5/21/25 Today, we had the pleasure of touring Dakakker, a facility with over 1,000 square meters of green roof space. This space includes a vegetable farm, bee hives, and a chicken coop. This space is extremely sustainable in many ways. To begin, producing local produce and animal product is inherently more sustainable. The roof top…
Tag: Plus3 The Netherlands
The Netherlands
Ranch & Research
5/22/25 Today, we had the opportunity to tour the floating farm which (as one may guess) is a farm that is floating on the water. As with any farm, the floating farm had to consider a path to make themselves a sustainable place. One stride they make towards sustainability is utilizing food that would otherwise…
See you next time Netherlands! Day 12 in Rotterdam
Today we had our last day in Rotterdam, and more importantly The Netherlands, before leaving tomorrow morning. We started out by visiting a floating farm that was founded in order to find a better solution to feeding the community while combatting climate change. Extreme temperatures and rain events are becoming more common, which makes farming…
05/22 – Floating Farm & RDM Rotterdam
Today was a really nice way to wrap up our trip–we toured the Floating Farm, which was the company I presented on during our pre-departure meetings, so I was excited to see it in person, and we also toured RDM Rotterdam. These visits were both very informational and inspiring to see the plethora of ways…
Day 12: Sea the Future of Farming
Our final day started with an exciting visit to the Floating Farm. We first started with a quick presentation that went over the Floating Farms entire premise and promoted its sustainable efforets. Our presentator explained that the Floating Farm is a small farm that is in the water supported by a platform that moves with…
One Last Day (Day 12)
All good things must come to an end, and this stood true on Day 12–our last day in the Netherlands before departing back to Pittsburgh. Today was a day filled with lessons on sustainability, but also a bittersweet goodbye to this experience that I have cherished. In the morning, we visited the Rotterdam Floating Farm,…
Floating Farms and Innovative Designs (5/22)
We solemnly started our last day, waking up early and prepared for a lot of morning tours. Our first destination for the day was the Floating Farm, an innovative dairy farm design aimed at transitioning to a greener alternative for dairy farming through the reduction of many high-carbon emitting processes. One of the ways the…
Day 11: From Rain to Rooftops
Day 11 brought us a cloudy day and even better a nice laid back day with some amazing experts that gave us tours and a lot of sustainability knowledge. After a quick breakfast, we started with a walking tour focused on sustainable architecture and water management in Rotterdam. Our guide, Rob, showed us how the…
Day 10: Dam, thats Impressive!
Today’s visit to the Delta Works was by far one of the coolest experiences of the trip from an engineering perspective. We began at the visitors center, where we watched a short film that gave us an overview of how and why the Delta Works came to be. The system was built in response to…
Cowabunga! A Floating Farm!
Today was Day 12, and our last day of programming in the Netherlands. To begin our day, we met at 10:10am and took a tram to the Floating Farm. The Floating Farm is a dairy farm that houses 26 cows and floats on water. It is a private project created by two Netherlands locals. They…
RD-Making Our Final Stops In The Netherlands!
Day 12 was quite entertaining and a bittersweet end to our educational experience in the Netherlands! After I munched on an apple for breakfast, our day started with a laid-back 10:10am walk to Rotterdam Centraal from where we took a tram to get to the Floating Farm. The Floating Farm is quite literally a farm…
It’s Over Already?!: Day 12
Today was our last day here in The Netherlands. We started off by visiting our final two companies: Floating Farm and RDM. The Floating Farm is a barge on water that is three levels that are a cowshed, production of products, and a basement for vegetable growing. We had a briefing and the is the…
Coming Full Circle
We had a late start today, so I escaped the hotel breakfast in exchange for some local bagels. Afterwards, we headed to the tram station to visit a floating farm. This farm is located about 10 minutes from central Rotterdam. It is home to a herd of 26 cows, who live on a structure floating…
My Final Day of Sightsneezing
It’s day 12, and our trip is sadly coming to a close! Unfortunately I’ve had a bit of a cold for the past couple of days, hence the title. We had a late start today and headed out around 10 AM to take a tram to Merwehaven, a port in Rotterdam by the river Maas….
Day 12: Moo-ving out
Our final day brought us lots of fun and meaningful experiences. We began at the Floating Farm, the first and only floating farm in the world! Upon arrival, we attend a presentation on the global challenges our planet is facing and how the Floating Farm is trying to combat them. With a population of over…
Goodbye Netherlands!
Today was our final day in Rotterdam and of our Netherlands Plus 3 adventure! For our last day, we started off the day by visiting Floating Farms and their floating cow and vegetable farms in one of Rotterdam’s port harbors. We learned about how Floating Farm, a volunteer-run group funded by private environmental investors, is…
Exploring Rotterdam (Day 11)
As we approached the end of our trip to the Netherlands, we spent Day 11 exploring the history of Rotterdam’s architecture and how it is being used to make the city safer and more sustainable. Rotterdam is noticeably much more modern than the city of Amsterdam due to the bombings that occurred during WWII. These…
Floating Cows and Farewells
Today was our twelfth and final full day in the Netherlands, and it began at 9. I enjoyed some strawberry yogurt, sliced meat and cheese, a boiled egg, and hot chocolate for breakfast. After breakfast, we took a tram to visit a floating farm. The farm we visited was the first and only floating farm…
Day 10: Why Yes, the Delta Does Work
Today, we visited the Deltaworks, which is a group of dikes, dams, and storm surge barriers throughout the Netherlands (specifically the southwest island-filled region) that began construction after the devastating flood in 1953. The idea behind Deltaworks is to limit the amount of water that enters Dutch lakes from the North Sea, while not disturbing…
Day 11: Sustainable Measures through Rotterdam
Wow, I can’t believe it is our second-to-last day here in the Netherlands! Time has definitely gone by quickly. Today, we set off at around 9 am to head over to DakAkker, a green roof in the middle of Rotterdam. Once we got there, we met our tour guide, Rob, who would show us some…