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Short Abstract

The study offers insights from the arts-based citizen science project 'Farming Sugar, Cultivating Salt' in the Dutch coastal area. It explores how human actions of cultivation have altered relationships between land, water, and food consumers through sensory encounters around sugar beets.

Abstract

Soil salinization is an accelerating environmental challenge in Europe’s low-lying and coastal regions, undermining soil structure, microbial diversity, and crop yield. In the Netherlands, historical land reclamation and intensive agriculture have altered hydrological balances to the point where rising salinity now affects both crop viability and landscape identity. Yet beyond its biophysical impact, salinization is also a socio-cultural phenomenon—one that reshapes human–nature relationships and the meanings attached to land, water, and food.

This study presents insights from 'Farming Sugar, Cultivating Salt'- an arts-based public engagement research project that explores how individuals in the Dutch coastal zone engage with processes of salinization through participatory and sensory forms of inquiry. To explore complex relationship between humans and their coastal environment, the case study follows the encounter between two plants that have become each other's extremes through human actions of cultivation- the sea beet and the sugar beet. The study engages artists, farmers and consumers in a co-creative inquiry linking scientific research on regenerative agriculture with artistic practices. In this way ecological and cultural tensions between salinization processes, sweet waters, land and sea are questioned. The findings highlight how engaging with art and one’s senses in such public engagement encounters can deepen one’s understanding of and connection to a local landscape and its biodiversity, leading to more reflective and environmentally friendly agri-food futures.