Rural versus Urban Struggles in a Divided Nation

During the 1970’s-1980’s, Europe suddenly faced overproduction and started introducing export subsidies. Farmers all of a sudden became global market players and the pressure to scale-up farming activities was almost unbearable, predominantly instigated by the Common Agriculture Policy, heavily promoting individual specialisation and excluding small-scale farming through its specific proportional subsidy system (the bigger the farm, the more governmental support). Dairy cattle got separated from beef cattle, animal farmers separated from arable and vegetable farmers. Side activities disappeared. Belgium saw an enormous increase in livestock farming, also replacing traditional sugar beet cultivation and all former grown winter fodders for corn growing [Van den Abeele, 2018, p. 22]. In addition, there was also a huge increase in non-land-based livestock, pig and chicken farming, which survived through the massive import of fodder from across the globe. Particularly in Flanders, the previously mentioned Boerenbond, being the main Flemish farmer’s union but also increasingly becoming the main insurer, banker, and (co-)supplier of feed and chemical additives for farming, would encourage the modernisation and mechanisation of agriculture through extensive campaigning [De Troch, 1981, p. 650, Cahn et.al., 2018]. In general, the individual farmer started to play an increasingly less powerful part of a much wider, international food chain. 

Again, the stubbornness of the Pajottenlander was awakened. In order to counteract the competition in pricing and the fluctuations of the free market generated by these European and Belgian policies, several farmer’s markets were set up in the Pajottenland in the beginning of the 1980’s [Cahn et.al., 2018]. As Wies De Troch, son of a Pajottenlander farmer, pleaded in a political magazine of that time: ‘Mentioning only small scale versus large scale, claiming autonomy […] is blinding ourselves. If farmers want to survive, there is only one alternative: self-organisation. They have to emancipate from the capitalist monopoly and take matters such as input, output, transport and distribution of products into their own hands.’ [De Troch, 1981, p. 655]. The impact of the return of self-organised markets was three-fold. As a first, the farmer’s market was a means to collectively organise distribution and the regulation and protection of fair pricing through the marktregelement (market regulations) and change the position of the farmer from prize-taker to prize-maker [Van den Abeele, 2018, p. 32]. The price could not compete with wholesale or auctions, but was at the time 30% lower than retail price [De Troch, 1981, p. 652]. Secondly, the farmer’s market was a way to collectively organise individual farm sales and offer a wider array of local products. ‘Self-sellers’ started to meet the ‘typically mixed’ farmers and, together, formed much larger farm entities [Kerkhove, 1994, pp. 69-70], transforming the market place also in a hub for knowledge exchange and, in some cases, farmers made agreements on joint cultivation plans [De Troch, 1981, p. 655] [14]. Thirdly, it was also a political tool. Engaged farmers were openly taking, very personally, a stand against the CAP and all its repercussions in public space. In other words, the farmer’s market was not only a selling point, but also an expression of rebellion [Cahn et.al., 2018].

Soon after the first Farmer’s Market in Gaasbeek was founded by the informal BoerenGroep Pajottenland (Peasants Group)[15] in 1981, many others followed in Dilbeek, Gooik, Oetingen, Roosdaal, Schepdaal and Teralfene. At one point, these farmers’ markets claimed they offered products from half of the Pajot farmers [Wervel/BoerenForum, 2019, p. 39]. These Pajottenlander markets also exchanged among one another and joined forces with the residual Boerkozen in the fringes of Brussels to combat several projects in the fertile Neerpede valley, such as the building of the new Erasmus Hospital, or the more effective activist protests against the layout of highway A8 (which was pushed further south), a new scrapyard (never built) or even the construction of the European DisneyLand Resort (which eventually went to Paris) [De Troch, 1981, p. 653, Van den Abeele, 2018, p. 24]. Although it is clear that the radical farmer’s markets were not able to stop further specialisation, nor the eradication of the smallholders, these small but daring coalitions of market farmers and the last Boerkozen eventually saved the valuable farming land of Brussels where, three decades later, organisations like BoerenBruxselPaysans would revive the Boerkozen/Maraîcher craft (see chapters 4 and 5).

While a minority of the smallholders of the Pajottenland were able to survive through the farmer’s markets, the specialized smallholders known as the Boerkozen were not. Steadily building up, but really exploding during the last decades of the 20th century, the market-gardening tradition scaled up to unseen proportions and split up in two main factions: greenhouse cultivation for the world market centred around the city of Malines on the one hand, and large scale open air vegetable cultivation mainly in the west of the country, immediately processed for the frozen food industry. Next to that, in 1973, the traditional early morning market, the main outlet of the Boerkozen, was moved from the Grand Place to an industrial site along the canal, better tailored to heavy traffic [MaBru]. In such a scheme, the traditional Boerkozen craft could not uphold their enterprises and became extinct. Officially only in 2008, but already facing a drastic decline during several years, the Boerkozen Union ceased to exist [16].

The loss of the Boerkozen also meant that the link between Brussels and its hinterland, mainly the Pajottenland, was broken more explicitly [17]. We have seen that many mixed farmers and market-gardeners folded back to local markets, but also on a national level things changed. Due to the foundation of the Brussels Capital Region in 1989, the growing political and social divergence between the predominantly French-speaking population of Brussels and Dutch-speaking Flanders was made more explicit. Up until today, the ‘entrance to the concentration of consumers that is Brussels’ for local Flemish growers is very hard to organise [Cahn et.al., 2018, p. 136].

Today, the Gaasbeek Market still is a breeding ground to exchange local knowledge, experiences and resources among mixed farmers [Van den Abeele, 2018, p. 29]. The restriction to local farming and the collective setting of a fair price has remained. It still is a catalyst to stimulate more farmers to commit to self-processing and self-marketing. As such, led by their stubbornness and their geuzen mentality [18], as they themselves call it, the people from the Pajottenland have continued to march against the expansion and production maximisation of their farms, greatly valuing the assets of their region: the fertile soil and the proximity to the city of Brussels [Van den Abeele, 2018, p. 30]. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that it is predominantly from this region that experimentation with agroforestry, dual-purpose cows and extensive rotation schemes is increasing and that some strong individuals are building the still small but daring BoerenForum, the Flemish pendant of La Via Campesina.

The growing divergence between the city and its hinterland was not only a social demarcation, it was also increasingly expressed spatially. Brussels, however, has not a green belt like cities such as London. One could argue that the city has not one, but two. 

The seeds for the first one originated shortly after World War I, when the green surroundings of Brussels were more and more used as a place to escape the hustle and bustle of the city [Vanempten, 2014, p. 104]. The duality between the hectic city life and idyllic countryside reigned supreme in those days. The Pajottenland, as well, was then not only known as Brussels’ Garden, but its unspoiled rolling landscape also resembled Tuscany of the North [Vanempten et.al., 2015]. It gave way to new urban strategies, made most explicit when social housing politics and the reconstruction agenda started to merge with Ebenezer Howard’s concept of the Garden City. Most famous for that time is Verwilghen’s plan to create an alternation of garden neighbourhoods and larger open spaces and, as such, develop a symbolic green belt surrounding the medieval and 19th century urban conglomerate [Eggericx & Hannoset, 2013]. Although Brussels was, eventually, dotted with twenty smaller Garden City neighbourhoods, this first green belt ideal was never reached, making way for Le Corbusier’s influence in constructing large immeubles.

The modernist approach suited Brussels’ plans to become a true capital; a global centre for politics and trade. In that, urban policies of the 1960’s and 1970’s were vigorous, resulting in the many careless infrastructure projects amounting to what would become known as Brusselization. In urban planning, Brusselization is an internationally coined term to describe ‘the indiscriminate and careless introduction of modern high-rise buildings into gentrified neighbourhoods’ and has become a byword for ‘haphazard urban development and redevelopment’ [State, Paul F., 2004 and Stubbs & Makaš, 2011]. It literally references to the uncontrolled development in Brussels, which resulted from a lack of zoning regulations and the city authorities’ laissez-faire approach to city planning [Le Vif]. The social scars of this unsuccessful and only partially executed forms of tabula rasa in different places in Brussels, coupled with the student and language protests of the 1969s, sparked public opinion and community engagement, especially concerning urban projects. The varied sloppiness, speed and slowness of most real estate projects also punctured the city with many unexecuted plans, giving way to closed off construction sites, polluted leftover spaces and many reservation grounds.

In reaction, the 1970’s witnessed the emergence of several comités de quartier(neighbourhood committees), which played an important role in the allotment movement (see Chapter 5). These committees were also crucial in revaluing the Garden City ideal. In response to the unbridled urge of building promoters in previous decades and to the ever-increasing pollution caused by, among other things, the sharp increase in car traffic and emissions from industry in the periphery,  environmental associations and neighbourhood organisations alike stood up for the rapid disappearance or decay of the green lungs in Brussels. Action groups started to map the many parks, abolished railway beds, old country roads and some semi-natural wilderness and supported a first feasibility study in 1986 [Trekkings]. Soon, the idea sprouted to link all of these precarious open spaces into a Promenade Verte. The idea of the perfect ring in Brussels proved to be a strong political figure: the many peri-urban residual spaces had to be connected and achieve a certain degree of quality. Action groups protested against planned projects in the periphery, such as waste dumps, port extensions or housing development. More and more activists also started to temporarily occupy these open spaces, nowadays putting food growing also increasingly on the agenda, illustrated by the many Maîtres Maraîchers and Maîtres Composteurs, the setting up of Parckfarm as part of the cultural manifestation Parckdesign 2014, the commoning test site at the former railway yard at Josaphat and the protests against the planned mega prison in Keelbeek Haren, on which we will further elaborate in the next chapters. The first fully linked promenade was completed at the end of the 20th century. Parallel routing is currently being attached to the course and expanded as a green-blue network.

The second green belt of Brussels is of a completely different nature. In the notorious year of 1962, Belgium was subdivided in spatially demarcated language regions. In the same year, the national law on urbanism was approved. Although it introduced a restrictive system and wanted to combat suburbanization, the eroding role of the national scale quickly pushed planning to the municipal level [Vanempten, 2014, p. 109]. Another interpretation of a ‘green belt’ then surfaced in the regional zoning plan of Halle-Vilvoorde-Asse (the three Flemish towns closest to Brussels) of 1969. It combined a polycentric structure, putting the stress on the historical Flemish hamlets, with green axes or lobes towards Brussels. This plan aimed to find an efficient bundling of infrastructures and buildings to protect agriculture and to safeguard open space as much as possible. The concept of the green belt was incorporated implicitly by lowering the amount of possible housing areas near the 19 Brussels municipalities and increasing it further away [Vanempten, 2014, p. 110], confirming the anti-urban strategies of postwar Flanders. This approach was further intensified by the construction of the major ring road (for the most part on Flemish territory) in the 1970s. It played a more explicit role in regulating urban-rural relations and the growth of Brussels. With its form, the ring road had to mark the edge of urban Brussels and thus contain the Flemish association that Brussels is spreading like an oil or ink stain, not only from a fear of a growing metropolis, but also of ‘Frenchification’ [Cahn et.al., 2018]. On the inside of the ring road, ‘grey’ and urban Brussels would be contained; on the outside, the Flemish ‘green belt’ of open spaces could be preserved [Vanempten, 2014]. However, the fact that the 1969 plan marked first the green axes (green lobes or fingers, rather than a belt-figure) and the cores- and satellites- approach later on, could also indicate that the plan aimed to rethink traditional urban-rural interaction. From this perspective, the Brussels’ green belt differs substantially from the London one. As Ryckewaert [2011] points out, the London green belt was meant to control city growth, while the Brussels’ variant did quite the contrary, aiming to deal with an increasing population by accommodating low-rise, low-density suburban development, supporting the transition of Brussels as administrative capital [Vanempten, 2014, p. 110] and, maybe unwillingly, concentrated political power in that spread out (sub)urbanisation. This was made most explicit in 1981, when Sint-Genesius-Rode, one of the last Flemish municipalities squeezed between Brussels and Wallonia, launched De Gordel, a yearly cycling festival with a route surrounding the Brussels region, advocating the Flemish character of the Groene Gordel (green belt), heavily supported by Flemish politicians and musicians, and equally infamously boycotted with pins and nails on the streets. The festival still runs, but under a different form since 2012, having lost a lot of its radical political association.