The Four Returns
Return of inspiration
Giving people hope and a sense of purpose.
Return of natural capital
Bringing back biodiversity, soil and water quality.
Financial returns
Realizing long-term sustainable profit.
Return of social capital
Creating meaningful jobs and business activity, education and security.
20 Years
- We strive to realize a healthy balance between the 4 returns in the way we operate our business. This requires that we adopt a long-term vision, spanning at least one generation. To realize this vision, we continuously learn and adapt to the changes in society and in the environment.
3 zones
- We aim to take care of the natural environment in which our crops and foods are produced, conserving the soil, local vegetation (plants, trees), water and climate (air quality). This forms the basis of our productivity, securing high quality of our products.
- We look at the complete landscape as a mosaic of different land uses and work together with other stakeholders to balance the functions of the natural areas, production areas, and combined zones, in which both production objectives and protection of nature are achieved.
- A big step we are now taking is to greatly reduce, and in some cases abandon, the use of fertilizers and chemicals.
- Starting five years ago in Germany with hundreds of hectares of cover crops as green manure, we now have converted most of our German hectares into organic.
- Our crop rotation is based on a grass-clover mix.
- We look for more harmony and listen to our soil and our plants.
- We don’t mind when we see a few weeds, a few beetles or wheat and barley not as good-looking as conventional. In fact, it is also rewarding to see the quality of our soils improve and the levels of biodiversity increase.
- Our experience with the transition to organic is that it does come at the price of reduced yields per hectare. In Germany, we accept 50% of our normal output. We continue to seek ways to maximize the overall productivity of our system through natural solutions, as well as ways to convey our story to our consumers, so that they will see and hopefully reward our philosophy by paying a better price for all the beautiful and natural products we produce.
