Planting trees needs a long term vision, as they don’t offer an immediate solution, trees need time to grow.
PHOTO: HANS PRINSEN
Using nature to tackle heat stress
The Dutch initiative Trees for Cows has planted over 114,000 trees since the year 2000. Their long term goal is to create many cool and shady places in and along pastures for dairy cows to find shade during extreme temperatures. The initiative urges livestock farmers to start planting trees now to profit from them later.
BY DICK VAN DOORN S
hade for livestock during warm, sunny days has al- ways been important worldwide, but with global warming it’s becoming even more important. How- ever, with increasing farm sizes and economy of
scale, the number of trees in pastures has declined. They seemed to just get in the way of the tractors and harvesters
which are getting bigger and bigger. “Half a century ago, fields in Europe were scattered with trees and shady spots”, says Thomas van Slobbe, coordinator of Trees for Cows. “Since then, many trees have been cut down, partly due to land con- solidation and scaling-up. In Africa, trees are disappearing as a result of the drought and the use of trees as fuel.” But in recent years, trees have gained new, positive attention for two reasons. Increasingly hot summers on the one hand
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