1. Why is mixed farming and agroforestry important in your region / country?

The MIXED network in the Netherlands consists of dairy and arable farmers in the province of Drenthe in the north-east of the Netherlands. The area is characterized by relatively poor sandy soils. The collaboration between the farmers is important as the swapping of land (Figure 1) enables more extensive crop rotations. This improves the sustainability of fields, and, more broadly, the sustainability of farms and the region as a whole. The joint use of land already exists for multiple generations.

The joint use of land enables farming on relatively poor soils. The importance and cultural heritage of this has recently been one of the reasons to announce the area as a national parc (https://www.drentscheaa.nl/).

2. Which changes have you seen as a result of MIXED?

The MIXED NL network meetings strengthened the collaboration between the farmers as they were meeting around specific themes as seen on the picture above. Most importantly, MIXED enabled to work on tailor-made research questions, such as economic and soil quality implications of joint rotations.

3. What results have you achieved and what are the next steps?

There are several best practices resulting from MIXED. First, farmers jointly discussed new rotation options, such as crops that can be used for building materials. Second, farmers were openly discussing possible positive and negative implications of joint rotations, such as implications for soil quality. The next step is to further finetune the quantitative impact assessment of the regional cooperation between arable and dairy farmers.