As part of her work for Grodan, Marketing Director Gonneke Gerkema is often the only female in management teams. For herself, her daughter and future generations of women, she has a personal wish to see more gender equality in the workplace. “Moreover, various studies show that a better gender balance is also good for business,” she says. To play an active part in making a difference, she recently joined the Gender Alliance for Innovation in Agriculture (GAIA) on behalf of Grodan. To tie in with this, we asked some of our other female colleagues to share their experiences of being a ‘woman in horticulture’.
Business Development Manager Lise Maibom made a conscious choice to study and build a career in the horticulture industry due to her commitment to sustainability and diversity.
I’ve been interested in plants and animals for a long time. In the past, I’ve worked with horses, so I initially considered a career in farming. But I’d also developed an interest in vegetables through my previous work as a chef at a gourmet restaurant. We were always on the lookout for varieties with superior flavour, but were often disappointed that many standard ones seemed to have been developed for yield rather than taste.
Sustainable future
Those two passions led to me studying agrobiology at Aarhus University in Denmark, where I grew up. The degree covered all aspects of agriculture – both crops and livestock – but I quickly decided to focus more on the horticultural side. I believe that vegetables have a more sustainable future than meat, both for environmental reasons and due to consumer lifestyle trends.
After graduating, I was keen to continue studying plant science so I applied to do a master’s in Resilient Farming and Food Systems at Wageningen WUR. I was super happy to get accepted because I’ve always regarded it as an industry-leading institution with the brightest minds and the very latest research and resources. Luckily my husband managed to find a job in the Netherlands too, so we – and our two-year-old daughter – moved to Eindhoven in August 2020.
People with a similar passion
My first contact with Grodan was as an intern during my master’s. I liked the fact that Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) can actually make a difference from a sustainability perspective. I’ve been interested in sustainability from an early stage, and it’s nice to be working in an industry where you’re surrounded by people who have a similar passion for it.
Horticulture still has the reputation of being a male-dominated sector, and I suppose that’s currently true; the growers, systems builders and breeders I encounter on a day-to-day basis all tend to be men. On the upside, I get a strong sense that the balance between males and females in horticulture is shifting increasingly rapidly, and that people are becoming more aware of gender equality. When I was at Wageningen, most of my fellow students were in their mid-20s and issues like diversity and equality were a hot topic for them. And this is the generation that will eventually take over as older growers retire.
More females studying horticulture
There are also more women getting ready to come into the industry, because there are more females studying horticulture than in the past. Having said that, I noticed that it was mainly male graduates who were more keen to go after the big jobs at commercial companies; women graduates were more likely to look for work with NGOs or organisations where they felt that they could have a positive impact for minority groups, indigenous people and/or nature.
Misconception
I think it's a shame that there is still this misconception, because in CEA we make more of a positive difference than many people realise. For example, by controlling parameters in the high-tech greenhouse such as temperature, humidity and irrigation, and by using natural predators, growers can reduce or eliminate their use of pesticides and insecticides, which is better for the environment.
Also, when my father was teaching me to cook as a little girl, I remember him warning me to rinse the vegetables carefully to wash off any contaminants. We’ve come a long way from that today. Thanks to automation, crops like lettuces can go from seeds to consumers – and every step in between – without being touched by human hands. Similarly, stone wool growing media like Grodan’s substrates eliminate the risk of soilborne bacteria, so they contribute to a clean and food-safe environment facilitated by high-tech greenhouses.
Setting nature free
Moreover, I’m a big fan of biodiversity – I even wrote my thesis on it for my bachelor’s – and CEA supports that. By creating the right conditions for crops to be grown indoors on a large scale, we don’t need space for those crops outdoors anymore; we can set nature free. These are all ways in which our industry is making a positive difference for the planet and society, and it feels very rewarding for me to be part of that.
