MEET THE Farmers

2026 Farmers

Yoshy 
Farmer @ Pluk! @ Fruittuin

As a young girl, Yoshy always dreamed of having a farm. After working in restaurants for several years, she decided it was time for something different and enrolled at Warmonderhof to learn more about organic farming.During her studies she completed internships at Fruittuin and Pluk Boterbloem, experiences she loved—especially being outdoors and witnessing every stage of growing vegetables. In 2024 she was invited to join Pluk Fruittuin as a farmer and happily became part of the Pluk family.Yoshy hopes that harvesters at Pluk enjoy the wide variety of vegetables the garden offers and that coming to harvest becomes a moment in the week they truly look forward to.

Ida 
Farmer @ Pluk! @ Fruittuin

Ida Simonsen is a farmer at Pluk! Fruittuin, environmental justice activist and coordinator at Toekomstboeren. She loves (re-)connecting people to soils, and is primarily active at the intersection of agroecology, human rights and food system transformation with a focus on democratisation and food sovereignty. Ida holds a Masters degree in human rights and humanitarian action with a focus on social movements and food systems, and was educated in biodynamic farming at Warmonderhof. She has been working in organic community-supported urban agriculture, radical grassroots organising and multilateral negotiations on biodiversity and food governance for a few years.

Gen
Farmer @ Pluk! @ Fruittuin

After a long career in contemporary arts, Genevieve made the leap to join the PLUK farming team in 2022. Finding ways to access better food production from within Amsterdam was what led her to enroll in one of Ann Doherty’s inspiring urban growing workshops via Cityplot. Having a deeper understanding of the nourishing world at our feet, fast became a passion, and after several years of involvement in local green projects, she began co-managing Pluk! Aside from this, Gen (& Edu) are the authors and teachers of ‘New Roots in Amsterdam - A beginners guide to small scale farming’ - course, and occasionally helps guide other urban farming projects such as at Stadsboerderij Osdorp and Cityplot.

Ilaria
Farmer at Pluk! @ Fruittuin

Ilaria’s calling for farming started while volunteering for a food saving initiative during her studies in Maastricht. Confronted with the massive amounts of food that go to waste every day, she realized that there is something wrong with our food system and decided that she wanted to do something about it.

After a WWOOFing experience in Denmark, Ilaria moved to Amsterdam for a master’s in Social Sciences. During the master, Ilaria focused on Mexican small-holder coffee farmers’ experiences, thereby approaching the farming world from a more theoretical perspective. At the same time, she found the Pluk! CSA at the Fruittuin van West, where she first started volunteering, then did an internship, and now works as a farmer!

Ilaria is very excited to be involved in the Pluk! project and wants to continue exploring ways to build community-oriented, sustainable food production systems, from both a practical and theoretical perspective. 

Internships

We have an incredible and dedicated team of interns at Pluk. If you would like to intern with us, get in touch!

Farmers over the years

Ann - Pluk co-founder
2017-2022
Ann is an urban farmer, educator, beekeeper and worm composter working within the Cityplot collective. She studied urban agriculture at the University of Guelph and at Warmonderhof in the Netherlands, and has a Permaculture Design Certificate from Linder van den Heerik. She was the communications coordinator for the global environmental federation Friends of the Earth International for 16 years before she decided to take the leap into urban agriculture in 2011. In 2017, she co-initiated Pluk!, and worked there until the end of 2022 when she took over the coordination of the Stadsboerderij Osdorp garden. Originally from New England, she has lived and gardened in Amsterdam for three decades.
Contact Ann: ann@cityplot.org

Annie
2019-2021
It was 2015 in India, whilst doing research for her Master’s in Cultural Anthropology that Annie realized she wanted to become a farmer. Looking into how people were protecting their food sovereignty through organic farming practices, she realized that more than research we need people who know how to grow organic food! Since then she has worked on organic farms in the UK and the Netherlands. Arriving into Amsterdam in the summer of 2018 she immediately started volunteering with Pluk! CSA, and went on to become one of the farmers for 3 years here. Pluk! has changed so many people’s lives, and she feels so honoured and grateful to have been part of this incredible community of farmers, harvesters, volunteers, interns and soil life!

Irma
2022
After studying anthropology and working in the social field, Irma’s first encounter with organic agriculture and agroecology was at a CSA in Brazil, and there experienced how the answers to the many problems in the world that we are facing lay right there, in our soil, our food and community building. Already working with food and marginalised people, she then started working with small scale farmers and accessibility of organic regional food. During Covid and back in the Netherlands, it was a good opportunity to start Warmonderhof to learn more about agriculture in the practical sense. With farming, Irma is exploring how we can repair and rebuild our relationship with the land through working with it, and how we can strengthen the position of farmers. She is active in Toekomstboeren and the Agroecology Network.

Hieke
2022-2023
Hieke loved working at Pluk!; it is a privilege to be able to work outside, hair in the wind and with the company of birds, butterflies and insects. By growing organically, she wants to contribute to more biodiversity, a healthier soil and fresh air and she can give people in the city the opportunity to choose vegetables that do not harm the planet. Building communities is very important to her; together with farmer-colleagues, interns, volunteers, harvesters and visitors, she tries to make every day on the land a special one! If you meet Hieke during weeding, sowing, planting or crop care, you can always start a conversation about sustainability, the weather, the state of the world and life in general.

Edu
Farmer @ Pluk! @ Fruittuin
Coming from the Catalan countryside from a small-farm family background, Edu studied Environmental Science in Barcelona and has been involved for a long time in community urban gardens and local activist grassroots movements. Edu moved to Amsterdam three years ago and he has been working on different projects such as Greenpeace International and the Knotwilg Organic Farm. Currently he combines the work at Pluk! with a part-time position at ASEED developing a coordination role campaigning against industrial agriculture.

Ilyanna
Farmer at Pluk! @ Fruittuin
Ilyanna first started her journey into growing food in her late teens as a London allotment holder and has since become more involved in community growing projects as she began to see how transformative local, organic, and bio-diverse food can be for the health of communities and the planet. Ilyanna farms part-time at Pluk and spends the rest of her time working as an
independent illustrator.