Second day Nepal Study Tour visit to The Netherlands
17-01-2018After the official kick-off and getting to know the Dutch cooperative landscape a little better, the second day was all about farmer unions and the services they provide to their members. That is why we started the day by visiting two members of ZLTO (Southern Agriculture and Horticulture Organization) with the Nepali delegation.
The first one was John Verkooijen, a fruitgrower who grows 2,5 million kg of apples and pears. His farm has been a family business for more than 60 years and he owns 58 hectares of land and has heavily invested in 34 cold storages and high tech sorting and grading machines. Because the market price for apples decreased the past few years, he decided to concentrate on cultivating mainly pears. Around 80% of his production is exported to India, China, South Korea, Indonesia and Brazil, and the remaining 20% is for the domestic Dutch market. The sales of the apples and pears is done by The Greenery, a large trading company in fruit en vegetables, owned by Cooperative Coforta. John is one of the 500 members of this cooperative. The guests from Nepal were surprised when they found out that the ‘one member, one vote’ principle does not apply in Coforta. Every member had one vote, and can cast another vote for each 100.000 euro of turnover with their cooperative.
The second visit of the morning was to Stan and Yvonne Fleerakkers, a dairy farm that was built on a hill to protect them against the water. Again a surprise for the Nepali farmers and government officials, when they heard that the farmers do not have any staff to take care of 110 milking cows and 50 young stock. The milking robot that is being used to milk the cows was not his only secret: the farmer is a member of more than 7 different cooperatives: FrieslandCampina (for adding value to the milk), ForFarmers (to provide the feed for the cows), CRV (artificial insemination), Rabobank (loan), AB Werkt (replacement labour in case of illness) and two more local cooperatives. And he is also a member of ZLTO, who assisted him to realise his farm in this new area.
After seeing the members, we headed to the head office of ZLTO in Den Bosch. Sabine Henselmans (Secretary of the Board) & Anke de Brouwer (one of the 7 accountmanagers) told the group all about the structure, history and activities and services that ZLTO offers to their 15,000 members: not only lobby and advocacy, but also individual services, setting up projects and connecting them to a valuable network. The day was concluded with a fierce discussion and a lot of questions....
Richard van der Maden
​business advisor Agriterra
Richard van der Maden
​business advisor Agriterra
