We milk 240 red Holstein cows. My father decided to convert to organic in 2002: it was too expensive to invest in more land, which costs €55,000/ha because we are close to the city. The quotas were on, yet the bank said we needed more income to expand.

By converting to organic, we accessed green finance at a 1% discounted rate. We have formed a co-op with other organic farmers. It just has an office – we sell tankers of raw milk to Dutch, Belgian and sometimes French processors.

The cows would normally graze 24 hours a day this time of year, but it is now so dry that they only go out during the day – or recently during the night because of the heat.

Our yield is 6,500l/year/cow and our price was 51c/l last year. It has now dropped to 47c/l because a wave of conversions in the past two years has increased the number of organic dairy farmers by 30% to supply a market that grows by 8% each year. We’re in for a difficult year or two and then we hope the price will go back up to 50c/l.

Since I joined the farm, we have diversified into eggs and cheese processing sold through our own shop. Our old haystack building hosts a daycare service for 10 Alzheimer patients and we rent out apartments and meeting rooms. My father says I’m going back to the old-fashioned farm. But while we used to specialise in producing cheap food, I think we need to move towards more local and quality production as well. I look for good business models, not ideology.

We have two full-time employees and two casual workers. My wife helps on the farm part-time as well. Our sources of income are €900,000 from milk (1.8m litres at 50c/l), €95,000 from the sale of solar electricity, €150,000 from other businesses and €72,000 from each direct and environmental payments.

The €300/ha direct payments are useless: they just increase the cost of renting land. We rent 140ha at €1,100/ha. Environmental payments are €300/ha as well, for providing walking paths on our land we are paid €1/metre/year and meadows for birds.

I see the environment and the government as a market: I sell milk and I sell meadow birds.

I believe the challenge for the next 10 years is how we deal with our neighbours in the city and with the government, not becoming more intensively productive – that’s old-fashioned. Investing in research to inform the government and in education by bringing children to the farms and farmers to the city should be our priority.