Gluten-free and insect-friendly: buckwheat returns to Dutch farms

A project to revive the crop, once grown across the Netherlands, is boosting pollinators and a renewed interest in the seed

Organic farmer Kees Sijbenga looks at the sea of white and pale pink blossoms before him. It is mid-July and millions of tiny buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) flowers sway in the wind on the plot he is cultivating in the Dutch province of Drenthe. Sijbenga is delighted that the crop is buzzing with a multitude of insect pollinators. I'm so happy to be growing buckwheat," says the third-generation farmer.

Sijbenga is one of 23 farmers in the provinces of Groningen and Drenthe in the north-east of the Netherlands who are part of an ambitious, nature-inclusive agricultural project to re-establish buckwheat farming in the country.