What is the right water level for the dairy grasslands?

This research project observes and unpacks water excesses and insufficiencies from the vantage point of the dairy grasslands - and the farming community which tends to them - along the tidal Scheldt in Flanders. Climate change is predicted to increase these water excesses and insufficiencies in years to come. The grasslands I research are located on the edge of a delta and therefore are known and interacted with at the interplay between continuously shifting lands and flows of waters. This deltaic context is anything but constant, entails particular hydrosocial dynamics and embeds the grasslands in “multi-scalar rhythms” (Krause, 2017, Krause and Harris, 2022). Following the last five years of severe droughts, the question of water retention in the dairy grasslands has become very important for diverse local stakeholders. However this contrasts and enters in tension with the local culture which is – or was until recently – one of heavy drainage to serve the spreading of agriculture and urbanization in the face of the last thousand of years of water excess. The dairy grasslands are produced and re-imagined through everyday negotiations between dairy farmers, environmental agencies and water management policies. In particular, the question of the ‘correct’ water level as well as the ‘correct’ means to maintain this water level is constantly negotiated, often with a lot of uneasy tensions. This research is undertaken through long-term participant observation and interviews with the dairy farmers as well as though ad-hoc participant observation and interviews with locally elected waterboards and environmental agencies. The perspective of the farmers in this area is one that has not been given much attention to up to now