> NL is 2nd-largest food exporter (in a bunch of markets) in the world, after US [1]. No it's not, it's a relatively tiny food producer with high yield rates p

> NL is 2nd-largest food exporter (in a bunch of markets) in the world, after US [1]. No it's not, it's a relatively tiny food producer with high yield rates per unit of area. Take their best yielding crop, tomatoes, they're not even in the top 10 producers worldwide. Uzbekistan produces more tomatoes than we do. We do have high yields, but that's mostly for food that are 96% water like tomatoes, as there's barely any solids to grow, you can just stack em in a greenhouse. Nothing too innovative going on there, in potatoes for example we're well below the number one in area-efficiency. And even the high yields in things like tomatoes or cucumbers isn't special in any way, it just optimises for area. The US has about 30 people per square kilometer, the Netherlands has over 400. Some countries don't have a priority for production density because they literally have 10-15x as much land. Besides, the vast majority of agricultural land is used for livestock anyway, if you take meat out of the equation, we could feed tens of billions of people easily. That's really where the problem lies, in meats. The source of all issues in production really lies with us, in our diets. You could spend less money if you ate better food as long as we all cut your meat consumption, and to get there we need to start pricing in all externalities because right now we a high price pay for shitty food we shouldn't eat through our taxes, and then overconsume by paying a low price in the supermarket after subsidising it with said taxes.