From the article: (By value, meaning that they sell relatively more expensive food, like meat, fruits and vegetables, rather than commodities like grain.) ... ... The pictures seem to be rather...
From the article:
[The Netherlands] has become the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States.
(By value, meaning that they sell relatively more expensive food, like meat, fruits and vegetables, rather than commodities like grain.)
The Netherlands produces 4 million cows, 13 million pigs and 104 million chickens annually and is Europe’s biggest meat exporter. But it also provides vegetables to much of Western Europe. The country has nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops growing in greenhouses. These greenhouses, with less fertilizer and water, can grow in a single acre what would take 10 acres of traditional dirt farming to achieve. Dutch farms use only a half-gallon of water to grow about a pound of tomatoes, while the global average is more than 28 gallons.
More than half of the land in the Netherlands is used for agriculture.
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Their centrality in global food exploration is indisputable: Fifteen out of the top 20 largest agrifood businesses — Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Cargill and Kraft Heinz — have major research and development centers in the Netherlands.
With their limited land and a rainy climate, the Dutch have become masters of efficiency. But there are challenges: The greenhouse industry has flourished in part because of cheap energy, but Western Europe is facing soaring gas prices. And the country’s intensive animal agricultural practices are also at risk. This summer, a conservative government coalition pledged to halve nitrogen emissions by 2030, which would necessitate a dramatic reduction in the number of animals raised in the country. Farmers and ranchers have protested, and it remains to be seen how this standoff will be resolved.
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Earlier this year PlantLab received 50 million euros (about $51.6 million) in investment capital to open more production sites outside the Netherlands to grow vegetables without pesticides or herbicides on a large scale very close to its consumers. The company’s goal is to expand more broadly in the United States, Asia and Latin America in the next five years, with the aim of having 250 acres of its vertical farms worldwide in the next 10 years.
PlantLab’s research and development center in Den Bosch is the largest such center for vertical farming in the world, and it uses limited light spectrum LEDs and plastic stacked production trays, and the plants grow in vermiculite with their roots in water. “Nothing is hand-harvested, nothing is touched by human hands,” Ockers said. The water is recirculated, meaning no water is lost in the growing process. For now, the system is most effective for growing leafy greens, herbs and tomatoes, but he said cucumbers, zucchinis and all types of berries are suited to this growing system. And by limiting the time between harvest and consumption, he said, food waste is minimized and nutrient density is much higher than traditionally grown crops.
The pictures seem to be rather horizontal-looking greenhouses with high-tech shelves. Still lots of natural light?
[Agro Care] was one of the first tomato growers to supplement natural light with artificial light and has grown into one of the largest tomato producers in Europe, producing nearly 200 million pounds a year, now with growing facilities in Morocco and Tunisia as well.
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The company’s significant achievement is changing the reputation of Dutch tomatoes — they’ve historically been known for hard, flavorless tomatoes harvested green. In 2000, Agro Care started with lights above the tomatoes and began harvesting them on the vine fully ripe. A quarter of the tomatoes stay in the Netherlands while the rest are shipped all over Europe.
Because of intensive electricity needs, Agro Care started its own small energy company. The carbon dioxide generated is used as a nutrient for the crop, piped into the greenhouses via huge ventilators, where it is turned into oxygen by the plants. The upshot is 99 percent efficiency and much less carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.
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Kipster is an egg company aimed at improving animal welfare, tackling food waste and producing certified carbon-neutral eggs. Farms incorporate natural light and fresh air, and chickens are free from cages to pursue their instincts and animal natures. And in a departure from the global practice of killing male chicks that are irrelevant in the egg-laying business, the males are kept and raised for meat.
Kipster chickens are fed entirely with food waste from supermarkets and food manufacturers, rather than with commodity grains. Thirty percent of the world’s grain production is for animal feed but “I’d rather use all arable land to produce cereals for people,” said managing director Ruud Zanders.
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In 2021, Dutch agricultural exports set a record, reaching 105 billion euros (about $108.4 billion), according to Wageningen Economic Research and Statistics Netherlands. This growth was attributable to higher prices and increased volume. Since 1995, the volume of Dutch crop and animal agricultural production has grown by 20 percent without significantly increasing natural gas consumption and with reduced fertilizer use.
I had the opportunity to visit the Netherlands last fall. We drove through and visited a lot of the countryside. They have an absolute massive agriculture industry. I was amazed.
I had the opportunity to visit the Netherlands last fall. We drove through and visited a lot of the countryside. They have an absolute massive agriculture industry. I was amazed.
When the Remkes report hit, everyone woke up. Agriculture was responsible for 80% of emissions of one form of nitrogen pollution, and the report pointed out that the largest share was coming from dairy farming. But dairy accounted for just 1% of GDP. Maybe, the logic went, cutting back on production wouldn’t be such a great sacrifice for the country.
This enraged farmers, who in many cases were already feeling mistreated. They had already reduced their nitrogen emissions by almost two-thirds since 1990, mainly through technical advances. Over the same period, government services in rural areas had been cut in favour of investment in cities. And for more than half a century, government policies had encouraged farms to expand, saddling farmers with debts; now they were being told to do the opposite. “A lot had the feeling that the government betrayed them,” Datema said.
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As strange as it sounds, the government’s failure to develop a workable political solution to the problem of excess nitrogen has shaken Dutch politics to its foundations. In the Netherlands, it is known simply as the stikstofcrisis, the nitrogen crisis. An environmental reform that, at first glance, seemed to affect only a small proportion of Dutch society has somehow become not only wildly controversial in its own right, but embroiled in a web of related and unrelated issues, grievances and conspiracy theories. In 2019, Prime Minister Mark Rutte called it the “fiercest crisis” he had faced as leader, and improbably, it has attracted attention around the world. In the summer of 2022, Donald Trump gave a speech in which he celebrated the Dutch farmers for “courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government”. The US rightwing website Breitbart praised the farmers’ resistance against a “green agenda”, and demonstrators in Canada, angry at Covid travel restrictions, waved Dutch flags.
In the Netherlands, far-right groups have seized on the chaos, using the issue to push their own agendas, and two new right-leaning parties (though holding, in a manner peculiar to Dutch politics, leftish elements) – the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (known by its Dutch initials, BBB) and the centrist New Social Contract – are now polling well in rural areas. Political discontent that coalesced around the nitrogen issue may well determine the outcome of the general election, which takes place on 22 November.
From the article:
(By value, meaning that they sell relatively more expensive food, like meat, fruits and vegetables, rather than commodities like grain.)
...
...
The pictures seem to be rather horizontal-looking greenhouses with high-tech shelves. Still lots of natural light?
...
...
...
I had the opportunity to visit the Netherlands last fall. We drove through and visited a lot of the countryside. They have an absolute massive agriculture industry. I was amazed.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/ipur2
Meanwhile:
Nitrogen wars: the Dutch farmers’ revolt that turned a nation upside-down (The Guardian)
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