The Enforcement Court has rejected the appeal of farmer Jan Jacobs (53) from Schoten. He will have to pay 2,325 euros because he had sown a game field with corn at the request of the tenant of a piece of land in an agricultural area on the Kleine Waterstraat in Schilde. “I call this pure land theft by farmers, they suddenly turn an agricultural area into a nature reserve, and that is possible just like that.”
Five years ago, an inspector from the Agency for Nature and Forest noticed how maize had been sown in a plot of 4,500 square meters surrounded by some trees behind the Hubo in Schilde. He discovered remnants of bent grass, a specific type of grass that grows on poor soil. In the past, a café football team was active on the plot and a horse had grazed for a while. At the request of the tenant, farmer Jacobs sowed a wildlife field with maize for the roe deer in the winter.
The Agency for Nature and Forest considers this transformation an environmental crime. Jacobs should have checked the status of the plot on the biological valuation map on geopunt.be. Converting nutrient-poor grassland to maize is an infringement of Article 7 of the Nature Conservation Decree. The grassland of approximately 4,500 square meters may no longer be worked.
Jacobs appealed, but was now also ruled against by the Enforcement Court (HHC). “This plot has been colored in as an agricultural area on the regional plan,” says Jacobs. “I call this pure theft of farmland.” The Flemish Region has already responded that illegal vegetation modification is regarded as a serious environmental crime.