Animal Farming in Flourishing Foodscapes and Thoughtscapes

Abstract

Animal farming is increasingly getting more attention and debate nowadays because of a lot of environmental issues it caused. Apart from that, the intensive animal factories have made consumers quite separated from food animals. What’s more, the animal welfare in current animal farming is not ensured, especially in those intensive animal factories which are always capital-dominated.

As the world’s second-biggest agricultural exporter, the Netherlands is characterized by its intensive farming. Noord Brabant is one of the most important agricultural provinces in the Netherlands with a huge number of animals. The study area Den Bosch region in Noord Brabant has a lot of intensive animal farmlands and factories. These existing intensive animal farms have a high demand to be improved in order to reduce the environmental issues in the Den Bosch region. Together with the natural, historical and cultural resources of Den Bosch, there is great potential to create flourishing animal farming landscapes and thoughtscapes in the Den Bosch region.

Therefore, the main research question of this report is exploring ‘How to build up sustainable, nature-inclusive animal farming landscapes that also provide attractive recreational qualities, through landscape design in the Den Bosch region?’

Four objectives of building up sustainable, nature-inclusive animal farming landscapes are promoted in this report which includes: Improving the ecological value of animal farming; Improving animal welfare; Creating recreational foodscapes of animal farming; Creating climate-adaptive animal farming landscapes. Design principles have been researched and concluded based on these four objectives. While the design principles are adjusted when applied on the design sites to be more suitable for the specific local context. Three sites are selected in different contexts of the city locate respectively in a natural area, suburban area, and urban area to explore the roles of animal farming can play in different city contexts. The relationship between animal farming and nature also has been explored through design exploration in three selected sites.

The outcome of this report aims to provide people with a set of possibilities for improving current animal farming spatially, environmentally, and socially by creating flourishing animal farming foodscapes and thoughtscapes.