becoming more and more refined,’ says Van der Linden. ‘And we can map the DNA faster and cheaper all the time, getting more and more information out of it. We can characterize genes and study their functions by switching them on and off using molecular techniques, and thus identify their specific contribution to the yield of the crop. In quinoa, for example, in which many different genes determine the harvest between them.’ Breeders can then crossbreed using the plants with the right genes.

‘We can also build them in to new varieties, or into other crops. Once we know which tricks quinoa uses for its drought and salt resistance, and how the damage is minimalized, we can also start designing drought-resistant rice or wheat varieties.’

According to Richard Visser, designer varieties are just around the corner. ‘You can figure out in advance what the best combinations are, and which parent plants you should pick, and how big your population needs to be to have enough chance of selecting the right offspring, instead of indiscriminately screening 100,000 offspring. If the fieldwork becomes cheaper to do, plant breeders will be able to serve all kinds of smaller, local niche markets and micro-environments as well. We are getting more of a grip on genetically complex characteristics such as yield stability and drought tolerance. We shall soon be getting the same yields with lesswater and pesticides. That is interesting from the food security angle as well.’

www.wur.eu/plantbreeding

Background image: ‘Pomologia; Beschryvingen en afbeeeldingen van appels en peeren’, by Johann Hermann Knoop

The top student in his year

Woldehanna lives close to the university in the big city of Addis Ababa, but he grew up in the sparsely populated South Tigray region. After leaving secondary school, he worked as an agricultural advisor for the ministry of Agriculture, where he developed an interest in economics. ‘The ministry gave the farmers artificial fertilizer and generalized advice on using it: so many kilos of nitrogen and so many kilos of phosphate, for any type of soil. The farmers did not have much faith in this advice. Then I made a cost-benefit analysis of the quantities of artificial fertilizer and the conditions under which it had most effect.’

Partly thanks to that analysis, Woldehanna was admitted to the Bachelor’s degree programme in Agricultural Economics at Alemaya University of Agriculture in eastern Ethiopia, where he graduated in 1994 as the top student of his year. This led to a lectureship at this university, but Woldehanna was more ambitious than that. ‘I wanted to become a professor and make a useful contribution to development in Ethiopia.’

Studying overseas

You only have to look at his father to see where he gets that drive from . His father was an illiterate farmer. At the age of 30, he met a monk, whom he asked to teach him to read and write. Once his father had mastered these skills, says Woldehanna, he read a lot of books and ended up being appointed village representative in the regional government.

‘I come from a poor area where even now, not all children go to school. But education is crucial if you want to change your life. My father taught himself, and he was the first person in his community to be able to send his children to school. So right from childhood I was given a strong sense of the importance of education for development.’

In pursuit of his dreams, Woldehanna sought a scholarship to study overseas. Some of the staff at Alemaya University knew Wageningen University & Research, so he made enquiries there too. But that was before Wageningen had a degree programme in Economics that was taught in English. One year later, in 1995, the MSc programme in Agricultural Economics and Marketing was launched, and Woldehanna lost no time in applying. He received a Wageningen University scholarship and was one of the first eight students on this new international degree programme.

Woldehanna was immediately struck by how practically oriented the programme was: he applied the ideas taught in class in work groups and in the field. What appealed to him most about the Wageningen philosophy was the emphasis placed on acquiring the skills required to apply the knowledge taught in practice.

Advizing the government

Woldehanna specialized in environmental economics and wrote his final thesis on deforestation in Ethiopia. He analysed the way timber was used over several years, found out what alternatives to wood were available as fuel and as building material, and proposed subsidies and taxes in order to bring deforestation to an end. ‘The government adopted my policy proposals and is still using them,’ he says proudly. Deforestation is still a serious problem in Ethiopia, though, as the demand for firewood is keeping pace with the population growth.

After graduating in Wageningen, Woldehanna went back to Alemaya University, and with the help of Wageningen Economics professor Arie Oskam, he won a grant from Dutch funding programme NWO-WOTRO to do a PhD in Wageningen. His research was about farm and off-farm employment opportunities for Ethiopian farmers. He selected 200 small-scale farmers in the Ethiopian region of Tigray, and monitored their activities over two years.

He made a discovery: the farmers’ off-farm activities such as temporary bricklaying or carpentry work did not clash with their farming or animal husbandry activities, as agricultural advisors had always believed. Instead, they were complementary to farming activities. Farmers with a good mix of farming and other work achieved the highest productivity and incomes, his PhD study revealed. So Woldehanna advised the government to stimulate off-farm activities, another recommendation of his that was taken on board.

Learning to cook in the Netherlands

The years he spent in Wageningen doing his PhD were enjoyable, says Woldehanna, but they were lonely too because he missed his wife and daughters. In those days, all foreign students were assigned to a host family, and that was a tremendous help to him. His host family was Wim and Agaath van Norel in Bennekom. ‘That was excellent’, he recalls. He could visit them every weekend. ‘We went on trips, I got to know Dutch eating habits – dinner between five and seven – and we cooked together.’

So it was in Wageningen that Woldehanna cooked a traditional Ethiopian meal for the first time. ‘I had never cooked before I came to the Netherlands. I found I could even buy sorghum flour in Wageningen!’ He still keeps in close touch with his host family. He regularly skypes with Wim and Agaath and they sometimes go to Ethiopia on holiday.

For 12 years after getting his PhD in 2000, Woldehanna was visiting professor in Wageningen alongside his job as Economics lecturer in Addis Ababa. This meant spending one month a year in Wageningen. Together with Arie Oskam, he supervised six Ethiopian PhD students, five of whom are now in prominent positions in Ethiopia.

Wageningen approach

Woldehanna sees the training of such experts as Wageningen’s biggest contribution in Ethiopia. Wageningen’s practically oriented education has brought about a lot of development, he believes, and other universities should take a leaf out of Wageningen’s book. He has adopted the Wageningen approach in his own teaching as a professor in Addis Ababa, where he teaches Microeconomics, Development Economics and Econometrics.

In line with this, Woldehanna’s vision paper as a candidate for the presidency of Addis Ababa University focused on career development and good prospects for graduates on the job market. ‘In the coming years, huge numbers of young people will come onto the job market from universities. We must ensure that they can find jobs easily, or be able to create work for themselves. For this reason I aim to put this university more in touch with the field and industry, like Wageningen. I want our Bachelor’s students to do a three-month internship with a company, so they understand what is required of them in that setting.’ He also wants to set up more projectbased education and more facilities for practicals.

Over the past 30 years, Woldehanna has had clear ideas about the role he wanted to play in education. ‘When I left the ministry of Agriculture I wanted to become a professor. And I wanted to do something useful for my country. My aspiration was: Research for Society. That is very much in line with Wageningen’s mission: science
for impact.’

Background image: Peter Wiggers

For every box of mangos, the harvest location and temperature during transport are recorded digitally using blockchain technology, as are the costs of trading and transport.

The payment system is linked to this data. The Haitian farmer owns the mango until it reaches the supermarket shelf. In the end he is paid the difference between the sale price in the shop and the costs accrued along the way. Currently, farmers sell their mangos for a few cents per fruit before they have even harvested them.

Yet the new system may pose some dangers, warns Oostewechel. ‘The farmers get their money later and they run more risk – if something goes wrong in transit for example.’

Info: rene.oostewechel@wur.nl

Background image: Shutterstock