The conversation: “Sustainability has no end point, it’s a continuous process”

Nick Major in conversation with José Aalders, employee Total Feed Support Pigs & Poultry

In her daily work at Total Feed Support in Heijen (NL), José Aalders is co-responsible for the planning of dozens of shipments of liquid residual products which go mainly to pig farms every day. The residual flows originate from the food industry and are recycled as animal feed. “I’m a small part of a whole circular system”, José observes. But the farmer’s daughter does much more. She was one of the initiators of the internal sustainability network for ForFarmers employees. Nick Major had a conversation with her.

Food and agri continue to attract

Nick: “I’ll start with my standard first question: What does sustainability mean for you?”
José: “It’s a tricky concept. You almost don’t really know where to begin when you want to make more sustainable choices. But it won’t surprise you that, as a farmer’s daughter, I’m particularly interested in the food and agri sector: more sustainable food production and more conscious consumer choices.”
Nick: “So that’s been instilled into you?”
José: “Well no, actually after high school I got a bit fed up with the farm and went to study Leisure Management. But food and agriculture are in my blood and I had to come back to it. In a previous job, I did many projects on the cutting edge of farmer-citizen-food. And for the municipality of Berg & Dal, where I live, I organised inspiration sessions with local entrepreneurs to brainstorm about regional products. I really liked the contacts with farmers anyway.”

Are there limits to growth?

Nick: “I detect many activities with a link to sustainability that are already here! Do you remember when the penny really dropped?”
José: “The moment when I consciously thought ‘sustainability is important to me’ was in 2015, during a theatre performance about Sicco Mansholt, a former Minister of Agriculture of the Netherlands. The performance took place in a barn on a farm. Most Dutch people know the story: ‘never again hunger’ was the guiding principle in Mansholt’s post-war agricultural policy. In the performance, on the eve of his retirement, he looks back on the consequences - the butter mountain, the milk lake, damage to nature and the environment - and distances himself from his own policy. From then on, I increasingly asked myself: are there limits to growth and can I be satisfied with enough?”
Nick: “How does that manifest itself in your daily life?”
José: “It’s often in the little things. Separating waste, of course, and I try to use less plastic. Nowadays, you can buy ‘shampoo bars’, shampoo in solid form, like a bar of soap, which saves a lot of plastic bottles. But I also try to make people aware and to start a conversation, about wasting food for example. You can’t do everything at once, but I believe that in making small changes you can make a big difference.”

It started with a cup of coffee

Nick: “Within ForFarmers, you were one of those involved in the start-up of the internal ambassador network for sustainability. How did that come about?”
José: “I wanted to do something with sustainability at work and I called Anouk, our sustainability manager at the time, and arranged to have a cup of coffee together. After the conversation with her, I came home full of energy and great ideas. We set to work immediately on one of these ideas: setting up a sustainability network within ForFarmers. A platform for sharing knowledge and to bring together initiatives from across the entire organisation. We quickly gathered together quite a large group and now we are 44 ambassadors from four countries.”
Nick: “I like the way this idea came about on the shop floor, as it were. Since Anouk’s departure, I’ve taken this up with you. That must have taken some getting used to for you.”
José: “Haha, yes, all of a sudden everything has to be in English, that makes the communication a little less easy. But in doing so we prevent things from becoming a ‘Dutch party’. And, of course, it’s great that you as Director Corporate Affairs and I from Total Feed Support are working together on a project while the rest of the time we work on very different things.”