Witnesses from an exhibition
Ghent is a large landowner. The city owns vast swathes of agricultural land, most of it outside the city boundaries. There was a time when Ghent held 5,000 hectares of arable land, meadows and woodland. Even today that figure is 1,800 hectares. The city in the countryside. What is the story behind that land? Where does its future lie?
The exhibition Ghent’s Land was on display at the STAM from 22.03.2024 to 29.09.2024 and came about through a collaboration between STAM and ILVO, the Institute for Agricultural, Fisheries, and Food Research.
This digital exhibition showcases the video testimonies that were featured in the Gentse Gronden exhibition.
The story of the Ghent’s land begins with the organization of care for the poor and sick in the 13th century. In the medieval city, charity was centered around the Christian faith. Wealthy citizens and clergy established numerous hospitals and almshouses where they took care of the sick, the mentally ill, the elderly, and orphans. They saw it as an expression of charity, of loving one’s neighbour. It was also, of course, a way of earning a place in heaven. An impressive example is the Bijloke hospital, where easily a hundred patients would have been cared for every day.
Hospitals and almshouses acquired quite a bit of farmland and farms in the Middle Ages. Like wealthy Ghent citizens and abbeys, the charitable institutions were veritable landowners. Initially, just outside the city; later on, also further afield. Ghent land even extended to Zeelandic Flanders, on the other side of what is today the Dutch border. Agricultural land was highly sought after as a financial investment, but also as a source of food supply to be able to feed the city’s poor and sick.
(image: Zeelandic Flanders ca. 1570, Simon Wiskerke, Archief Gent)
Managing Ghent’s land and farmsteads required a good bookkeeping system. A property register preserved in the State Archives in Ghent reveals how important and complex this was. The hefty tome records the accounting of the properties belonging to the Holy Spirit Table of the Church of St Nicholas between 1587 and 1794.
Browse through this impressive book with archivist Annelies Somers.
Annelies Somers: ‘The book weighs 23 kilos. For reference, I have a six-year-old daughter, who weighs 20 kilos’.
The French Revolution brought the ancien régime to an end. In 1795, the Southern Netherlands were annexed by France. New administrative structures replaced old laws and institutions. Caring for the poor and sick now fell to public institutions.
The Burelen van Weldadigheid welfare organizations took on the work previously carried out by the parishes, such as supporting poor families. The civil hospitals Burgerlijke Godshuizen assumed responsibility for running the old hospitals, providing care for the sick, mentally ill, elderly and orphans.
Both institutions also inherited the land owned for centuries by their legal predecessors. The lands and farms continued to guarantee a stable yield in the form of food and money.
The agreement between the urban property owners and their tenants provided security for both parties.
A part of the harvest went straight to the hospitals: staples like grain and potatoes, but also fruit and wood. That short chain meant that relatively cheap food was always available to Ghent’s institutions even in times of famine and war. Paying rent and supplying the required foods also provided the tenants with stability and security. In return, they and their family had the right to live in the same farmhouse and work the same land for generation after generation.
Gery Huysman, the eighth generation of tenant farmers in the family, looks back on the period when he supplied potatoes to the hospitals.
Géry Huysman: ‘Als a young lad, I helped deliver potatoes in Ghent to the hospitals of the OCMW’.
What was produced on Ghent’s land? These colourful posters give us an idea of the main products: grain, hay and flax, plus wood from the annual tree felling.
In this image, we see a ceremonious occasion attesting to the close bond between proprietor and tenant. Victor Blommaert (second from the right), manager of the holdings of Ghent’s Burgerlijke Godshuizen, pays a visit to the Scheele family around 1900. The Scheeles have been renting land in Zaamslag in Zeeland for seven generations.
See how Johan and Gian Scheele experience this in this portrait of father and son, the seventh and eighth generations of tenant Scheeles.
Johan Scheele: ‘The biggest change is my son's entrepreneurship. He has a better grasp of it than I do’.
Until the Second World War, the land belonging to Ghent remained relatively intact, despite the pressures of urbanization and industrialization. But then everything changed.
Social policy was professionalized and became increasingly ambitious. With money needed for other purposes, the OCMW began to sell off its time-honoured agricultural patrimony.
In 1976, every city and municipality in Belgium was allocated a Public Centre for Social Welfare (OCMW). These replaced the Public Relief Committees (COO), which had originated from an amalgamation of the Burgerlijke Godshuizen and Burelen van Weldadigheid in 1924.
The OCMW’s gave short shrift to charity as the basis for caring for the poor and sick. Care is no longer a gesture of goodwill, but an enforceable social right.
Joris Sleurs and Annemie Baetslé played a key role in establishing OCMW Ghent. They talk about the shift in mentality they brought about and the major investments they realized.
(Image: the newly-built Jan Palfijn hospital, 1983, Archief Gent)
Joris Sleurs: ‘We did ensure a shift in level there.’
Today the ring canal, two motorways and the now sizeable port cut through the open space around Ghent. Though less than a century old, it is now impossible to imagine life without them. They are a result of the economic growth and optimism of the decades following World War Two.
Between 1960 and 1980, Ghent’s OCMW forfeited no fewer than 1,000 hectares of land along with 30 farmsteads. Besides the port municipalities of Sint-Kruis-Winkel, Zelzate, and Evergem, Nazareth was also affected. As a tenant, Hubert De Kocker lost some pieces of land here due to the arrival of the E17. In this video, he looks back on farm life in Nazareth before the highway arrived.
Hubert De Kocker: ‘Nowhere is there a farm so close to a motorway. Isn’t that something?’.
Behind the history of the Ghent’s farmland lie numerous personal stories. One of them is Marie De Lepeleire, born in 1924. She looks back on a lifetime of farming together with her husband Marcel in Afsnee. With the arrival of the tractor, she experienced the major agricultural revolutions of the 1960s and 70s.
Marie De Lepeleire: ‘I think I crawled from here to Brussels on my knees to weed’.
The OCMW has been disposing of land since the 1980s. At first gradually, then at a quickening pace. Land ownership dropped from over 4,000 hectares in 1980 to approximately 1,800 hectares today. Of the more than 100 farmsteads just five remain. A part of the revenue was used to purchase ICT and build care homes, hospitals and welfare centres.
As a notary in Nazareth, Jean-François Agneessens organized numerous public sales of land and farms for OCMW Gent.
Jean-François Agneessens: ‘Public sales were often difficult cases, but I enjoyed solving those problems.’
Due to numerous sales, the tenants lost the security that public land had provided for centuries. Some farmers have bought their farmhouse to ensure the future of their company, but most still rent the land around the house and so continue to be dependent on the OCMW. If the land is also sold, they risk losing access to it.
Jos Depotter is one of these affected farmers. He talks about his search for a new future for his farm after OCMW Gent sold the farm and land.
Jos Depotter: ‘When a farmer loses land, it’s like sawing off one or two legs of his chair.’
Since 2019, Ghent has been working on new green, climate and spatial policies. The city launched its food policy under the name ‘Gent en Garde’ and a new vision for agriculture in and around the city followed in 2023. Ghent’s land is once again seen as an important policy instrument. A few hectares in Afsnee and Mendonk have been strategically revived by two pilot projects relating to sustainable agriculture.
Maarten Cools hopes to set an example for sustainable farming on public land with the organic farm De Goedinge in Afsnee.
Maarten Cools: ‘We started De Goedinge to show that it can be done differently.’
Over the last 70 years, some 60 percent of all Ghent’s land and almost all its farmsteads have been lost. As the owner of 1,800 hectares, however, the OCMW is still a large landowner in the wider Ghent region.
Today as many as 160 farmers depend on land owned by Ghent. For half of them, that equates to more than a third of their land.
What lies in store for Ghent’s remaining land? Will it be sold off or remain in public ownership? What objectives might it help realize?
In this video reportage, eight interested parties from diverse backgrounds tell us how they see the future of Ghent’s land. Each has his own expectations, ideas and dreams.
Final video: What does the future hold?
These video portraits were featured in the ‘Ghent’s Land' exhibition, which ran from 22.03.2024 to 29.09.2024.
In the context of the exhibition, Stadsacademie, ILVO, and STAM organized three debate sessions. You can find a report on that here.
Ghent is by no means the only place with public lands. ILVO also mapped out the situation in Brussels and Flanders. You can find more information about that here.
Ghent’s Land. An exhibition by STAM in collaboration with ILVO.
Curators: Esther Beeckaert and Hans Vandermaelen
Video: Frederik Verstraete