Klompe Farm and the Soil Heroes Foundation

We took the farm over from my father in 2013. Back then we were conventional farmers, following the same farming path as my family before me and the neighbours around us. The Netherlands is world-renowned for being one of the most highly innovative and productive agricultural sectors - we are famous for the standard of our agricultural universities and our excellent soils - so there seemed to be no reason to question how we farmed. But as time when by, it was clear to us both that something wasn’t right. We were being forced to add more fertilisers and inputs to our soils just to try and keep the yields stable. Costs were going up, but our yields were going down.