Cattle, cheese make Dutch farmer a millionaire

In April this year, I had the opportunity to visit the Netherlands, a country much advanced in agricultural technology.

Invited by the Netherlands Embassy in Dhaka, and Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP), this was my second visit to the country where I first went back in 2015, invited by the Dutch Foreign Ministry. This time I met some mainstream farmers.

One afternoon I went to a traditional Dutch village, called Luntere, and saw a huge old-fashioned home beside a vast grazing field, full of cows. A canal flows through the fields. I reached a dairy farm owned by Jan Dirk van de Voort, also known as Remeker.

It was a bright afternoon when I reached Jan's farm that has huge grazing fields, filled with lush green grass, for his cattle. Jan has 90 cattle, known as Jersey breed, in his 70 hectares farm.

As soon as I arrived the farm, Jan took me to the field and said the farm was built around 375 years back. "It's a family farm with a long tradition,"Jan said.

The farm was last renovated back in 1925. After his grandfather, and father Peter van de Voort Jan took the charge and now owns it.

Jan is a workaholic who has amazing skills and indigenous knowledge of farming. His outstanding expertise is not only preserving the heritage of his forefathers, also keeping the true organic farming alive. He is running the farm with 100 percent purity as his predecessors did since 1650s.

Many students from Wageningen University come here to learn about the pastoral and dairy life, Jan said, adding that the main problem of livestock farmers here is the animal feed. But when I asked what food is given to the cows? Grass, Jan replied in one word. He then took a pause and said when it snows in the winter, they eat straws.

Jan, wearing a special boot and a shovel in his hand, took me to the grazing fields, for the last 40 years, Jan has kept the soil of the grazing field completely organic. Jan said natural grass has enough nutrients for cows.

This soil remains as it is since the ancient periods. I saw a lot of earthworms under the fertile soil, when Jan demonstrated the quality of the soil. Then he picked up an earthworm and said, "I don't cultivate this land as these earthworms are my natural plough."

There is a certain path for the cows to walk in and out of the field. The cattle defecate where ever the want as the cow dung is food for the grass. Jan said, "I talk to my cows, observe their movements. I want to understand what they're trying to convey, or what they mean."

Jan never cut the horns of the cows as it tells the age. As the number of horn rings increases, the cows get older. They get minerals from their horns.There aresome natural flowers, called Dandy Lion, on the field from which its soil gets calcium, Jan claims.

Jan is happy with the profit he gets from Remeker. About 1,440 litres of milk comes from his 90 cows every day. "I don't sell a drop of milk as other farmers do. I make organic cheese with the milk," Jan informed.

Meanwhile, seeing Jan's cheese house I was quite astonished. Shelf after shelf is filled with round cheese discs, weighing 10kg each. The cheese is preserved in such a way, using ghee (clarified butter) on the outside. A technique that came from Jan's wife.

The older the cheese gets, it becomes costlier. I went up the stairs with Jan and saw another floor full of preserved cheese. Jan makes cheese every two days. A two-year-old cheese disc, weighing 10kg costs about 500 Euros, about BDT 50,000. The price of Jan's cheese is three times more than the other cheese available in the market because they are 100 percent organic.

I calculated that the cheese Jan has in his house is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jan uses Celtic sea salt water to soak the cheese. He showed the place where ghee is being prepared. The milk Jan uses is unpasteurized and comes from their Jersey cows only.

Cattle's best medicine is their daily diet of grass, clover, and rich variety of other herbs. Occasionally they get a treat of raw oats, rye, and other unrefined grains. Jan then took me to his sales centre, from whereI bought 500 grams of cheese for my eldest son Ayon.

Dear readers, Remeker is a model of heritage preservation. With devotion it is possible to preserve the aristocracy and tradition. If Jan wanted to build a modern farm, it would have been quite easy, but his family is committed to protectthe farm's heritage. Jan's commitment to organic farming is exemplaryfor the farmers living worldwide.