Tackling and overcoming the pain

Thijs Jasperse

“PARACETAMOL,” he shouted at the 20-kilometre mark. We rushed to the nearest village, bought the pills and popped them as soon as we could. The pain on his face. We later found out he had huge blisters. My son ran the Zeeland marathon last Saturday. Not your average marathon. With more than 10 km of running along the beach and highly variable terrain through the dunes, dykes, up the stairs and lots of wind, the toughest marathon in the Netherlands.  Changeable and tough conditions. 

Stifling the pain through ever-changing and harsh conditions. It's an easy bridge to horticulture. Blows are coming at us from every direction. The energy crisis is a heavy pill to swallow but we will face many more shocks over the next few years. This will require resilience and agility.  

Resilience is often explained financially. You have to be financially resilient during such times and able to reinvest in a timely manner. But mental resilience may be even more important. We see big changes when it comes to mental resilience. We see entrepreneurs that are tired of the struggle, and we see those that love a challenge and have the peace of mind to not just be in crisis mode but to look ahead. Within multi-person boards and partnerships, this proves easier.  

A second key word in times of high uncertainty and changing circumstances is agility. Horticulture has grown through hyper-specialisation. But we have gotten carried away a bit. There are plenty of opportunities to increase agility. For example, international production and mutual participations between horticultural companies with different but complementary product ranges. Making the equipment more flexible (tomato-cucumber example) and centring complexity in one place in the form of joint sorting and packaging.  

Stifling the pain through ever-changing and harsh conditions. He is now 37, finished in the 104th place out of 1700 participants and is very happy (and I proud of course). It was and felt like a victory. An easy bridge to horticulture…