Past, Present and Future 17932 In short, the ‘network’ cannot be understood simply as an aggregate of modes of ordering. All the
more because the ‘patterning of the social’ (certainly in the current postmodern constellation)
increasingly defines which modes of ordering, which strategies, do or do not fit. Here too the
turning point, to which I referred previously, appears again.
33 All in all, financial capital represents nothing more than a particular project: to increase the initial
amount of capital through participation in other projects.
34 A definition in terms of ‘feasibility’ is also important: What can I exercise influence over? What is
beyond my power? ‘Feedback’ is already integral to all this: as part of the decision of what is rel-
evant to me (and definitely in the further specification of what I could influence) I will have to take
account of the world as it presents itself to me and/or of the world as it is presented to me. Yo soy yo
y mi circunstancia, as Ortega y Gasset (1995) states in this context: ‘I am myself and my situation.’
35 These are the terms suggested by neo-institutional analysis as solutions to problems such as those
described here (see, inter alia, Saccomandi, 1991, 1998).
36 In fact, this continued to the extent that the building of the factory had almost been finished
before the third partner, Friesland Coberco Dairy Foods, decided to participate. I think it goes
without saying, therefore, that considerable risks have been taken along the entire trajectory. On
the other hand, as Henk Brouwer argues, you ‘need to be able to fall back on a number of side
streets. If you can’t turn left, you’ll have to be prepared how to turn right if necessary’.
37 Even though leading thinkers of the Rabobank in Utrecht (its headquarters), such as Wijffels and
Krouwel, supported the initiative wholeheartedly, the Eindhoven office (where credit applications
are eventually assessed on the basis of formal criteria) reached a negative decision. It was reasoned
that dairies were being closed all over Europe, and it was therefore ludicrous to think that a small
dairy such as the FEZ would stand a chance of survival. Eventually, the Rabobank did become
involved in the FEZ indirectly through Rabobank International.
38 Friesland Coberco Dairy Foods had attempted years before to set up a range of organic products.
However, it had turned out to be a total flop. A new initiative by a ‘small outsider’ was initially
regarded as rather painful: ‘If we can’t do it, nobody can.’
39 The Industry and Commerce Board was notable by its absence in this innovation. It is also typical
that serious practical research on organic dairy farming by the expert system only started during
1998–1999. For that is the moment when institutionalized practical research (in casu Aver Heino)
makes a changeover. It means that the first results will only be available in five years time, i.e. in
2003 or 2004.
40 The alleged backwardness became even the conceptual starting point of operationalizing the
countryside and, therefore, of differentiating it from the city (see Van der Ploeg, 1997).
41 Of course, other large megaprojects did exist. In The Netherlands, they included the organization
of water management, coastal defence and energy supply. It is well known that each of these rep-
resents so much as a state within the state.
42 After all, you cannot experiment simultaneously with Schiphol Airport in the North Sea, Schiphol
in Flevoland (or in the Markerwaard), and the expansion of the existing Schiphol.
43 If there is anything in this world that can hardly be virtual, it is a farmer. Farmers stand in the
mud, between their cows. Or they watch the latest version of a milk robot at the Agricultural
Show. However, they watch all this knowing that milk will soon have to flow into the jars. In our
‘virtualized world’, farmers are probably the last junction of its stubborn opposite: it starts off on
matter, on mud and cows, and it ends in matter, in milk or in seed potatoes. Hence, it is out of
the question that there is or could be any detachment and evaporation of things into words and
symbols and nothing else.
44 The ‘old boys network’, which clearly exists in the agricultural knowledge network or ‘expert
system’, centres largely on aspects of one and the same set of axioms.
45 Recent agrarian history has a painful flip side, related to the ‘conversion’ of critics and innovators
into ‘charlatans’. Older colleagues have told me many stories about this. I leave the retelling of
those stories to the first agrarian historian who dares to research a really controversial issue.