Offspring Magazine - The Podcast (Max Planck PhDNet)

#3-05 - Sustainable Farming from a Farmer's Perspective - ft. Chiel van Dijk

Listen on

Episode notes

Farmers feed us and feed the world. In the current agricultural society, it is crucial to understand how farming can be more sustainable in terms of energy input/output and agroforestry (the use of land, in which trees and shrubs are intentionally integrated into crop and animal farming systems) offers a number of environmental, economic, and social benefits.

In this episode, Srinath and Leonie talk to Chiel van Dijk, owner of the Frecklinghof farm in the North of Germany. They talk about what sustainability means for a farm, whether there is such a thing as more or less sustainable, how Frecklinghof came to be, and how Chiel measures the energy output and input of his farm.

Chiel talks about Agroforestry, the way it is implemented on his farm in particular, and the advantages and challenges it can bring to farming in general. Chiel emphasises the importance of small farms as the feeders of people, distinguishing them from the large farms that tend to be geared towards animal feed.  

If you would like to know more about Chiel's farm, check out Frecklinghof here: https://www.frecklinghof.com/

Episode Art: Photo by Annie Spratt (@anniespratt) on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/)

You can follow us on: 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MPPhdnetPodcast 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/offspringmagazine_thepodcast 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offspring-magazine-the-podcast 

YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/MaxPlanckPhDnet

If you have any feedback, comments or suggestions, reach out to us at [email protected] 

Check out the Offspring-Blog where we publish articles on a regular basis: https://www.phdnet.mpg.de/outreach/offspring-blog

Intro - Outro music composed by Srinath Ramkumar: https://twitter.com/srinathramkumar 

Pre-Intro jingle composed by Gustavo Carrizo: https://www.instagram.com/carrizo.gus 

See you soon!