Do you have some source of this criticism? I am also a member of one of these initiatives, and I imagine a lot depends on the specific cooperative. Is this coming from your personal experience?

> The lack of knowledge (or wilful ignorance) results in them not requesting permits like other farmers have to, resulting in frustrated neighbours and a bad reputation.

Don't recognize that at all with my farm, we spent 3+ years getting permits before we were even allowed to start farming (on an existing farm!). But who knows.

> The lack of knowledge (or plain arrogance) results in trying to turn soil that is unsuitable for vegetable cultivation into vegetable gardens, resulting in failed harvests and wasted money. It's fine to experiment, but throwing money away while well meaning neighbouring farmers are proactively giving you all information you need to know is something else entirely.

First of all I don't think its a good look to assume malice based on one case (wilful ignorance, plain arrogance) and generalize that to the whole movement.

A lot of the farmers are actually reasonably well educated and knowledgeable, but a mixed farm such as this is a very complex operation. A lot of regular farmers specialize in a handful of crops, or in animals, or in trees. But mixing 50+ crops with animals and an orchard _and_ dealing with volunteers and a cooperatively owned farm: this is no piece of cake. So, for sure there will be mistakes.

However, I don't recognize this at all at my farm, even in the first year we had an abundant harvest and we are just getting started.

> Like with a lot of homesteading initiatives, the end goal often seems to be make money on rent and knowledge sharing and not creating a sustainable business based on produce. The same goes for Youtube channels of people promoting the lifestyle. Without ad money it's unsustainable..

This is just wrong. For starters, it is not a homesteading initiative! It is real farm on a medium scale, supplying about 500 to 700 people with fresh produce, meat, eggs, fruit and sometimes grains (but mostly grains aren't done). The difference with a 'normal' farm is that the farmer is paid a decent _wage_. The consumers are also the legal owners and bear the risk, not the farmer. There are no supermarket or other middle-men involved. We have a very direct connection with the farmer.

But most importantly, there is no end goal of making money. You can buy a stake in the farm to become co-owner, but the legal contract says you are not allowed to sell it at a profit. We are also forbidden from selling the food. Any surplus we have we give away to charity.

If we are done producing food to feed ourselves, we can relax, make the operation cheaper, or produce food for the wild animals or whatever. But we can't make money.

I can't stress this enough because this in my opinion is the most important innovation of herenboeren: we collectively fund the (ecological sound) production of our own food, which is the only goal. In fact we have legal precautions in place to block anyone who attempts to make money from this initiative. It is funded by the 500 to 700 owners and this is enough to pay the farmer a living wage, lease the land and run the farm. We just get food out of it, nothing more. This is it, very simple. In a sense, we have taken free market capitalism out of food production. Not completely of course, participants will leave if we don't deliver, but to an interesting degree.

> Overall my gut feeling is that initiatives like these will only result in glorified allotment gardens and it will never be able to achieve its goal of reinventing food production.

You are wrong on several assumptions and at least part of your conclusion as well. It is definitely a real farm, providing real food, to real people. There are now 18 in operation, feeding around 10000 people. There are dozens more in the process of being started. There are problems with the herenboeren concept, but you haven't touched on any in your criticism.

I think reinventing food production is too bold a claim, but it is real, it works and it is here.