One of the most important aspects in life is good health. Indeed, research over the past twenty years concludes that the majority of people consider good health the most important thing in life. (See for example the Social and Cultural Planning Agency’s report, ‘The social state of the Netherlands, 2005’.) Several public surveys suggest that health will remain high on the list of important social issues in the coming decades, alongside income, education, safety and security, etc. Although our expectations with regard to the quality of life are now higher than ever before (and are likely to become even more so), we must not lose sight of the importance of good health. Quite the reverse.

There are many aspects to ‘good health’. The term can refer to physical health and to mental health. It can refer to the health of the individual or that of society as a whole, in the sense of the quality of interpersonal relationships in various social contexts. It can refer to objective, measurable indicators of health, or to the manner in which people perceive health.

Further improvement of health, in all its many manifestations, is therefore an important social objective. But what has this to do with the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV)? Why should InnovationNetwork become involved? To ask this question is to answer it.
Of the many factors which can influence health, several are directly related to ‘agriculture and greenery’. There are, for example, clear links between nutrition and health. We can think of food allergies, overweight, food-borne illnesses, health-promoting foodstuffs and eating habits, for example. There is the sheer pleasure, the sense of wellbeing, that a good meal can provide. There are also clear relationships between health and nature. Our health and sense of wellbeing are derived from the way in which we interact with natural processes. Just looking at an attractive landscape or a row of trees has a beneficial psychological effect.

In various projects conducted over the past five years, InnovationNetwork has attempted to develop innovative concepts which are based on these direct relationships, partly with a view to contributing to social health. Two very different examples are the ‘Gustation Lessons’ and ‘New Villages’ projects. However, it is impossible to quantify the contribution that such concepts can make to the aim of improving health, since health itself is intangible and often outside our direct sphere of influence. The capacity to bring about change through individual projects addressing agriculture and greenery is therefore, by definition, limited. A link with other domains is required.

In this theme, we therefore intend to take an entirely different approach. We shall seek cooperation with parties who are already far more involved in the field of social health than we are, and we shall listen to what they consider to be the most important innovation challenges. We shall then join them in arriving at new innovation concepts. The question that InnovationNetwork will try to answer is, “If breakthroughs in health (in the wider sense) are the primary objective, what radical changes are required on the part of the various actors, and in the way in which the domains of agriculture and nature management operate?’ Must we take a radically different view of nature, the countryside, agricultural production and nutrition in general?

One important starting point for any sustainable improvement in health is lifestyle and social situation. The ongoing intensification of daily life is surely a cause for concern. The combination of rising prosperity, increasing availability and use of new technologies, and demanding lifestyles is pushing society to the very borderline of health, in both the physical and the social sense. The phenomena of obesity and food allergies, the decline in social cohesion and the growing distance between culture and nature are all resultant characteristics of our social system, and of the lifestyles we have chosen to adopt. Those lifestyles often make it extremely difficult to make the ‘healthy’ choice as a matter of course.

The challenge here is to make the long-term perspective of the ‘healthy society’ the focal point of the choices that people make every day – choices in diet, in the way they choose to spend their time, in the way they accept responsibility for their own environment, their interaction with nature, and their call on care services. We believe that the best approach will be one which addresses the way in which people perceive and experience their lives and the world around them. For example, should nature which has been ‘designed’ from the perspective of a healthy society be fundamentally different to that which is based on ecological principles?

The prime mover responsible for the administrative aspects of this theme is A.H.A. Veenhof.

The issues to be addressed within this theme are very much sociological. Accordingly, the direct relevance to the standard domains of InnovationNetwork is, as stated above, not always immediately obvious. The first undertaking will be to establish that relevance and to explore the contribution which InnovationNetwork can make alongside partners active in other domains. The second task will be to arrive at new avenues of approach, again in cooperation with other parties. A potential pitfall here is that it may provide difficult to look beyond the familiar concepts which have already emerged within our own domain, such as the ‘care farm’. Nevertheless, it is already possible to make firm statements regarding the innovation challenges in this theme, and about the potential role of agriculture and nature management.

Four dimensions of the healthy society which appear to be relevant are physical, mental, social and moral health. We have therefore arranged the innovation challenges according to these four dimensions, which may provide a starting point for the development of radical new concepts.