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.
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.
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).
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.
“But many of those farmers are not a small family business anymore, they are very profitable businesses…”
My wife is a small business owner and it is rough as hell. Directing shit at the farmers who actually managed to be successful and grow their operations seems really stupid.
It's clickbait, that's why they don't put 'the Netherlands' in the headline. It's better to edit a headline when submitting an otherwise interesting story to HN than to perpetuate this sort of marketing-speak.
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?
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?
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.
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.
No really. The modern greenhouses act as little power plants, burning gas and generate electricity for the grid when demand is high, or act as a sink with electric heat when demand is low.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
1) Southeastern US. We will announce exact location shortly.
2) Vine crops (Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Peppers) and berries. No cannabis.
3) Greenhouses are supplying the US market from Canada and Mexico today. So they are already price competitive. Greenhouses are complementary to field farms as a) field farms do not produce during the winter; and b) greenhouses supply higher quality varieties.
So you will grow on string and do lean and lower? Or use the high lift vehicle to prune and harvest?
I've been in some of the greenhouses in Mexico, (Sinaloa to be exact) growing peppers and Asian eggplants. They were fairly simple plastic houses but had strict entry protocols including booties and yellow sticky trap mazes to enter.
There is a more complex industrial greenhouse I saw in Utah growing tomatoes on string. Very tall, unfortunately I didn't get to go in. It's next to a power plant and they pipe the expelled CO2 into the greenhouse for increased crop production. I believe it was started by Dutch growers.
I'm an agronomist by training and even got on the cover of a seed catalog one year back in the 90s when I worked in Arizona on a veg farm. Previously I worked field tomatoes around Tampa Bay area Florida. Now I program for last 12 years, but still have a big garden every year. I agree on greenhouse quality 100% but but am personally a big fan of soil and compost and dislike hydroponics. Nearly religiously so haha.
Really like the idea of localized production centers. Makes a lot of sense for many reasons.
I have to say, Dutch growers really have my respect. They are the masters of this craft and even dairies. I currently live in a dairy rich region and many of the owners are of Dutch heritage.
Very interesting stuff anyway, thanks for sharing and I will keep an eye on this.
Also I didn't realize you were founder of this company. I thought you were just a guy on the internet.
Good work! Very interesting ideas in your videos. People think because something looks like a tomato it is all the same. But there is a huge difference in flavor and nutrition as you correctly point out and the idea of optimizing for nutritional quality is so overlooked. We grow on mineral poor soils often because those are taken up over the years however we still get something that is red and tomato shaped so it goes off to the supermarket to be sold after sitting for some long period of time which further degrades both flavor and nutrition.
The thing that I am skeptical of (and why I love compost), is that we will ever get a full enough understanding of the interplay between various factors of life to duplicate or balance at the same level. But perhaps I am very wrong.
At any rate, I view life as a succession of organisms of which we are a part, and trust management of complexity primarily to evolution and biology because I know I cannot manage complexity at the same level.
Admittedly this could be one part naturalistic fallacy and one part article of religious faith and one part hippie wooo but the taste of compost grown produce with good mineral supplementation I have not found elsewhere. But perhaps it is possible hydroponically and I'd really like to see it.
Anyway, great points in your videos! More people should know about what you say. It's such an overlooked topic, the real nutrition value of food.
So you will grow on string and do lean and lower? Or use the high lift vehicle to prune and harvest?
For vine crops (tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, eggplants), we use a high wire system. The stems are clipped to the wire as the crop grows upwards. The entire wire (and crop) is then lowered as fruits are harvested to make room for more growth. We keep the same crop for an entire year.
I've been in some of the greenhouses in Mexico, (Sinaloa to be exact) growing peppers and Asian eggplants. They were fairly simple plastic houses but had strict entry protocols including booties and yellow sticky trap mazes to enter.
Pest and disease management is a big deal in greenhouses as they spread quickly given that it is an indoor environment. In Mexico, more high-tech plastic greenhouses are being built. They are cheaper than the Dutch glass equivalent but still have a high degree of actuation. In Mexico, there is so much light, that you don’t need the high light transmissivity of glass.
There is a more complex industrial greenhouse I saw in Utah growing tomatoes on string. Very tall, unfortunately I didn't get to go in. It's next to a power plant and they pipe the expelled CO2 into the greenhouse for increased crop production. I believe it was started by Dutch growers.
I’ve been to this facility. It was built by a company called Houwelings which are a Canadian company with Dutch heritage. Unfortunately it was not operated well and it has recently gone through a restructuring [1].
I agree on greenhouse quality 100% but but am personally a big fan of soil and compost and dislike hydroponics. Nearly religiously so haha.
There’s a case for soil vs hydroponics but the reality is that you can’t supply year-round at the quality and price that consumers expect without hydroponics.
Also I didn't realize you were founder of this company. I thought you were just a guy on the internet.
I am both :)
People think because something looks like a tomato it is all the same. But there is a huge difference in flavor and nutrition as you correctly point out and the idea of optimizing for nutritional quality is so overlooked.
You can grow high taste varieties and low taste varieties in greenhouses. Which variety you choose is a simple ROI calculation like in any business. A big problem in the US today is that greenhouses have been built in Canada and Mexico and the produce is trucked a long distance. This results in significant quality degradation vs growing locally. We aim to fix this in the US and in other countries.
Interesting. I'll have to take your word on the necessity of hydroponics to meet quality at a price point year around because don't have enough detailed knowledge.
I currently live in southern New Mexico which I suppose is really northern Mexico if you removed the political lines. Yes, sun is not lacking here at all. The problem here is intense heat and scorching sun and wind and hard water. Crops like tomato and bell pepper do not really produce outside (fruit fails to set except for a couple months, bell-pepper the size of habanero if you are lucky enough to get one or two).
People have tried greenhouses but they are too hot. Some have tried with wetwalls but the hard water quickly ruins them. Several abandoned attempts (not to your scale obviously) sit around town as a warning to others.
I've been experimenting in this area for a few years and finally last year was able to grow a massive crop of tomatoes (that set fruit all summer) and full sized bell peppers. Even a rhubarb which the sun would fry normally.
I built a metal hoop house and covered it with 40% aluminet which is a reflective shade cloth, no doubt you are familiar. Normally I guess removing 40% of the light would be an issue but there is just _so_ _much_ _sun_ and my feeling is it probably compares to normal atmosphere and cloud cover in say, England but don't have any hard numbers.
I was really surprised how well it worked and what I was able to grow. I left it open to air circulation with no plastic. It cut the harsh winds down to a nice breeze. I did have an early problem with aphids in some crops (exactly right about the threat of pests in greenhouses and pseudo greenhouses like mine). Next year I'll be introducing lacewings and minute pirate bugs with wheast very early and hope to avoid as much soap spray and cursing.
I'm expanding the tunnel over the winter (got 3000 square feet aluminet but will only use maybe 600-800) and trying a number of different indeterminate tomato varieties on string with clips. Then lean and lower as they reach the top. Similar (but smaller and not as pro) to what you are doing.
My medium is 1/3 peat, 1/3 composted cotton burrs and mushroom compost and homemade compost, the rest sand and perlite with bone meal, blood meal, calmag and micros, traces of clay and some crushed volcanic stone. Also water holding crystals. Growing in 7 gallon bags. Fish emulsion and kelp compost blends primarily for fertilizer. All water is run through an osmosis system I built with an RV softener and undersink RO parts into a 300 gallon tank then pumped.
Open (or non enclosed with translucent cover) aluminet is a real game changer in this region and I've wondered if it could be commercially viable to expand the range of crops that could be grown locally. It also holds in some heat and I evaded the first 3 frosts still producing tomato and pepper. But for now am just puttering and experimenting and enjoying some really excellent tomato and peppers!
Thanks for the info anyway. This truly is such a fascinating topic and your plans and company are impressive.
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.
> 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.
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..
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.
Nature (biological systems) do not in general consume all available resources to die off. It may happen to bacteria in isolated Petri dishes but in open ecosystems there are in general restoring factors that keep populations within ranges. In fact, despite the "inanity" of low life, over geological timescales a pretty nasty rocky planet has been turned into a vibrant biosphere (the Gaia hypothesis - though its validity is not necessary for my argument).
Technology opens up channels that are so "unnatural" there is little to contain them in the short term - besides human reason and empathy ofcourse, but reports on that front are contradictory. There was, e.g., nothing nature could do to fix the depleting ozone layer hole generated through the mindless release of new gases. Fortunately, in that instance, it was technically and behaviorally possible to start reverting the damage. As another, (currently) most extreme example, the biosphere doesn't know how to handle nuclear energy. Its entirely conceivable that geopolitical strife can make large parts of the planet uninhabitable and whether that happens or not plays out entirely in the mental / emotional states of humans.
I stand by my point that human invented technology opens up immense channels for large scale destruction of the biosphere and there is no natural restoring force to ensure its sustainable use. A casual inspection of the speed with which we alter our environment (for the worse) using technology, coupled with the dominant mindset of widespread ignorance of our condition does not bode well. It may happen that we will somehow "grow up" and develop a globally adopted culture of equilibrium within society and with the environment but that is a big if.
> Nature (biological systems) do not in general consume all available resources to die off.
So what happens to a deer population if it is established somewhere with no natural predators? Same question for any other prey species. You can also ask the same question for what happens when a predatory population expands rapidly but this is harder to control all variables for.
I still disagree that there is anything unnatural. Yes, ionizing radiation can easily kill most living things, no it is not something that life could not adapt to. The only reason that most organisms are not tolerant of high levels of radiation is because this particular planet doesn't have high levels of radiation (though we do have a non-zero amount of background radiation that we are all very tolerant of). There currently exist organisms that are tolerant of high levels or radiation and given enough time to evolve that would be possible for life in general.
Logically and abstractly, yes, everything is "natural". Both nuclear forces and the human collective's behavior are part of the Universe after all. Even as we engineer one tech-driven ecosystem instability after another, it is likely that some living things will survive for the day after. But is this a scenario that should consider seriously?
The problem is not the un-natural nature of technology per se but the mismatch between our intellectual ability to unlock potent technology domains that tap unusual (non-biological) spheres, versus our self-governance capability to deploy them in sustainable ways. The lack of any other restoring force besides limited human reason and empathy means its a race against the clock before something really bad happens.
Nature does logistic growth all the time, just look at human height growth curves. We grow very quickly when we are young and barely grow when we are old. That is literally the inversion of exponential growth which is slow in the beginning and fast at the end which tends to overshoot resource constraints by a far bigger margin.
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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.
* 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
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.
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.
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].
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.
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 sol...
I also live in the Netherlands. I confirm that the above comment very accurately describes the agriculture situation in the Netherlands, much more so than the washington post article.
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
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.
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.
86 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadHere's a randomly picked alternative article that isn't locked behind a Pay wall: https://dutchreview.com/culture/innovation/second-largest-ag...
The title should be updated to avoid the clickbait.
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.
[1] https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2022/03/agricultural-exports-e.... In monetary values, 28% is re-exports and 72% is exports.
Aren't they shutting down greenhouses now due to exploding energy costs?
https://www.reuters.com/article/netherlands-gas-imports-idUS...
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
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?
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.
2. Fair enough. My own anecdotal evidence hasn't been that bad. But then again, I haven't seen an industrialized pigpen yet.
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.
This is the core of the problem, and it's obviously not the Netherlands exclusively, it's a feature of modern agribusiness.
We've spend decades mostly optimizing for things that are not taste and nutrition, and it worked - often at the expense of those things.
A lot of this is on consumers of course. Voting with your wallets for bland but uniform-and-pretty has a knock on effect.
I can't recommend it enough. It really changed my mind about food.
You almost always grow in soilless medium or hydroponics in greenhouses.
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"?
2) Vine crops (Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Peppers) and berries. No cannabis.
3) Greenhouses are supplying the US market from Canada and Mexico today. So they are already price competitive. Greenhouses are complementary to field farms as a) field farms do not produce during the winter; and b) greenhouses supply higher quality varieties.
So you will grow on string and do lean and lower? Or use the high lift vehicle to prune and harvest?
I've been in some of the greenhouses in Mexico, (Sinaloa to be exact) growing peppers and Asian eggplants. They were fairly simple plastic houses but had strict entry protocols including booties and yellow sticky trap mazes to enter.
There is a more complex industrial greenhouse I saw in Utah growing tomatoes on string. Very tall, unfortunately I didn't get to go in. It's next to a power plant and they pipe the expelled CO2 into the greenhouse for increased crop production. I believe it was started by Dutch growers.
I'm an agronomist by training and even got on the cover of a seed catalog one year back in the 90s when I worked in Arizona on a veg farm. Previously I worked field tomatoes around Tampa Bay area Florida. Now I program for last 12 years, but still have a big garden every year. I agree on greenhouse quality 100% but but am personally a big fan of soil and compost and dislike hydroponics. Nearly religiously so haha.
Really like the idea of localized production centers. Makes a lot of sense for many reasons.
I have to say, Dutch growers really have my respect. They are the masters of this craft and even dairies. I currently live in a dairy rich region and many of the owners are of Dutch heritage.
Very interesting stuff anyway, thanks for sharing and I will keep an eye on this.
Good work! Very interesting ideas in your videos. People think because something looks like a tomato it is all the same. But there is a huge difference in flavor and nutrition as you correctly point out and the idea of optimizing for nutritional quality is so overlooked. We grow on mineral poor soils often because those are taken up over the years however we still get something that is red and tomato shaped so it goes off to the supermarket to be sold after sitting for some long period of time which further degrades both flavor and nutrition.
The thing that I am skeptical of (and why I love compost), is that we will ever get a full enough understanding of the interplay between various factors of life to duplicate or balance at the same level. But perhaps I am very wrong.
At any rate, I view life as a succession of organisms of which we are a part, and trust management of complexity primarily to evolution and biology because I know I cannot manage complexity at the same level.
Admittedly this could be one part naturalistic fallacy and one part article of religious faith and one part hippie wooo but the taste of compost grown produce with good mineral supplementation I have not found elsewhere. But perhaps it is possible hydroponically and I'd really like to see it.
Anyway, great points in your videos! More people should know about what you say. It's such an overlooked topic, the real nutrition value of food.
For vine crops (tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, eggplants), we use a high wire system. The stems are clipped to the wire as the crop grows upwards. The entire wire (and crop) is then lowered as fruits are harvested to make room for more growth. We keep the same crop for an entire year.
I've been in some of the greenhouses in Mexico, (Sinaloa to be exact) growing peppers and Asian eggplants. They were fairly simple plastic houses but had strict entry protocols including booties and yellow sticky trap mazes to enter.
Pest and disease management is a big deal in greenhouses as they spread quickly given that it is an indoor environment. In Mexico, more high-tech plastic greenhouses are being built. They are cheaper than the Dutch glass equivalent but still have a high degree of actuation. In Mexico, there is so much light, that you don’t need the high light transmissivity of glass.
There is a more complex industrial greenhouse I saw in Utah growing tomatoes on string. Very tall, unfortunately I didn't get to go in. It's next to a power plant and they pipe the expelled CO2 into the greenhouse for increased crop production. I believe it was started by Dutch growers.
I’ve been to this facility. It was built by a company called Houwelings which are a Canadian company with Dutch heritage. Unfortunately it was not operated well and it has recently gone through a restructuring [1].
I agree on greenhouse quality 100% but but am personally a big fan of soil and compost and dislike hydroponics. Nearly religiously so haha.
There’s a case for soil vs hydroponics but the reality is that you can’t supply year-round at the quality and price that consumers expect without hydroponics.
Also I didn't realize you were founder of this company. I thought you were just a guy on the internet.
I am both :)
People think because something looks like a tomato it is all the same. But there is a huge difference in flavor and nutrition as you correctly point out and the idea of optimizing for nutritional quality is so overlooked.
You can grow high taste varieties and low taste varieties in greenhouses. Which variety you choose is a simple ROI calculation like in any business. A big problem in the US today is that greenhouses have been built in Canada and Mexico and the produce is trucked a long distance. This results in significant quality degradation vs growing locally. We aim to fix this in the US and in other countries.
[1]: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sunset-continues-to...
I currently live in southern New Mexico which I suppose is really northern Mexico if you removed the political lines. Yes, sun is not lacking here at all. The problem here is intense heat and scorching sun and wind and hard water. Crops like tomato and bell pepper do not really produce outside (fruit fails to set except for a couple months, bell-pepper the size of habanero if you are lucky enough to get one or two).
People have tried greenhouses but they are too hot. Some have tried with wetwalls but the hard water quickly ruins them. Several abandoned attempts (not to your scale obviously) sit around town as a warning to others.
I've been experimenting in this area for a few years and finally last year was able to grow a massive crop of tomatoes (that set fruit all summer) and full sized bell peppers. Even a rhubarb which the sun would fry normally.
I built a metal hoop house and covered it with 40% aluminet which is a reflective shade cloth, no doubt you are familiar. Normally I guess removing 40% of the light would be an issue but there is just _so_ _much_ _sun_ and my feeling is it probably compares to normal atmosphere and cloud cover in say, England but don't have any hard numbers.
I was really surprised how well it worked and what I was able to grow. I left it open to air circulation with no plastic. It cut the harsh winds down to a nice breeze. I did have an early problem with aphids in some crops (exactly right about the threat of pests in greenhouses and pseudo greenhouses like mine). Next year I'll be introducing lacewings and minute pirate bugs with wheast very early and hope to avoid as much soap spray and cursing.
I'm expanding the tunnel over the winter (got 3000 square feet aluminet but will only use maybe 600-800) and trying a number of different indeterminate tomato varieties on string with clips. Then lean and lower as they reach the top. Similar (but smaller and not as pro) to what you are doing.
My medium is 1/3 peat, 1/3 composted cotton burrs and mushroom compost and homemade compost, the rest sand and perlite with bone meal, blood meal, calmag and micros, traces of clay and some crushed volcanic stone. Also water holding crystals. Growing in 7 gallon bags. Fish emulsion and kelp compost blends primarily for fertilizer. All water is run through an osmosis system I built with an RV softener and undersink RO parts into a 300 gallon tank then pumped.
Open (or non enclosed with translucent cover) aluminet is a real game changer in this region and I've wondered if it could be commercially viable to expand the range of crops that could be grown locally. It also holds in some heat and I evaded the first 3 frosts still producing tomato and pepper. But for now am just puttering and experimenting and enjoying some really excellent tomato and peppers!
Thanks for the info anyway. This truly is such a fascinating topic and your plans and company are impressive.
What's a "Dutch greenhouse" specifically, what makes it different?
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
> 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.
What is normally meant by "sustainability" in a human context is avoiding that overshoot and dieoff..
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.
Technology opens up channels that are so "unnatural" there is little to contain them in the short term - besides human reason and empathy ofcourse, but reports on that front are contradictory. There was, e.g., nothing nature could do to fix the depleting ozone layer hole generated through the mindless release of new gases. Fortunately, in that instance, it was technically and behaviorally possible to start reverting the damage. As another, (currently) most extreme example, the biosphere doesn't know how to handle nuclear energy. Its entirely conceivable that geopolitical strife can make large parts of the planet uninhabitable and whether that happens or not plays out entirely in the mental / emotional states of humans.
I stand by my point that human invented technology opens up immense channels for large scale destruction of the biosphere and there is no natural restoring force to ensure its sustainable use. A casual inspection of the speed with which we alter our environment (for the worse) using technology, coupled with the dominant mindset of widespread ignorance of our condition does not bode well. It may happen that we will somehow "grow up" and develop a globally adopted culture of equilibrium within society and with the environment but that is a big if.
So what happens to a deer population if it is established somewhere with no natural predators? Same question for any other prey species. You can also ask the same question for what happens when a predatory population expands rapidly but this is harder to control all variables for.
I still disagree that there is anything unnatural. Yes, ionizing radiation can easily kill most living things, no it is not something that life could not adapt to. The only reason that most organisms are not tolerant of high levels of radiation is because this particular planet doesn't have high levels of radiation (though we do have a non-zero amount of background radiation that we are all very tolerant of). There currently exist organisms that are tolerant of high levels or radiation and given enough time to evolve that would be possible for life in general.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC99018
The problem is not the un-natural nature of technology per se but the mismatch between our intellectual ability to unlock potent technology domains that tap unusual (non-biological) spheres, versus our self-governance capability to deploy them in sustainable ways. The lack of any other restoring force besides limited human reason and empathy means its a race against the clock before something really bad happens.
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.
* 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
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?
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.
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!
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-...
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/repo...
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/soy
[2] https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/
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.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/09/putin-says-nea...
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 sol...
"Vion uses artificial intelligence to detect and flag signs of animal cruelty and to minimize animal stress." oh come on now
- measuring food export in Euros,
- selling your food to Germany.