Transaction costs and farming

Many people stress about the ‘cost of living’ but the ‘cost’ of living is not the only thing that makes demands on one.  Institutional economics has developed the concept of ‘transaction costs’. These are the costs, financial but also in terms of time and stress, that occur when trying to find a new ‘supplier’.  When I go to the ‘market’ to buy tomatoes I have relatively straightforward choices between variety, quality, origin and price.  But, when I want to find a dentist, mechanic or accountant, things become more complicated.  The same is true if I want to buy, say, bottling machinery that will preserve those tomatoes.  

This has huge implications whenever people talk about, or conceive of, ‘the market’.  It means ‘trusted trading partner’ becomes a criterion that is much more important than ‘best deal on the street.’      I have been working with some clients of my business for almost fifteen years, since I first started it.  I have been using the services of some key suppliers for almost as long.  These are smooth relationships, far removed from the cut and thrust of spot markets.   I have good relations with these people, all tried and trusted business partners. 

When moving home (and especially country) developing these relationships anew can be one of the hardest things.  This was especially noticeable when I moved from Wageningen to Brussels five years ago.  Most of the contacts I made for things like a computer support, flat sharers etc., were achieved via the local Couchsurfing  group. Trying to find a mechanic was hell (no-one in the Brussels Couchsurfing group had a car).  The dentist, doctor and notary were found through lists of British-speaking professionals on the UK Consulate’s web-site.  But that was pretty much a stab in the dark. I mostly went for those that were easily accessible by public transport.   

Now I am going through the same process in Hendaye.  The mechanic, handyman and translator are already in place (though in some cases with reservations).   The search is on for a doctor and wood-supplier.  It’s much easier in a small town. You ask your acquaintances if they can recommend a (fill in gap here).  Sometimes it will just be a friend of theirs, others someone who does give good service.

But I am trying to take my search a bit deeper here.  I have recently joined a Jardin Collectif, which I blogged about a few weeks ago.  Jardins Collectifs are a form of community supported agriculture (CSA) help move farmers, growers and consumers move away from the brutality of spot markets and into a mode of exchange that is more trust-based, offers them more continuity and helps to balance the grower’s cash flow across the year.  

If you don’t already belong to one try researching what is available in your neighbourhood: a box scheme for fruit and veg (preferably from a local grower) or a meat-bag scheme.  When living In Wageningen I even belonged to a group that had keys that gave us access to a trailer full of dairy and meat products and an honesty box.  (I don’t think that model would work in a larger city such as Brussels!!).  Let’s help farmers and growers move away from the insecurity associated with reliance on spot markets and/or contracts with multi-national retailers.

A Time of gifts

My last (but one) blog was about Patrick Leigh Fermour, an English travel writer (and much more) from the 1930s. While researching the background for that article I found out that the third part of his trilogy of his epic journey by foot from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1934-5 had been recently and posthumously published. I promptly went out and acquired a copy and have just finished reading it. It is perhaps the most compelling of the three books. Partly perhaps because he is travelling in more exotic lands (Romania and Bulgaria – turkey hardly gets a look-in – maybe he was suffering from travel fatigue by the end). During this part of the trip eh gets to stay with shepherds, charcoal burners, students, a British Consul and a ‘hotel de passe’. He visits the opera in Bucharest and nearly drowns when slipping off of a cliff path into a deep rocky pool on the Bulgarian coast. What a rich life he led. He culminates his diaries with a voyage to Greece (where he was to spend much of the rest of his life) and a ten day (or so) sojourn on Mount Athos. He only reclaimed the notebooks on which he based this book some thirty years after the event (he left them with a Romanian love, and they had no contact until the grip of the iron curtain was loosened). The book leaves me wanting to visit several of the villages he describes to see how much they have changed in the intervening eighty years.

Wageningen's arboretum

I recently had my own Time of Gifts (the title of the second book in this series) a long overdue trip back to Wageningen to visit friends and business associates. I came bearing gifts but embarrassingly returned with far more: vegetables and soft fruit from two different allotments, cherries from a local fruit grower, (nine different varieties of) beer from a friend who spends winter evenings brewing (bringing beer back to Belgium always feels like bringing coals to Newcastle) and an unwanted home brewing kit (alas too late for this year’s elderflower crop but good for next year’s). I even had to turn down a bread making machine as I feared cluttering up my kitchen with paraphernalia that would remain unused – although the offer did inspire me to bake bread after returning – for perhaps the first time in more than ten years. I had lunch and beers with several other entrepreneurs I used to hang out with several years ago – telling each other stories about our business plans and pain in the ass clients (those that don’t pay for three months or make unreasonable demands). All in all it was a wonderful few days- enhanced by being surrounded by tall stand of waving grasses and occasionally spotting a herd of laughing Amazonian blond Dutch women cycling through town or the wood, doubtless to some rendez-vous thy they had arranged several weeks ago . All in all a wonderful few days marred only by a falling out with someone I regard as one of my best friends whose hospitality and company I regularly enjoy on these trips. One hopes that that can be healed with the passage of time . It must have taken me an hour to unload all the gifts from my car when I got home – a week later I still haven’t fully unloaded the burden of the argument that we had.

My friend's 'prize-winning' allotment

The Italian Job(s)

Living on mainland Europe doesn't always make inter-cultural communication easier - as these three sketches show.

1. Umberto Eco, one of my favourite authors, came to do a talk in Amsterdam to promote his new book. I almost went - I am a bit of a literature junkie and a signed copy of the book would not have gone amiss. But I only heard about it the day before and rearranging my schedule to include a trip to A'dam was too bothersome. The next week I was in the public library and saw a copy of it - in Dutch. So I went to the help desk and asked (in my best Dutch) if I could order an English version. Umberto is pretty difficult to understand in one's native language and there was no way I was going to try to read a 'stun an ox' novel in Dutch. She (librarians are almost always ‘shes’) hunted through the system and tried hard to find a copy. A few days later I got an e- mail telling me that the book had not yet been translated into English. 1-0 to the Dutch for being more integrated with the culture of other European cultures than the Brits.

A few days later the Champions League knock-out stages came around. There were two matches that night - Man U ('my team') vs. Marseille (one of my favourite cities in Europe) and Bayern vs. Inter Milan. I skipped out of my Dutch class a bit early hoping to watch the Red Devils trounce the Marseillaise. ITV has the transmission rights to the Champions League so I am dependent on Dutch broadcasters to show the 'right' match. They choose the 'wrong' one. Actually the Bayern - Inter match turned out to be the better one - with Milan stealing a last minute goal on the Germans (déjà vu from 1998?) to become the only group runners-up to make it through to the last eight. I asked a few Dutch friends whether the choice of match reflected a critical choice about the likely quality of the match – or a nationalistic one reflecting the number of Dutch players involved. They were disarmingly honest and almost universally opted for the later choice. But it was the better match- so we’ll give them a draw on that one (though I will have to make a note to go to a pub with cable TV to watch the Chelsea v Man U match tomorrow).

Finally, one of the banes of ex-pat life in (rural) Netherlands is that foreign movies are largely inaccessible to non Dutch speakers – at least at the movies – because they are only subtitled into Dutch. Representations have been made to managers of movie houses – pointing out that they may be losing a considerable amount of custom in a town where at least 40% of the student population (or about 20% of the total population) is non-Dutch speaking: all to no avail. It seems the system is too inflexible - or the cost of getting movies with English sub titles (as well as / instead of) Dutch ones seems too high (unless one gets lucky at a film festival and gets one that has only been subtitled into English). So non-Dutch speaking world movie fans miss out. But there are occasional victories – I can manage French language movies – at a push- and last month we went see a beautiful Italian movie ‘Le Quattro Volte’ - although secure in the knowledge that there was no dialogue, and thus no sub titles, to struggle with. (Having said that I have been to see a Thai and Iraqi movie this year and got by – most of the time- with the Dutch subtitles, only occasionally asking my Dutch companions for translations of key words). It (my Dutch) must be getting better. And things could be worse – one could live in Germany and have to watch James Bond movies dubbed into German…..

Lets call it a score draw on this cultural front.

Spring at last

Spring came late this year, but in a stunning array of colours. This weekend was the weekend of the 'Cultureleronde' when different local artists open their houses as galleries or display their works in public buildings. Its a time for exploring unknown places, meeting artists and visiting some of the town's monumental buildings. While all this was fun, the undisputed stars of the show were the magnolia trees lining the route up the General Foulkseweg.

Dutch elections

I was thinking of setting myself the challenge of a blog a day in March. I'm glad I didn't announce it because yesterday it fell by the wayside. I spent a lot of time looking at election results yesterday. Mixed news really. Geert Wilders' party did very well in the two councils where they stood. In Almere, a new town with hardly any immigrant population, they were the top party - but I guess they were playing to the fear factor. In Den Haag they managed second place - but the other parties are clear that they are not going to cooperate with them. So his party is in a strange place were they are setting the political agenda (with the other main parties drifting to the right) but where the other parties refuse to collaborate with a party whose main policy seems to be banning head scarves in publicly funded buildings. Strange - isn't a head shawl part of traditional Dutch women's dress? Perhaps no traditional costumes will be allowed in any building that receives state/municipal funding. I was in France in 2002 when Le Pen won a ticket to the two-way fight off for the Presidency. I heard the fear and outrage then and am quietly confident that this will also turn out to be a similar storm in a teacup (to use a very English metaphor)

On a different note the Green/Left party did really well. In Wageningen it increased its share of the vote to 18%, won an extra Council seat and became the second largest party on the Council. In Utrecht (the fourth largest city in the Netherlands) they won the most seats - so can set the agenda for building a coalition on the council. I always thought it was a groovy city.

Closer to home, in Wageningen, the leader of the party (D66) who won the most votes/seats used to be my landlady - for more than two years - and might well become mayor / leader of the council. Do hear the rustling of cheque books from the gutter press? Of course I have more integrity than that!

Impermanence / nature in the raw

This week I found a new resident on my balcony. A tiny spider - a few mm across - had built a web across my lavender and geraniums - impressively anchoring the top of the of the web to the balcony overhang- more than one metre overhead. Not only are spiders impresive engineers but also quite stunning acobats! A few days later there was a bug five times the size of the spider caught in the heart of the web - and we were treated to the gory sight of the spider sucking it dry. Nature in the raw, in tooth and claw! This morning I went out to check progress on this real time wildlife documentary on my very own doorstep - and found the web in tatters - battered and torn apart by last night's torential rain. I trust Mr spider got enough sustenance to build another food catching machine. Like estate agents say - its all about location, location, location.

Postcript: five days later the web had been rebuilt and the next night was washed away again in another storm.

Autumn leaves

Early morning autumnal mist through the trees
The smell of scorched dust as the heating kicks in for the first time
Parsley thyme and mint plants for my balcony

Feed the world

Kofi Anin was in town today to open the new academic year at the University - the ex UN Secretary General himself. A huge publicity coup for a small town with an agricultural university. There were cops and broadcast vehicles and all the media circus you might expect . He was giving a talk about food, agriculture and development. I didn't get an invite (obviously I should network harder), but then neither did any of the friends I called who do work for the university - invites were restricted for the elite of professors and upper tier of administrators.
I want to find out what he said about food and agriculture. There is quite a war of brains going on about how the world can feed itself. Sustainable agriculture or GM foods? That war goes on in the university too. Is the future of food going to rest in the hands of a few multinationals or in learning with poor peasant farmers about how to improve their productivity? What' s the official line this year and what are the grassroots feelings?

Waiting for the summer

This weekend I achieved the long planned goal of covering the cold concrete floor of my balcony with wooden decking. Quite a simple task you might think - except my balcony is triangular and the pallets come in squares! I worked out some time ago that if I bought half metre squares (as opposed to metre ones) this would reduce any inaccuracies in cutting the hypotenuse. This weekend I put that theory to the test and, with the little knowledge about laying floors that I had gained from helping Herman lay the laminate in my flat, came up with a very passable and well aligned new wooden floor.

It is now pleasant to walk barefoot on the balcony (humming the Girl from Ipanema). In addition being three cm higher I can now reach the clothes line without having to stand on tip toe (and risk having my sarong part company from my waist). I also bought two potting tables, one for plants and one for dinner and drinks, and three more (non-plastic, they are so hard to find) balcony boxes so I can maximise the amount of nature that I can cram into the limited amount of space that the Dutch housing market allows me ( I think I spent so long living in squats in baronial parts of London and farmhouses in abandoned parts of the French countryside that I developed optimistic expectations about what my minimum housing requirements are and what they would cost). Next week I will plant the rest of the herbs that I want in order to keep a fresh supply of those that I use the most. I will fill the gaps with geraniums because they flower the longest and brightest and are the best value balcony plant I know. This year - for the first time ever - I have managed to get Coriander seeds to germinate and grow beyond the the four leaf stage (hurray- I must spend 40 Euro a year on bunches of Coriander - now I hope I have a six month supply in situ).

Needed a quiet weekend at home - to reground a bit - I have spent some of all of the last four weekends away in London. Not grumbling about that - much was necessary, and some enjoyable. But it was also unsettling - took me out of a routine (not that I have ever been a big fan of routines)

I am going to plan the rest of the summer around eating drinking and reading on my balcony between 6-8pm when it has the full sunlight. Tonight I sat there and wrote a short essay in Dutch. Yes! I have finally taken the plunge and found and hired a private Dutch teacher for two hours a week. And I get home work - this first assignment to assess my level of written Dutch - which is probably my weakest area.

Time to go now; Germany is playing Poland- this is not just a football match but an expression of 800 years + of colonial rivalry

Down by the river, and into the river we dive

I got all my commitments put to bed today (to use a publishing term) . Two annual NGO reports - one mega PhD chapter and a proofread of half of a PhD where the tenses and use of 'the' and 'it' needed checking. 6pm I got on my bike and headed down to the river to have what felt like a symbolic swim - the first of the year. Immersed myself in the cold waters of the Rhine - and made a promise to myself to be back soon and not let myself be a slave to my business or my past.

Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps please

Another day - another PhD defense (and party). I am getting quite used to the format and the Dutchness of these events. The long speechifying, the elaborate gift giving (elaborate in the sense of the thought that goes into customising gifts rather than conspicious consumption) and the free bar. Did I mention the free bar? I have never been to an event in the UK with a free bar (I guess there must be some corporate hospitality gigs of that nature but I never moved in those circles and they generally have quite heavy security). In short I have never known anyone host an event in the UK with a free bar. It would be a recipe for bankruptcy - and there would be no-one left standing by 10pm.
But the Dutch do it - at their main life celebrations - and this seems to go against their renowned circumspection with money. (Belgians will describe this characteristic rather less charitably). Most Dutch people will admit that it is a national characteristic to try to save money whenever possible - looking for the best deal (voordeel, aanbeiding - they have many words for this concept).
So it puzzles me that Dutch people are prepared to write out blank cheques for the bar. At one similar event recently people were given (a reasonably generous number of) drinks vouchers and I am get the impression now that this might have seemed like penny pinching - although it seems very sensible to a Brit.
So can any of my Dutch reader explain this paradox?

ps. I have come to realise that this system works on a "give em enough rope" principle and that anyone incapable of wending their way home on a bicycle after one of these events is thought of as a soundrel and waster. So yours truly was alternating beers with soft drinks all night to avoid sullying his reputation. Whose party was it again?

In the jungle

A colleague, client and friend of mine succesfully defended her PhD thesis yesterday. (I had an interest as I edited much of it). Her defense against aggresive questioning was so robust that during the summary she was likened to a lioness defending her cubs.
So P this photo is for you- the new lion cubs at the Burger zoo.

Reasons to be cheerful

Coming home late from a meeting in Utrecht on Saturday I was approached by a young guy outside the post office who asked me where the McDonald's was. I thought about this for a moment (never having considered eating in such an establishment) and then said, with perhaps ill disguised delight, that we don't have one. It made me inordinately proud to be an (adopted) Wageninger - almost as if I had single handedly led the campaign against the dreaded golden arches. But it was a lovely feeling to realise that I live in a Mac Free zone. Another plus for Wageningen!(Realising he was hungry, and it was late at night, I did suggest alternative sources of cheap -albeit non corporately owned- nutrition).

Time stands still

For most of the five years that I have been in Wageningen I have lived close enough to the market square to hear the church bells mark the passing of time - every quarter hour during most of the day and hourly through the night. I now also work within hearing distance of the bells (if my window is open). So in some ways I live like people used to live 100 years ago - nearly constantly within earshot of the same church bells. Sometimes at night they do disturb me but more often they are a comfort factor rather than an annoyance.

At Easter the bells stop for three days. Its like time stands still -I keep having to check a clock as my day feels all out of rythmn and I can't track the passing of time as I usually do.

Desmond has a barrow in the market place

In Wageningen we are really privileged to still have a good number of family / specialist stores and a twice weekly market. With the exception of the organic shop I don't use them enough. I am ashamed to say that the supermarket trawl is easier than visiting seven or eight shops to buy proper and decent food. Today I did a big tour of them and spent outrageous sums of money stocking up my fridge and cupboard. First to one of the town's two excellent cheese shops where I buy my usual favourites and then splash out on some thome de savoie - for no other reason than it is made from raw milk and that I am editing a thesis where Savoie is one of the case studies and it is nice to eat some produce from an area whose farming systems and governance I am becoming (over) familiar with. That's 12 Euro down. Next to the family butchers. They are not organic (that one is out of town) but at least they sell free range meat. My Dutch is now good enough to verify this (as opposed to miming a free range chicken in a Saturday-afternoon-crowded shop). Then to the Toko (world food shop) where I make serious dent in a 50 Euro note by buying up spices, staples and a few treats.
Finally to the market. The organic stall has no tarpaulin above it today. I ask and was told it had been blown away by the wind. The organic bread stall does even worse- while I am buying a couple of loaves the wind first of all whips away all the cake boxes and then as the trader is reaching into her cash box it blows away most of her day's takings. Blue and red banknotes flying around in the air!! The people in the queue behind me all rush off to retrieve the money from under the tables and chairs of a cafe on the terrace - to return it to the somewhat hapless trader. I'm left thinking what a wonderful movie scene that would make - how lucky I am to have an office job and how hard people work to bring food to our tables.

Today the wind and storms killed six people in Germany and Austria. I guess we got off lightly.

West of Wageningen

Driving west from Wageningen one comes across the small town of Rhenen. It has an improbably huge church tower for such a small town and while curious about why, I never found a reason to stop and visit it. Driving through last weekend on our way to a walk we drove through the town (I would almost say village – but actually it had city rights in the middle ages) and so we stopped over went to see the church and asked one of the local residents the story. Here it is.

Rhenen was once an important town because it was on the border between the dukedoms of Gelderland and Utrecht and commanded a strategic position on the Rhine. Cunera, a female British crusader, had been captured by the Frankish (and pagan) hordes near Cologne on her way back from the Holy Land and the Duke rode out to save her and her companions. He bought her back to Rhenen and gave her sanctuary. Cunera apparently did many good works while there, giving solstice and alms to the poor. This attracted the attentions of the Duke and the jealousy of his wife, who together with a hand-maiden strangled Cunera. Two hundred years later Cunera’s body was exhumed and found to show no signs of decay and she was duly canonised.

It's a nice story, so I checked Google and found a host of catholic websites whose existence I had never imagined. The seemingly most-trustworthy of these says: Cunera - a British virgin venerated in Germany. Her traditions are not trustworthy. I have to concur - a British girl who went to the Mediterranean and came back a virgin – it doesn’t happen often. Maybe she does deserve her role in the pantheon.

Fact or fiction? Whatever, it’s a nice piece of local folklore. In summer there are daily tours up the tower – from which you can (reputedly) see the Dom (Cathedral tower) in Utrecht. After that we went to a country park, where the lakes were still frozen after a hard frost.

postscript For some reason this is my popular post ever - with more than 500 hits. No-one has noticed the big blooper - in the title (now changed). Rhenen is actually west of Wageningen

Blue skies

A week of below freezing temperatures, a heavy overnight freezing fog, then a day of beautiful sunshine.....

Back in the high life

Sinterklass was incredibly prescient in arranging advance delivery of his present as I was actually out of the country on his birthday party. Perhaps the knowledge that I hadn’t been naughty enough throughout the year was a subconscious reason for going away. I knew there was very little chance this year of being thrown into a sack and whisked away to sun and sangria land. But the main reason for being away was that I had been invited to go and talk at a conference in what can only be described as the German equivalent of Wageningen: the small town of Witzenhausen.

Witzenhausen probably became a university town for the same reason as Wageningen. The farmers didn’t want their sons being seduced by the pleasures of city life, never to return to the family farm. If anything Witzenhausen is smaller than Wageningen, but makes up for this by having its own railway station, being surrounded by rolling hills and having much of its medieval architecture intact. In the 1970s the university made the bold decision to become Europe’s first faculty dedicated to organic agriculture. There are still only three such faculties in Europe. Hence my invite to speak at their annual students’ conference: hence the ease of spotting the students, 20% of whom seemed to have thriving dreadlock ecosystems.



Getting invited to be a guest speaker there was an encouraging experience. I realised that over the last two years I have somewhat let go of my passion and engagement in advocating organic farming as tool for helping meet Millenium Development Goals, and especially for reducing food insecurity. I allowed myself to become too involved in the practicalities of establishing a functioning business in the NL. Financing and acquiring office space and furnishing a flat and the need to ensure that my business could support both of those changes took centre stage for a while, and led me to lose track of my broader vision of the work that I want to do. In my two or three days in Witzenhausen I came back to an understanding of the importance of this "mission" - in terms of having an something to inspire my own life - and also hopefully to inspire others. Thank you Moritz, the organizing committee, the audience and the people I spoke with in bars, and over lunch, for helping for me reestablish my commitment to this work and for giving me new and interesting insights and ideas.

Everyone's gone to the movies

I went to try to see a movie last night - Manufactured Landscapes - a worthy and serious documentary on the impact of manufacturing on society and the environment in China and other countries. I thought it would be a kind of "seven people and a dog" audience - but would you believe it was sold out......They turned 20 or so people away (me included). That's Wageningen for you - full of people who want to save the world - maybe that's why I feel at home here. At least it is showing again at the weekend.

Do it Yourself

As the season of mellow fruitfulness descends upon us I am coming to the end of a job that I started less than wholeheartedly some eight months ago. My flat is gradually starting to feel like my home. When I was first offered it in February I nearly turned it down - on the second floor and so small there was no room to swing a cat (and certainly not to have a cat). But 18 months of housing insecurity had eroded the range of available options. I was no longer holding out for a coach house with a back door to the woods. Moving home every four months had got tiresome. A base with more permanence was needed, whether or not it was ideal. I told myself it was one small step from practising Japanese Buddhism to living Japanese style in 30M2.


The first few months I put the basics in place - but these last weeks, being there more often than before, has driven me to put the finishing touches in, and they are now almost complete. DiY is not really my idea of fun. I got someone to help with the difficult jobs like the laminate and the complicated shelves. But even on small jobs there are so many things that can go wrong. Not wrong in the comic and ultimately tragic sense of Edul Minshi (see Rohinton Mistry's novel blog passim), but more wrong in annoying little ways. Breaking your last hacksaw blade or snapping the drill bit on a Sunday afternoon. Finding that there was a missing component or you haven't got the right length / thread of screw ten minutes before closing time on a Saturday. And this ain't the UK. The shops here shut on Saturday at 6 and don't open again till 9 on Monday. That has good and bad sides. When you are doing DiY you see the bad side.

Last week I had two jobs that I had put off for ages: changing my shower unit (as the old one was attached to the hook by an elastic band that had lost its elasticity) and putting a reading light on the wall by my bed. One job held the prospect of drilling into tiles, the other into heavy duty concrete. "I'll do that next week".

But when I eventually went to start the job the objects just flew into the wall. The light perfectly fitted some existing holes drilled as an anchor support for my hoogslaaper (and saved me even having to fill them later). The shower was slightly more problematic. The stem was about 5mm too short to nest in the old fittings and the old stem was about 2mm thinner than the new one- meaning I couldn't get a purchase on the old stem with the new shower head fitting. So it seemed impossible to get by with the exsting wall fittings. A glimpse into my toolbox gave me a flash of inspiration. There was a packet of rubber washers in the bottom. Not only did I need these to connect the hose at the top and bottom - but they could also be used to take up the slack where the new stem was 5mm too short to nest in the wall fittings. Et voila the stem now fits into existing wall fittings. I didn't have to get my drill out, bust a few drill bits or even disturb the neighbours' Sunday. Ain't it grand when difficult things fall into place? There's just a possibility that I am becomng less impulsive and more insightful - but I wouldn't advertise a complete transformation having taken place.