‘Floating Farm’ in the Netherlands wants to keep food above rising seas

The mooing of dairy cows and the whiff of fresh manure likely don’t come to mind when thinking of a major port city like Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. But the owners of Floating Farm are hoping to change that.

With 32 cows on the top floor of a three-story pontoon barge, moored in an underused part of the harbor, co-founder Minke van Wingerden said this project is likely the world’s first seaborne dairy farm. 

“We go up and down with the tide,” said van Wingerden. “We always can keep on producing fresh, healthy food and we create more or less arable land in the city.”

The goal of the floating farm is to find a way to adapt agricultural and farming practices to the reality of rising seas. The majority of Rotterdam sits about 23 feet (7 meters) below sea level. And while the Dutch have centuries of experience holding back the sea with dikes, pumps and storm surge barriers, Dutch government research suggests the country’s extensive flood protections could become insufficient to hold back the sea by 2050 without extensive updates. 

Van Wingerden and her husband, Peter van Wingerden, launched the Floating Farm in 2019. They were inspired by Hurricane Sandy five years earlier, which left many grocery stores along the US east coast empty as people scrambled for food. 

“At the time [we were] involved in a floating housing project,” said Minke van Wingerden. “When Manhattan was flooded, after two days there was no fresh food on the shelves … [and] we realized, if we can do floating houses, why not a floating farm?”

Livestock, however, present unique challenges on the water. Securing permits, van Wingerden explained, required unusual proof: that the cows wouldn’t get seasick. Researchers confirmed they were no worse off on a barge than in transport trucks, she said.

Today, the farm produces a plethora of dairy products: yogurt, buttermilk, butter and even artisanal Dutch cheeses aged on board in its underwater “cheese cave.” They also recently expanded to growing vegetables below deck under solar lamps.

While the visual impact of the farm is striking, the scale is small; the cows produce about 200 gallons of milk daily, which is distributed locally, along with the cheeses. In exchange, the stores and supermarkets — including SPAR, a major market chain — send the farm food scraps, which become cow feed.

The van Wingerdens are fine with the small scale. The point of the project, Minke explained, is first and foremost a proof of concept: Every aspect of the farm focuses on resilience and sustainability — from generating solar power and collecting rainwater, to the local distribution and upcycling of the food waste. She hopes the project can serve as a model for other low-lying nations.

“The project is meant to be for cities like Singapore,” van Wingerden said. “They hardly produce any food, and they … have a lot of water, so why not make use of that?”

Despite the focus on climate adaptation at the heart of the project, one aspect of Floating Farm is not so environmentally friendly: the cows. Each year a single cow can produce an estimated 220 pounds of methane — a major greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide — through flatulence and belching. It’s a concern van Wingerden acknowledges.

“We should go to a more ‘vegan protein’ diet” to reduce emissions, she said, “but we still would need some animals in the circle of life. So, if you want to produce milk, please do it in a proper way, and that’s why we do it this way.” They’re also looking into possibilities to produce protein in other ways, such as expansion into growing more produce.

To keep their cow-associated emissions down, the farm uses an industrial robot vacuum to collect the cows’ manure. It’s like a giant poop Roomba, rumbling around the stalls and “hoovering” up the refuse.

“Doing this, we have about 60% [fewer] emissions,” van Wingerden said.

Minke Van Wingerden admitted that neither she nor her husband had any farming experience before. But she said it’s been an educational process. “It’s about learning and doing.”