"We want to show that Dutch flowers are not just full of poison and that it's all more nuanced," says Wikke Vedder. He is one of the HAS students who presented their chemical-free chrysanthemums to the mayor of Zutphen, Wimar Jaeger last Wednesday.
The municipality of Zutphen recently decided to stop giving bouquets as gifts on anniversaries, among other occasions. The reason was that the bouquets would be 'poison bouquets'. At the time, students at the HAS were working on a project at school to try to grow chrysanthemums without chemical plant protection products and without growth regulators. Several articles appeared in the media where growers were dismissed as poison sprayers, but that is obviously not very nuanced, Wikke believes.
Wikke did the project together with fellow students Jari van Vliet, Luuk Lauwerijssen, Eugenio Rhoads, and Peer Juhre.
He elaborates on the project: "During our experiment, we made every effort to keep pests out of our chrysanthemums by using natural pesticides. We also made adjustments to the climate, light, and water strategy in the greenhouse to inhibit the chrysanthemums. As a result, we did not have to use growth regulators. With our project we wanted to show how innovative the greenhouse sector is, and that crop protection, in particular, is already very sustainable."
With this story and a bunch of chrysanthemums, Wikke and a few fellow students went to Zutphen to speak to the mayor. "The mayor thought it was good that we had come to give a response to the decision. He had not expected so many. At a certain point there were also threats towards municipal employees. He thought that handing over chrysanthemums was an example of a good response. After the handover, we talked at length in his office about our chrysanthemums and the decision taken by the municipality of Zutphen. The mayor was receptive to our story and is going to raise it at the next council meeting on 16 December."
"We hope that the municipality of Zutphen will reconsider its decision. Floriculture in the Netherlands is already making great strides towards sustainability. Natural pesticides are already used on many farms and chemical intervention is only used in exceptional cases."
Despite their enthusiasm, the students do not see the Dutch flower industry becoming chemical-free in the next 5-10 years. "We think chemical agents should remain available to the flower industry, in case it is necessary to intervene when diseases or pests in the greenhouse get out of hand. However, we do think that pesticide use will decline as natural control agents will increasingly form the basis of the integrated crop protection strategy. Despite our success in using climate, light, and water to inhibit chrysanthemum, we do not think this will be commercially applicable. We think the biggest steps can be made with breeding, developing shorter varieties that need less inhibition."
A video of the chrysanthemum handover can be seen in this article at AD (in Dutch).
For more information:
Wikke Vedder
Tel: 0624702712
[email protected]