Joe's Corner

Who scares Joe Swamp?

By our correspondent Dave Digdeeper

I usually don't stop for hairy green creatures hitchhiking at a lonely road at eight in the evening in the middle of nowhere. This one was different, though. I had met Joe earlier (see newsletter 1/2002) and knew that he was a grim looking, yet peace-loving creature who would boast about his latest "limnloloq-au-vin" while actually chewing on same water lily salad that had seen its days.

"Joe", I said joyfully, yet warily, "what are you doing here along this highway at this time of the day? Shouldn't you be at home, kissing your wife and putting your kids to bed?"

"My dear friend", he said, "I had a horrible dream last night. I went jogging in the morning to shake it off, but I couldn't and then I somehow got lost, trying all day to find my way back. I'm glad you showed up. I tried to stop a car for the last 5 hours".

"You are about 50 kilometres from your home swamp", I said. "That must have been quite a dream".

"Yep", Joe responded "it was a veritable nightmare. I think I am hanging too much around you Ecological Engineering folks. My dream started out with one of your meetings I attended. Everything was fine and there was this guy from the Netherlands speaking about 'closing cyclic processes, reducing transport and utilising scarce space' and about how some so called stakeholders liked the 'spatial-quality advantages of removing both poultry and pig farms and greenhouse horticulture from rural areas'.

It turned out he was taking about something he called 'agroproduction parks', an 'inspiring and daring' idea to combine various sectors of agriculture into one bulding. The park, it was called 'Delta Park' would include the following functions: greenhouse horticulture and other types of indoor cultivation, protein production (pigs, poultry, fish and insects)..."

"Even insects?" I called.

"Yes,and even more: slaughterhouses, meat processing, waste sorting and upgrading, finishing products, biorefinery, the production of organic fertilisers, support activities such as packaging and storage. This all would be located in the Rotterdam Harbour area and cover 30-100 hectares of land.

"That doesn't sound much land, if you have ever seen how some parts of Holland are covered by greenhouses today".

"Yes", Joe said, "and the speaker mentioned that, too. He also said that this vision is a progressive idea in order to increase efficiency and to reduce environmental pressure. However, consumers would not be ready to accept it as just another step towards industrial food production and scolded their romantic notions of agriculture. This, he said, was the reason that the Delta Park project had been stopped by the Dutch people.

"I was just taking a deep breath and leaning back when he looked at me and said, 'I guess, agroproduction parks would also shy away guys like this one up there.' Everyone turned around towards me. 'They call us "dry folks,"' he yelled angrily. 'They are sitting in their so called homestead wetlands telling us what Ecological Engineering is all about. Making jokes about us, talking about educating us about the right way to build these absolutely outdated wetlands.' Buh, he was really pissed off. 'What do you know about business? I mean real business, that's agro business. Real systems ecology, that's Constructed agrofactories. Real Ecological Engineering, that's Industrial Ecological Engineering!'

"And then horror got a name: 'Speaking of business, I think you would make quite a steak for tonight's welcome dinner,' he cried, foaming at the mouth and pulling out this huge knife and starting to hurry up the aisle towards my seat. I tried to run away, but I was frozen to my chair and couldn't move, much as I tried. He swung this huge knife towards me and..... I woke up."

"Gosh", I said, "and then you had to go running?"

"Yes", Joe sighed, "I guess this ruins my self-esteem for the next couple of months. Joe Swamp scared to death by a dream about a Dutch businessman. But that dream was scary, the guy was SO REAL".

We continued our car ride not speaking any other word for the next 35 kilometres and I was pondering whether I should tell Joe that his nightly vision was far from being all so unrealistic, that I had just downloaded that article about agro-industrial parks from http://www.agro.nl/innovatienetwerk/doc/ agroproduction_parks_e.pdf and that I hadn't been able to make my mind up whether this was a bad idea, or even had something to it...

I dropped Joe at the intersection to his homestead swamp.