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Netherlands is the second-largest exporter of agricultural products

109 points by sambeau 4y ago

badcppdev 4y ago
Clickbait spoiler: It's the Netherlands Here's a randomly picked alternative article that isn't locked behind a Pay wall: https://dutchreview.com/culture/innovation/second-largest-agriculture-exporter/ https://dutchreview.com/culture/innovation/second-largest-ag...
- gpderetta 4y ago
  Thanks! The title should be updated to avoid the clickbait.
- Aachen 4y ago
  Guessed it! Wasn't sure whether the Netherlands is small enough to be called tiny, there's plenty of places smaller and so obscure that there's indeed little point mentioning it in the title, but it was the only place I know of that indeed has a surprising food surplus given the very high population density across most of the available space. You basically can't get lost, no matter where you are: walk 500 meters in any direction and you'll find at minimum a path to walk along if not having cleared any forest already; another 10 minutes and you'll likely have met your first passerby (daytime) or sighted your first building.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
I think the article paints this as a multi-factor contribution to the yields in the Netherlands. But all the high-tech examples are marginal volume wise. The major factors in the success of the Netherlands is: - Insanely fertile clay soil - Careful water management - Large square footage of greenhouses, Everything else in the article is kind of vapourware.
- emrvb 4y ago
  I'm from the Netherlands and I must agree. The entire article reads as a sponsored item.
  - radicalbyte 4y ago
    We have the top agri/bio university in the world here too which I assume is a massive plus and an area which is basically Silicon Valley for agri/bio tech (where I live).
    - brodouevencode 4y ago
      What's the name of this university?
      - Jasp3r 4y ago
        Wageningen University
  - brodouevencode 4y ago
    Maybe a sponsored mea culpa for the protests? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netherlands-buy-farmers-amid-pushback-162708037.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netherlands-buy-farmers-amid-...
    - emrvb 4y ago
      The protests are coming from individual farmers, the article is a feel good story about large(r) companies profiting from those farmers.
      - Maarten88 4y ago
        Those same large agri companies are working behind the scenes to stir up the farmer protests, hiding behind likable small family farmers. See some recent TV commercials to positively frame farmers' image. But many of those farmers are not a small family business anymore, they are very profitable businesses and the owners want to continue making those profits, increasing emissions which are already too high for our very small country.
- usrusr 4y ago
  Import of (fossil based) fertilizer and of animal feed that's converted into another form of imported fertilizer by the primary use aren't major factors?
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    No in the sense that they are not diferentiating factors, i.e. everybody else is also doing that and yet don't have surplus of food.
    - usrusr 4y ago
      Chances are they are, per capita, importing a lot more than others (haven't looked it up but I'd be surprised if they didn't, happily surprised that is), and if that's the case, "others do it too" (but less of it) doesn't rule out that the nl food surplus is more a form of processing (of other countries agricultural output) than of domestic production, that just hides behind the different classification of imports and exports (one isn't food, the other is). How much agricultural surplus would there still be if they were isolated for a few years?
      - dtech 4y ago
        This is easily researched [1]. While NL exports inflated due to having a large port with a lot of imports, they are still a large net exporter compared to size. [1] https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2022/03/agricultural-exports-exceeded-100-billion-euros-in-2021 https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2022/03/agricultural-exports-e.... In monetary values, 28% is re-exports and 72% is exports.
        usrusr 4y ago
        Easily researched? Imports and exports are usually compared in terms of € or USD and sure, if you process feed into meat you will make a surplus or you wouldn't do it. But for agriculture, a more fitting unit would be the nitrogen involved, and I'm pretty sure that imports greatly outweigh what's exported in food.
- chaoz_ 4y ago
  No, it's square meterage
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  I have a few issues with this pro Netherlands agriculture piece: 1. Vegetables grown in the Netherlands tend to taste very bland in my experience (personal taste), tough I can't complain for the price as they're usually the cheapest option in local supermarkets. If you want great tasting organic veggies you get them at the farmers market which has higher prices than the supermarkets and is only open on certain times of the day/week making convenience an issue as well. 2. The conditions I witnessed in which animals are farmed in the Netherlands are appalling. The amount of diseased animals (infected bloody wounds and swollen limbs from puss), overpacked in their own feces, will turn anyone vegetarian. To be fair, the Netherlands is not alone here but in general, then animal conditions I witnessed in places like Germany, Austria or Switzerland were on average better than in the Netherlands. Disclaimer: I work in tech for the farming industry
  - emrvb 4y ago
    1. The good stuff is for export. 2. Would you reckon your experience applies to the average animal farm in the Netherlands or does it apply to the farms where your tech gets applied?
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      1. It was the stuff for export (I'm not based in the Netherlands) 2. My anecdotal evidence is restricted only to the farms I visited which in my opinion tend to represent the typical/average medium to large scale farms catering to the usual meat suppliers you'll find in local supermarket or big butcher/meat chains regardless of country.
      - emrvb 4y ago
        1. I guess we're overproducing the bland stuff then. 2. Fair enough. My own anecdotal evidence hasn't been that bad. But then again, I haven't seen an industrialized pigpen yet.
  - someotherperson 4y ago
    > Vegetables grown in the Netherlands tend to taste very bland in my experience (personal taste) I see this raised often. It's almost exclusively because the cultivars used are specifically chosen for yield and hardiness in transport and storage. The "organic" stuff grown in a farm 20km away and only needs to be transported for half an hour, on the other hand, are just cultivars that can be selected for reasons other than hardiness. This type of cultivar can also be mass-produced although it becomes a lot more expensive for the producer and the customer.
- Jasp3r 4y ago
  Do you have some data to backup this bold claim?
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    Does the Washigton post have any data at all about how robotic arms or seed design are driving the farming yields in the Netherlands?
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  But it’s almost certain they don’t use the clay soil in the greenhouses, right? You almost always grow in soilless medium or hydroponics in greenhouses.
- bergenty 4y ago
  I’ve never heard of clay soil being referred to as fertile. What exactly grows in clay soil? Generally vegetables don’t grow in clay soil, neither do a lot of fruit trees.
- shellfishgene 4y ago
  Also it's second largest exporter by value, not by calories. So they are not exactly "feeding the world".
davidhunter 4y ago
We are deploying Dutch greenhouses in the US and have deep roots in the Netherlands - AMA
- Aachen 4y ago
  Just to check my understanding: a greenhouse, to me, is a structure that keeps in heat from irradiation by the sun and lets crops grow year-round. What's a "Dutch greenhouse" specifically, what makes it different?
  - davidhunter 4y ago
    Yes your definition of a greenhouse is correct! By "Dutch greenhouse", I meant industrial-scale glass greenhouses [1] that have evolved in the Netherlands over the last 70 years and, more recently, have been built in other countries primarily by Dutch greenhouse construction companies. These greenhouses are 20+Ac in footprint (similar in footprint to a Tesla Gigafactory) and have a wide variety of actuation - heating, cooling, lighting systems etc. [1] https://havecon.com/en/projects https://havecon.com/en/projects
    - carlsborg 4y ago
      What is the ballpark energy consumption in KwH for one of those units?
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  Do puns grow like weeds in them?
- mythrwy 4y ago
  1) Where in the US will these be deployed? 2) What will you grow (produce probably?) 3) If produce is to be grown, how will it be price competitive with field grown produce from the US and Mexico? Will it be "specialty"?
  - davidhunter 4y ago
college_physics 4y ago
The interesting bit is this: > 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. Overly intense exploitation of the environment, whether in agriculture or other domains can easily reach unsustainable levels. Technology, being an entirely human invented category does not have sustainability built-in. To the degree that we have actually become dependent on such artificial intensity the outcome can be catastrophic.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  For what it's worth, nature doesn't have sustainability built in either.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    This doesn't really make sense - nature is, almost by definition, what's been sustained so far on this planet. It has a number of homeostatic feedback mechanisms. It tends to "enforce" stability by die-offs; species that overconsume their food have population crashes. What is normally meant by "sustainability" in a human context is avoiding that overshoot and dieoff..
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      So you agree? The population boom and bust cycle is exactly how nature functions in almost all cases. Life attempts to expand as much as possible consuming all available resources and the only limit is exhaustion of those resources or being consumed by other life. Humanity is the only example of a living organism that is aware of this and attempts to mitigate it by finding more efficient ways to use those resources or developing new ones. That is the point I was trying to make, I was refuting the other commenter's argument from nature that technology is not natural because it doesn't have sustainability built in. They have it backwards, nature is un-directed and un-aware and is therefore unable to find solutions to resource depletion. Humanity is aware and capable of changing their behavior and their environment and is therefore capable of efficiently using existing resources and finding and developing new ones.
sfusato 4y ago
The Netherlands might be a small country, but it's the second-largest exporter of agriculture in the world, after the United States.
crote 4y ago
Dutch farming is incredibly dense, but that's not the same as good. For example, emission of ammonia, nitrogen, and phosphorus is through the roof, and pesticides aren't far behind. This kind of farming is wreaking havoc on the environment. And that's not even mentioning the massive deforestation due to imported soy, CO2 emissions for fertilizer production, and greenhouse energy use. This kind of farming is simply not sustainable, and it will need to be scaled down in the near future.
lnsru 4y ago
Lots of tasteless stuff. Looks like food, but no smell, nor taste. Probably better than nothing at all, but not comparable to a real deal bought locally from farmers in neighbor countries.
- Maximus9000 4y ago
  Is that a defect that can be solved through more science? tweaking the light and nutrients?
wunderBar84 4y ago
Also this tiny little country is in the midst of a major environmental crisis caused by overproduction of nitrogen thanks to its highly industrialised farming practices (mainly from livestock): https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-packed-livestock-operations-has-paralyzed-dutch-economy https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-...
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  As a Dutch person, I think we have a bigger problem and that is that the majority of higher educational people don't understand this. This whole article explains it better, than what I have heard.
meindnoch 4y ago
If you factor in the industry and acrage required to produce the massive amounts of fertilizer and animal feed they import, then their agricultural operation is not so tiny, nor green anymore.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Food is a bad industry to get into: * You're competing with 101 nations that subsidize their exports for political reasons * You probably also have to subsidize exports, so it's a loss maker over all * You're open to very erratic prices as freak weather (at home or abroad) drive supply around. Plus fashion and arbitrary changes to tariffs and other factors. Your inputs (fertilizer made from petroleum) fluctuate in price a lot too * In the medium term nothing you're growing will remain viable as climate change bites * The work is low skill, dangerous, boring and isolated leading to major issues in the community * Pollution is high both generally and locally Stick to financial services where you can employ a lot of people, pay them well, actually make money, keep them in efficient low pollution cities and live a boring prosperous life like the swiss
- bell-cot 4y ago
  All true, to various degrees. OTOH, if $Sudden_Unexpected_Events make it very difficult to import enough food to keep your own population decently fed... "Keep the Nation Secure" is a pretty basic & important function of a national government, no?
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    Trying to keep a population fed vs trying to profit in the international food market are two very different things. I bet to keep a minimum level of food always available in case of black swans you don't need to grow food the way the Netherlands do.
unglaublich 4y ago
Cutting edge tech has nothing to do with it. Post-WW2 Netherlands invested heavily in super dense fertilizer heavy farming and dedicated 80% of its surface area to farming. And now it is bringing the country to a stop. Pollinators died due to pesticide over-use. Natural diversity vanished because all land is consumed by mono-crops and the emissions of farming are so high that construction work has been halted as well, during a housing crisis. This is NOT the future of food production!
- badpun 4y ago
  > the emissions of farming are so high that construction work has been halted as well Can you elaborate? What emissions and why they've stopped construction work? EDIT: Nevermind, I found the Science article explaining it: https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-packed-livestock-operations-has-paralyzed-dutch-economy https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-...
neals 4y ago
And the next step for this tiny country might be even more interesting. I'm talking robotics developed for a better mixture of nature and farming. Think pixel farming, automated agroforestry and hydroponics. I've been fundraising in this field and some of the POC's I've been showed are really next level.
myshpa 4y ago
The level of robotic tech in vegetable production is admirable. But this has caught my eye: > Forty-three percent of the Soy imported from Brazil is destined for Dutch livestock feed. "The fastest growing export markets for Soybeans of Brazil between 2019 and 2020 were Netherlands ($494M), China ($457M), and Thailand ($317M)." [0] Funny how most vulnerable countries threatened by climate (rising seas) are among the ones doing most of the damage (brazilian soy is linked to the deforestation of Amazon)[1] for something we don't really need (animal agriculture)[2]. [0] https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/soybeans/reporter/bra https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/soybeans/repo... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy [2] https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/ https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/
- Lutger 4y ago
  Another interesting fact: the grain deal between Ukraine and Russia that was supposed to alleviate hunger in the poorest of African countries led to the import of almost 800K ton of grains to the Netherlands. Some of it for further distribution within Europe, and most of it to feed livestock. And the African countries who suffer crop failures due to intense floods? They depend on the grains imports to even survive, but all combined they imported about half of what the Netherlands imported. Europe is so filthy rich we outbid those poor countries, just so we can feed our livestock to make hamburgers, and now the Europeans get 6 million tons of grain from the Ukraine deal. The poor African countries get a mere 400k tons. That is wild to me. A perfect illustration of how messed up our food system and trade is.
  - Animatronio 4y ago
    I'll just leave this here, in the hope that someone more knowledgeable than me clarifies this matter: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/09/putin-says-nearly-all-ukraines-grain-has-gone-to-the-eu-is-he-right https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/09/putin-says-nea...
    - fruit2020 4y ago
      What the person above said is true, it was even on dutch tv
Lutger 4y ago
Dutch agriculture is completely broken, and these kinds of marketing pieces don't help putting it together again. No, we don't produce more than enough food to feed all our people, because importing stuff is often still cheaper (which is what we care about the most) and we want a lot of stuff we can't easily grow. In fact, we only produce about a third of the food we eat ourselves, and we can't even do that without a lot of outside inputs. Yes, we export a lot of stuff. So what? It has a huge price on so many levels, it is not benefitting the Dutch that much, if at all. To name but a few: The fossil fuels used for heating greenhouse, powering machines, producing fertilizer, transport, etc are causing dangerous climate change, and will only get more and more expensive in the future. The toxins from the pesticides we use to kill everything we don't want, transform our pastures and what used to be fertile woodlands, into green deserts void of life. Stacking together they cause a not always well understood harm to the consumers of our produce, to the inhabitants next to the production sites and especially the producers of it who are famously dying in their sixties a little too often to be coincidental. Famous for our water management, we are intent of lowering the ground water level so that the heavy machines of industrial scale agriculture can ride on the land. This is disastrous for our ecosystems and makes us drought prone, it also sinks our land even further below sea level. I'm not even talking about how vulnerable to disease monoculture is, how it is not supporting biodiversity at all and how all this dairy and meat production could be so much more efficient if these calories were plant based. I'm also thinking about the brutal animal suffering caused by the industrial production of meat, which is inhuman even if the rules would be followed - which isn't the case. Agriculture is a big contributor to air pollution, which is proven to cause more than half a million deaths in Europe each year. We could furthermore discuss how animal production is a breeding ground for new viruses to develop, and how it drives antibiotics resistence. Dutch agriculture is not healthy at all, not for animals and not for humans. Especially not for the farmers. I'm concerned about the pollution of nitrogen deposits which are by far the most extreme in the Netherlands when looking at Europe, causing ecosystem collapse and species extinction, and which politics has managed to completely ignore, terrified of the disproportionately large political power of its agricultural industry. This is upto the point where the highest judicial body has ruled many permits void. Not only for farming, but many housing projects have been stalled because of this, amidst a housing crisis which caused intense shortage of homes and have driven up the prices in crazy ways. We are not happy. I don't love our agriculture, which takes up a whopping two thirds of our land by the way - not 50% (that number includes water which doesn't make sense), and more than 70 percent of it is not for domestic use. The profits of this 70% disappear mostly in the pockets of big agricultural firms, the average citizen isn't seeing much of its benefits. In any case, they are not used to pay the often exploited immigrants and seasonal labor from eastern Europe a decent wage and living condition. But, the average citizen is asked to cough up taxes used to subsidize agriculture, and bear the cost of destroying our ecosystem, climate, housing market, health and countryside. If anything, agriculture in the Netherlands is a great example of what _not_ to do, especially because it is such a commercial and corporate marketing success. I haven't even mentioned how it drives the divisive politics of extremism. Arguably, we have had our own 6th of January in the often violent rebellions of farmers, sponsored and supported by Big Agro firms, rooted in conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism resisting solving any of the problems I mentioned above by flat out denial and intimidation. And this continues to be a big threat in the years to come, according to our intelligence agency and national coordinator on terrorism. I hate our agriculture.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
but really, "cutting-edge tech made the netherlands a major exporter of food". why the clickbaiting?
robbie-c 4y ago
The animals section of this is extremely grim. I appreciate that it's probably better than what happens in a lot of places, but the industrial scale slaughter of pigs is something I find extremely morally objectionable that most people seem to be indifferent to. "Vion uses artificial intelligence to detect and flag signs of animal cruelty and to minimize animal stress." oh come on now
svilen_dobrev 4y ago
tomatoes from Netherlands? hah. Even tenis-balls may taste better
- shellfishgene 4y ago
  Try the "Tasty Tom" variety.
latchkey 4y ago
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. Many many years ago, I grew a special plant in a secret room under a house that also had an indoor pool. The pool was heated with a natural gas heater. I directed the flow of the the vent pipe into the grow room. The effect it had on growth was nothing short of amazing. I'd see several inches of growth in a day when the heater was going full blast.
LaGrange 4y ago
The technical innovations are: - measuring food export in Euros, - selling your food to Germany.
durnygbur 4y ago
I call their products porn fruits and porn vegetables. Uniform in size and perfect in appearance and color. Not a trace of soil. Taste and smell like porn watched on the screen.
aaron695 4y ago

109 points by sambeau 4y ago

Clickbait spoiler: It's the Netherlands Here's a randomly picked alternative article that isn't locked behind a Pay wall: https://dutchreview.com/culture/innovation/second-largest-agriculture-exporter/ https://dutchreview.com/culture/innovation/second-largest-ag...

gpderetta 4y ago
Thanks! The title should be updated to avoid the clickbait.
Aachen 4y ago
Guessed it! Wasn't sure whether the Netherlands is small enough to be called tiny, there's plenty of places smaller and so obscure that there's indeed little point mentioning it in the title, but it was the only place I know of that indeed has a surprising food surplus given the very high population density across most of the available space. You basically can't get lost, no matter where you are: walk 500 meters in any direction and you'll find at minimum a path to walk along if not having cleared any forest already; another 10 minutes and you'll likely have met your first passerby (daytime) or sighted your first building.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago

I think the article paints this as a multi-factor contribution to the yields in the Netherlands. But all the high-tech examples are marginal volume wise. The major factors in the success of the Netherlands is: - Insanely fertile clay soil - Careful water management - Large square footage of greenhouses, Everything else in the article is kind of vapourware.

emrvb 4y ago
I'm from the Netherlands and I must agree. The entire article reads as a sponsored item.
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  We have the top agri/bio university in the world here too which I assume is a massive plus and an area which is basically Silicon Valley for agri/bio tech (where I live).
  - brodouevencode 4y ago
    What's the name of this university?
    - Jasp3r 4y ago
      Wageningen University
- brodouevencode 4y ago
  Maybe a sponsored mea culpa for the protests? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netherlands-buy-farmers-amid-pushback-162708037.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netherlands-buy-farmers-amid-...
  - emrvb 4y ago
    The protests are coming from individual farmers, the article is a feel good story about large(r) companies profiting from those farmers.
    - Maarten88 4y ago
      Those same large agri companies are working behind the scenes to stir up the farmer protests, hiding behind likable small family farmers. See some recent TV commercials to positively frame farmers' image. But many of those farmers are not a small family business anymore, they are very profitable businesses and the owners want to continue making those profits, increasing emissions which are already too high for our very small country.
usrusr 4y ago
Import of (fossil based) fertilizer and of animal feed that's converted into another form of imported fertilizer by the primary use aren't major factors?
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  No in the sense that they are not diferentiating factors, i.e. everybody else is also doing that and yet don't have surplus of food.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Chances are they are, per capita, importing a lot more than others (haven't looked it up but I'd be surprised if they didn't, happily surprised that is), and if that's the case, "others do it too" (but less of it) doesn't rule out that the nl food surplus is more a form of processing (of other countries agricultural output) than of domestic production, that just hides behind the different classification of imports and exports (one isn't food, the other is). How much agricultural surplus would there still be if they were isolated for a few years?
    - dtech 4y ago
      This is easily researched [1]. While NL exports inflated due to having a large port with a lot of imports, they are still a large net exporter compared to size. [1] https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2022/03/agricultural-exports-exceeded-100-billion-euros-in-2021 https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2022/03/agricultural-exports-e.... In monetary values, 28% is re-exports and 72% is exports.
      - usrusr 4y ago
        Easily researched? Imports and exports are usually compared in terms of € or USD and sure, if you process feed into meat you will make a surplus or you wouldn't do it. But for agriculture, a more fitting unit would be the nitrogen involved, and I'm pretty sure that imports greatly outweigh what's exported in food.
chaoz_ 4y ago
No, it's square meterage
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
I have a few issues with this pro Netherlands agriculture piece: 1. Vegetables grown in the Netherlands tend to taste very bland in my experience (personal taste), tough I can't complain for the price as they're usually the cheapest option in local supermarkets. If you want great tasting organic veggies you get them at the farmers market which has higher prices than the supermarkets and is only open on certain times of the day/week making convenience an issue as well. 2. The conditions I witnessed in which animals are farmed in the Netherlands are appalling. The amount of diseased animals (infected bloody wounds and swollen limbs from puss), overpacked in their own feces, will turn anyone vegetarian. To be fair, the Netherlands is not alone here but in general, then animal conditions I witnessed in places like Germany, Austria or Switzerland were on average better than in the Netherlands. Disclaimer: I work in tech for the farming industry
- emrvb 4y ago
  1. The good stuff is for export. 2. Would you reckon your experience applies to the average animal farm in the Netherlands or does it apply to the farms where your tech gets applied?
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    1. It was the stuff for export (I'm not based in the Netherlands) 2. My anecdotal evidence is restricted only to the farms I visited which in my opinion tend to represent the typical/average medium to large scale farms catering to the usual meat suppliers you'll find in local supermarket or big butcher/meat chains regardless of country.
    - emrvb 4y ago
      1. I guess we're overproducing the bland stuff then. 2. Fair enough. My own anecdotal evidence hasn't been that bad. But then again, I haven't seen an industrialized pigpen yet.
- someotherperson 4y ago
  > Vegetables grown in the Netherlands tend to taste very bland in my experience (personal taste) I see this raised often. It's almost exclusively because the cultivars used are specifically chosen for yield and hardiness in transport and storage. The "organic" stuff grown in a farm 20km away and only needs to be transported for half an hour, on the other hand, are just cultivars that can be selected for reasons other than hardiness. This type of cultivar can also be mass-produced although it becomes a lot more expensive for the producer and the customer.
Jasp3r 4y ago
Do you have some data to backup this bold claim?
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Does the Washigton post have any data at all about how robotic arms or seed design are driving the farming yields in the Netherlands?
Mistletoe 4y ago
But it’s almost certain they don’t use the clay soil in the greenhouses, right? You almost always grow in soilless medium or hydroponics in greenhouses.
bergenty 4y ago
I’ve never heard of clay soil being referred to as fertile. What exactly grows in clay soil? Generally vegetables don’t grow in clay soil, neither do a lot of fruit trees.
shellfishgene 4y ago
Also it's second largest exporter by value, not by calories. So they are not exactly "feeding the world".

davidhunter 4y ago

We are deploying Dutch greenhouses in the US and have deep roots in the Netherlands - AMA

Aachen 4y ago
Just to check my understanding: a greenhouse, to me, is a structure that keeps in heat from irradiation by the sun and lets crops grow year-round. What's a "Dutch greenhouse" specifically, what makes it different?
- davidhunter 4y ago
  Yes your definition of a greenhouse is correct! By "Dutch greenhouse", I meant industrial-scale glass greenhouses [1] that have evolved in the Netherlands over the last 70 years and, more recently, have been built in other countries primarily by Dutch greenhouse construction companies. These greenhouses are 20+Ac in footprint (similar in footprint to a Tesla Gigafactory) and have a wide variety of actuation - heating, cooling, lighting systems etc. [1] https://havecon.com/en/projects https://havecon.com/en/projects
  - carlsborg 4y ago
    What is the ballpark energy consumption in KwH for one of those units?
readthenotes1 4y ago
Do puns grow like weeds in them?
mythrwy 4y ago
1) Where in the US will these be deployed? 2) What will you grow (produce probably?) 3) If produce is to be grown, how will it be price competitive with field grown produce from the US and Mexico? Will it be "specialty"?
- davidhunter 4y ago

college_physics 4y ago

The interesting bit is this: > 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. Overly intense exploitation of the environment, whether in agriculture or other domains can easily reach unsustainable levels. Technology, being an entirely human invented category does not have sustainability built-in. To the degree that we have actually become dependent on such artificial intensity the outcome can be catastrophic.

throwaway4aday 4y ago
For what it's worth, nature doesn't have sustainability built in either.
- pjc50 4y ago
  This doesn't really make sense - nature is, almost by definition, what's been sustained so far on this planet. It has a number of homeostatic feedback mechanisms. It tends to "enforce" stability by die-offs; species that overconsume their food have population crashes. What is normally meant by "sustainability" in a human context is avoiding that overshoot and dieoff..
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    So you agree? The population boom and bust cycle is exactly how nature functions in almost all cases. Life attempts to expand as much as possible consuming all available resources and the only limit is exhaustion of those resources or being consumed by other life. Humanity is the only example of a living organism that is aware of this and attempts to mitigate it by finding more efficient ways to use those resources or developing new ones. That is the point I was trying to make, I was refuting the other commenter's argument from nature that technology is not natural because it doesn't have sustainability built in. They have it backwards, nature is un-directed and un-aware and is therefore unable to find solutions to resource depletion. Humanity is aware and capable of changing their behavior and their environment and is therefore capable of efficiently using existing resources and finding and developing new ones.

sfusato 4y ago

The Netherlands might be a small country, but it's the second-largest exporter of agriculture in the world, after the United States.

crote 4y ago

Dutch farming is incredibly dense, but that's not the same as good. For example, emission of ammonia, nitrogen, and phosphorus is through the roof, and pesticides aren't far behind. This kind of farming is wreaking havoc on the environment. And that's not even mentioning the massive deforestation due to imported soy, CO2 emissions for fertilizer production, and greenhouse energy use. This kind of farming is simply not sustainable, and it will need to be scaled down in the near future.

lnsru 4y ago

Lots of tasteless stuff. Looks like food, but no smell, nor taste. Probably better than nothing at all, but not comparable to a real deal bought locally from farmers in neighbor countries.

Maximus9000 4y ago
Is that a defect that can be solved through more science? tweaking the light and nutrients?

wunderBar84 4y ago

Also this tiny little country is in the midst of a major environmental crisis caused by overproduction of nitrogen thanks to its highly industrialised farming practices (mainly from livestock): https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-packed-livestock-operations-has-paralyzed-dutch-economy https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-...

MonaroVXR 4y ago
As a Dutch person, I think we have a bigger problem and that is that the majority of higher educational people don't understand this. This whole article explains it better, than what I have heard.

meindnoch 4y ago

If you factor in the industry and acrage required to produce the massive amounts of fertilizer and animal feed they import, then their agricultural operation is not so tiny, nor green anymore.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Food is a bad industry to get into: * You're competing with 101 nations that subsidize their exports for political reasons * You probably also have to subsidize exports, so it's a loss maker over all * You're open to very erratic prices as freak weather (at home or abroad) drive supply around. Plus fashion and arbitrary changes to tariffs and other factors. Your inputs (fertilizer made from petroleum) fluctuate in price a lot too * In the medium term nothing you're growing will remain viable as climate change bites * The work is low skill, dangerous, boring and isolated leading to major issues in the community * Pollution is high both generally and locally Stick to financial services where you can employ a lot of people, pay them well, actually make money, keep them in efficient low pollution cities and live a boring prosperous life like the swiss

bell-cot 4y ago
All true, to various degrees. OTOH, if $Sudden_Unexpected_Events make it very difficult to import enough food to keep your own population decently fed... "Keep the Nation Secure" is a pretty basic & important function of a national government, no?
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  Trying to keep a population fed vs trying to profit in the international food market are two very different things. I bet to keep a minimum level of food always available in case of black swans you don't need to grow food the way the Netherlands do.

unglaublich 4y ago

Cutting edge tech has nothing to do with it. Post-WW2 Netherlands invested heavily in super dense fertilizer heavy farming and dedicated 80% of its surface area to farming. And now it is bringing the country to a stop. Pollinators died due to pesticide over-use. Natural diversity vanished because all land is consumed by mono-crops and the emissions of farming are so high that construction work has been halted as well, during a housing crisis. This is NOT the future of food production!

badpun 4y ago
> the emissions of farming are so high that construction work has been halted as well Can you elaborate? What emissions and why they've stopped construction work? EDIT: Nevermind, I found the Science article explaining it: https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-packed-livestock-operations-has-paralyzed-dutch-economy https://www.science.org/content/article/nitrogen-crisis-jam-...

neals 4y ago

And the next step for this tiny country might be even more interesting. I'm talking robotics developed for a better mixture of nature and farming. Think pixel farming, automated agroforestry and hydroponics. I've been fundraising in this field and some of the POC's I've been showed are really next level.

myshpa 4y ago

The level of robotic tech in vegetable production is admirable. But this has caught my eye: > Forty-three percent of the Soy imported from Brazil is destined for Dutch livestock feed. "The fastest growing export markets for Soybeans of Brazil between 2019 and 2020 were Netherlands ($494M), China ($457M), and Thailand ($317M)." [0] Funny how most vulnerable countries threatened by climate (rising seas) are among the ones doing most of the damage (brazilian soy is linked to the deforestation of Amazon)[1] for something we don't really need (animal agriculture)[2]. [0] https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/soybeans/reporter/bra https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/soybeans/repo... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy [2] https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/ https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/

Lutger 4y ago
Another interesting fact: the grain deal between Ukraine and Russia that was supposed to alleviate hunger in the poorest of African countries led to the import of almost 800K ton of grains to the Netherlands. Some of it for further distribution within Europe, and most of it to feed livestock. And the African countries who suffer crop failures due to intense floods? They depend on the grains imports to even survive, but all combined they imported about half of what the Netherlands imported. Europe is so filthy rich we outbid those poor countries, just so we can feed our livestock to make hamburgers, and now the Europeans get 6 million tons of grain from the Ukraine deal. The poor African countries get a mere 400k tons. That is wild to me. A perfect illustration of how messed up our food system and trade is.
- Animatronio 4y ago
  I'll just leave this here, in the hope that someone more knowledgeable than me clarifies this matter: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/09/putin-says-nearly-all-ukraines-grain-has-gone-to-the-eu-is-he-right https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/09/putin-says-nea...
  - fruit2020 4y ago
    What the person above said is true, it was even on dutch tv

Lutger 4y ago

Dutch agriculture is completely broken, and these kinds of marketing pieces don't help putting it together again. No, we don't produce more than enough food to feed all our people, because importing stuff is often still cheaper (which is what we care about the most) and we want a lot of stuff we can't easily grow. In fact, we only produce about a third of the food we eat ourselves, and we can't even do that without a lot of outside inputs. Yes, we export a lot of stuff. So what? It has a huge price on so many levels, it is not benefitting the Dutch that much, if at all. To name but a few: The fossil fuels used for heating greenhouse, powering machines, producing fertilizer, transport, etc are causing dangerous climate change, and will only get more and more expensive in the future. The toxins from the pesticides we use to kill everything we don't want, transform our pastures and what used to be fertile woodlands, into green deserts void of life. Stacking together they cause a not always well understood harm to the consumers of our produce, to the inhabitants next to the production sites and especially the producers of it who are famously dying in their sixties a little too often to be coincidental. Famous for our water management, we are intent of lowering the ground water level so that the heavy machines of industrial scale agriculture can ride on the land. This is disastrous for our ecosystems and makes us drought prone, it also sinks our land even further below sea level. I'm not even talking about how vulnerable to disease monoculture is, how it is not supporting biodiversity at all and how all this dairy and meat production could be so much more efficient if these calories were plant based. I'm also thinking about the brutal animal suffering caused by the industrial production of meat, which is inhuman even if the rules would be followed - which isn't the case. Agriculture is a big contributor to air pollution, which is proven to cause more than half a million deaths in Europe each year. We could furthermore discuss how animal production is a breeding ground for new viruses to develop, and how it drives antibiotics resistence. Dutch agriculture is not healthy at all, not for animals and not for humans. Especially not for the farmers. I'm concerned about the pollution of nitrogen deposits which are by far the most extreme in the Netherlands when looking at Europe, causing ecosystem collapse and species extinction, and which politics has managed to completely ignore, terrified of the disproportionately large political power of its agricultural industry. This is upto the point where the highest judicial body has ruled many permits void. Not only for farming, but many housing projects have been stalled because of this, amidst a housing crisis which caused intense shortage of homes and have driven up the prices in crazy ways. We are not happy. I don't love our agriculture, which takes up a whopping two thirds of our land by the way - not 50% (that number includes water which doesn't make sense), and more than 70 percent of it is not for domestic use. The profits of this 70% disappear mostly in the pockets of big agricultural firms, the average citizen isn't seeing much of its benefits. In any case, they are not used to pay the often exploited immigrants and seasonal labor from eastern Europe a decent wage and living condition. But, the average citizen is asked to cough up taxes used to subsidize agriculture, and bear the cost of destroying our ecosystem, climate, housing market, health and countryside. If anything, agriculture in the Netherlands is a great example of what _not_ to do, especially because it is such a commercial and corporate marketing success. I haven't even mentioned how it drives the divisive politics of extremism. Arguably, we have had our own 6th of January in the often violent rebellions of farmers, sponsored and supported by Big Agro firms, rooted in conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism resisting solving any of the problems I mentioned above by flat out denial and intimidation. And this continues to be a big threat in the years to come, according to our intelligence agency and national coordinator on terrorism. I hate our agriculture.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

but really, "cutting-edge tech made the netherlands a major exporter of food". why the clickbaiting?

robbie-c 4y ago

The animals section of this is extremely grim. I appreciate that it's probably better than what happens in a lot of places, but the industrial scale slaughter of pigs is something I find extremely morally objectionable that most people seem to be indifferent to. "Vion uses artificial intelligence to detect and flag signs of animal cruelty and to minimize animal stress." oh come on now

svilen_dobrev 4y ago

tomatoes from Netherlands? hah. Even tenis-balls may taste better

shellfishgene 4y ago
Try the "Tasty Tom" variety.

latchkey 4y ago

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. Many many years ago, I grew a special plant in a secret room under a house that also had an indoor pool. The pool was heated with a natural gas heater. I directed the flow of the the vent pipe into the grow room. The effect it had on growth was nothing short of amazing. I'd see several inches of growth in a day when the heater was going full blast.

LaGrange 4y ago

The technical innovations are: - measuring food export in Euros, - selling your food to Germany.

durnygbur 4y ago

I call their products porn fruits and porn vegetables. Uniform in size and perfect in appearance and color. Not a trace of soil. Taste and smell like porn watched on the screen.

aaron695 4y ago