Eelco van Putten runs a family farm that has grown Brussels sprouts and other crops for generations. His great-great-great-grandfather started it; how many generations back exactly, he couldn't say. In 2003, Eelco joined the family business. Since then, the crops haven't changed much. The way he grows them has.
That shift began a few years ago, particularly with the Brussels sprouts. For sprouts and other brassicas, fewer and fewer chemical products have been approved in recent years, with little in the way of alternatives to fill the gap. Eelco went looking for other ways to keep his crops healthy. "We invited people who had ideas about how to do that," he says. A Google search led him to Ger Kappert, who in turn brought along Dietmar Näser. "Out of everyone we'd spoken to, Dietmar Näser's advice was the most realistic."
Three Years of Figuring Out What Works
Three years ago, Eelco completed the Regenerative Alliance's e-learning course and the practical training offered by Bij de Oorsprong, and began experimenting – mainly with sprouts — alongside research from growers' association Oxin Growers. With guidance from Dietmar Näser and Martijn van Vijfeijken, he's been gradually reducing his use of synthetic fertilizers and crop protection products while trying to make the plants themselves more resistant to fungi and insects. Soil aeration, cover crops, Flächenrotte, compost tea, ferments, foliar fertilizers: all tools to positively influence soil health and crop growth. Soil samples tell him whether an adjustment is working. If not, something gets tweaked to fit the specific conditions on his farm.
"In the end, we try a lot of things. Some don't work, and some do. We take nine steps back and ten steps forward."
Eelco is matter-of-fact about it. "I'd hoped it would go faster, but I need more patience." At the same time, the stakes are real. Brussels sprouts are a labor- and capital-intensive crop with thin margins. When the harvest disappoints, he feels it directly in his wallet. That's why he'll still reach for chemical products when he truly has to, to keep things from going too far off the rails. For him, that's not a contradiction; it's part of the process. "Nobody can tell you exactly how it's supposed to go," he says. "We farmers have to work that out together."
A Farm Where Lessons Are Taught
Eelco has also become a host farm within the practical coaching program, which centers on sharing experience. Course farmers spend two days at his place: looking at adapted equipment, watching compost tea being strained until it's ready to spray, walking the fields together to see how the crops are doing. After the e-learning, that kind of hands-on visit is a welcome change of pace, Eelco notes. Staring at a screen will only take you so far, and getting out onto the land is something else entirely.
One thing that's helped him: someone else currently going through the course also grows Brussels sprouts. "I could learn a lot from them, and vice versa," he says. That's exactly the point of the practical coaching: farmers wrestling with the same challenges swapping experiences. A two-way street that benefits everyone.
"I Think It's Possible"
Asked why he does all this, his answer is surprisingly straightforward: "Because we genuinely enjoy innovating, and I think it's possible." The experimenting, the discovering of new things: for Eelco, there's real pleasure in it. He also sees the bigger picture. He's convinced that this way of farming has a future and can be part of the answer to the broader challenges agriculture faces — even if he can't say exactly what that will look like yet. That's what a transition is: learning as you go.
For farmers considering making the same move, his advice is simple: "Take the e-learning. And if you don't get anything out of it, you stop. Nothing is mandatory."
Want to learn more about how farmers like Eelco are putting this into practice? Come to the Regenerative Agriculture Day on July 4.