Freddie and Rina Beltman came to Poland from their native Netherlands in pursuit of a simple dream: To farm.
“A farmer is not something you become. You have to be a farmer,” Rina Beltman said as she sat at the kitchen table and spooned oatmeal into the mouth of her 10-month-old daughter. “My husband is a farmer.”
Freddie Beltman grew up on his father’s farm in Overijssel, a prosperous agricultural province in north central Netherlands. He gave no serious thought to any other occupation.
But opportunities are limited in the Netherlands. “His father is too young to retire, the farm is too small to divide, and land at home is too expensive to buy,” Rina said.
So five years ago, the Beltmans moved to Poland, where land was cheap and the government was privatizing its obsolete collective farms.
The couple signed a 15-year lease on 480 acres and a derelict barn that were part of a bankrupt state farm in Pomerania, a region of meadows, forests and lakes in northwest Poland that would remind American visitors of Wisconsin’s dairy lands.
They set up house in the barn, had three daughters and nursed a dying farm back to life. Things seemed to be going well until last December, when a fire thrust the Beltmans into the middle of a bitter national debate over Poland’s future.
Many in this country are worried that membership in the European Union will bring an invasion of rich foreigners eager to buy up Polish land. Most Poles agree that their country must embrace Europe, free up domestic markets and open its borders to foreign investment. But a newly ascendant minority is consumed by bitter memories of the last century and warns that Poland could risk its hard-won sovereignty if it allows foreigners to gain too much economic leverage.
Dream is torched with barn
On the night of Dec. 30, someone torched the Beltmans’ barn. Neighbors helped save his 80 cows, but the milking machines were destroyed, and the Beltmans were ruined.
It was the second fire on the farm in less than six months, and the message was clear. The story has become a major embarrassment for the Polish government as it readies for EU accession in less than two years.
Agricultural land and farm subsidies have become political flash points in Poland’s talks with the EU. In March, the Poles negotiated a deal that will prevent foreigners from buying land for 12 years (three to seven years for those presently holding leases) after Poland is accepted for membership.
But at the same time, the EU has made clear that it will not be giving farmers in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic or any of the other seven hopefuls the same generous subsidies that it provides to current members.
This will put farmers in Eastern Europe at a severe competitive disadvantage. The fear is felt most keenly in Poland, where a quarter of the workforce still earns its livelihood in the agricultural sector.
Poland has 2 million farms, but 1.2 million of them are no larger than 17 acres–the size of a postage stamp by U.S. agricultural standards–and produce only enough to feed the farmer and his family. Of the remaining 800,000 farmsteads, only about 100,000 produce on a commercially viable scale.
“Sixty percent of Poland’s farmers could drop out tomorrow, and you wouldn’t miss a kilo at the market,” said Adrian Bovee, the agricultural attache for the Dutch Embassy in Warsaw.
The surplus of small farms reflects the tenacity of Polish farmers and their almost religious attachment to the land. Unlike in other former East Bloc countries, communist authorities here never had much success in their attempts to collectivize farming. Less than a quarter of Poland’s arable land is owned by the state.
After the collapse of communism in 1989, Poland’s democratic government created a new agency to manage and ultimately privatize 11.3 million acres of state-controlled agricultural land. The Agricultural Property Agency opened its doors in January 1992.
The idea was to sell the land to Polish farmers, but the bargain prices drew land-hungry Western European farmers.
“If you look at the average price for an acre of farmland in the EU, we are seven times cheaper. If you take Holland, Poland is 30 times cheaper,” said Jan Bielanski, director of land management for the Polish Ministry of Agriculture.
Indeed, the subsidy that the EU pays an Austrian farmer on an acre of land would buy the same acre in Poland.
But the property agency has been careful, and the rules governing land purchases by non-Poles are fairly arbitrary. Less than 80,000 of its 11.3 million acres have been sold to foreigners. The agency prefers leasing the land at more competitive rates; some 427,000 acres have been let to foreigners.
Andrzej Zadura, chief of the property agency’s foreign cooperation division, acknowledged that permission is “hardly ever given” for foreigners to buy farmland.
“It’s not discrimination. We are acting on behalf of the country. We have to protect the land because prices are too low,” he said.
So far, there are about 1,200 foreign farmers in Poland. The majority are from Germany; the next largest group is from the Netherlands.
Politicians exploit old fears
But Poland, with its shifting borders and bitter memories of foreign invaders, has a deep reflexive fear of foreigners, especially Germans. And populist politicians have exploited this.
In last September’s parliamentary elections, Andrzej Lepper, a rabble-rousing pig farmer, rode a wave of anti-EU sentiment and xenophobia to a surprisingly strong finish. Polls now indicate his Self-Defense Party is second only to the ruling Democratic Left Alliance, the reformed communists.
Wojciech Mojzesowicz, vice president of Self-Defense and chairman of its agricultural committee, said he believes Germany has an “agenda” to buy back the Polish lands taken from it after World War II.
The Beltmans are not German, and by all accounts, they were well-liked by their neighbors. Police got a partial identification of the arsonist, but thus far there have been no arrests.
Bovee, the Dutch attache, blames the attack on “a simpleton” who may have been inspired by Self-Defense Party rhetoric.
In Cetyn and other nearby villages, local people express their support for the foreign farmers.
“They took over these poor state farms where the soil had been abused, and they’ve put them back into production. They give local people jobs, and they help the whole economy,” said Ireneusz Horoszko, the general manager on a 1,500-acre former state farm leased to Klaas Ruscher, who is Dutch.
“The Dutch owner here, he helped rebuild the local church when it burned down. He lends his equipment to other farmers; he’s involved in the community, and people like him a lot,” Horoszko said.
But Ruscher is thinking of packing it in. “This is the last year for me,” he said in a phone interview. “I’m going back.”
“My problem is with the [Polish land] agency. They don’t want to talk about selling these fields, or a longer lease or lowering the payments,” said Ruscher, who estimates he has lost $950,000 in the past six years.
For the Beltmans, after five years, there is only bitterness to harvest.
“We’re finished with Poland,” Rina Beltman said. “Our story is over.”
