Not to talk down the Dutch achievement too much but the quality of statistics used in this article is terrible.
Total monetary value of agricultural exports is a terrible way to measure output. It doesn't take into account:
1. Re-exports (Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe)
2. Specialisation in the production of certain goods (i.e. high imports and exports)
3. The high price of agricultural goods in Europe, driven by high trade barriers.
4. Low domestic consumption compared to more populous nations.
> It doesn't take into account: 1. Re-exports (Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe)
At some point during Ceausescu’s later years Romania (my country) was one of the largest exporters of bananas in the world, as Romania was trading with many African countries using barter: we give you tractors and Romanian-built replicas of the AK-47, you give us bananas. Those bananas were later re-sold by the Romanian Government for much needed foreign currency.
One would not expect The Netherlands to export so much in the presence of "high trade barriers". But I strongly suspect that trade barriers between European Union Members to be very low.
Low transport costs also helped The Netherlands achieve this position. Numerous highways, railways and waterways connect it to it's neighbours.
He means trade barriers against cheap food from developing countries like Africa. The EU blocks such imports with high tariffs mostly to protect French agriculture, but it has the advantage of allowing the Dutch to invest in super high tech farming. Sucks for consumers though. Food is more expensive in Europe than the USA and that's why.
The Netherlands is in the EU. They have total unrestricted access to the EU market, which is exactly where the vast majority of their agricultural exports go.
What is kind of funny is that people here like to pay more for 'organic' food because they think it's more healthy. But what comes from the greenhouse is so lab-grown it's more healthy than anything. Those labs also don't like to use pesticides because it's unhealthy for the workers and plants as well. They use insects to control pests.
The only problem with greenhouse food is that it tastes like nothing. A tomato grown on soil has much more taste than grown on water.
It's not the soil but the lack of sun that deprives the tomatoes of their taste.
Greenhouses in the Netherlands are heated with natural gas. The Dutch government subsidises the gas so they can keep their costs low and be competitive.
So that's another reason to eat organic food; it is more sustainable because it uses natural sunlight. And tastier as well!
That fact about natural gas was one of the most surprising things to me. I realise the Netherlands is right next to some huge oil and gas fields, but surely burning gas to heat greenhouses filled with tomatoes in a cold climate, can't make sense compared to just importing those vegetables from countries where they grow naturally? Shipping fuel isn't that expensive?
Is this some weird side effect of the tariffs and CAP? It's cheaper for Europe to burn fossil fuels and build robots to grow tomatoes in cold climates with expensive labour, than import them from warm climates with cheap labour?
Only problem is that dutch vegetables have no taste and are still insane expensive compared to meat (which is also tasteless). So yeah, awesome thinkering and efficiency here, but quality is not there.
Actually a bit of a myth (I'm Dutch). It's more a case of targeting different markets with different price and quality ratios. E.g. Germans love to complain about Dutch water bombs but buy them by the kilo anyway because the stuff is cheap. They don't realize the more expensive varieties also available to them come from the same country. You don't have to buy the cheap ones but they do; it's their poor tastes that are driving the demand for this.
Likewise, Italy imports a lot of tomatoes (more than they export according to this: https://www.freshplaza.com/article/2158667/italian-table-tom...). Most of those come from the Netherlands. Italians are of course famously picky when it comes to their food. Yet they seem to buy Dutch produce.
In the UK, supermarket tomatoes imported from The Netherlands are also common. The tomatoes are mostly tasteless, regardless of the variety. Even the premium-priced organic ones have little flavour.
That's what modern, mass-produced agriculture gives us: tasteless, low-cost produce all-year round because price mostly trumps other factors for many, if not most, consumers. But it seems that even expensive mass-produced varieties are just as tasteless as their cheaper counterparts.
The other problem is the Netherlands are at risk of getting wiped out by rising sea levels.
Your example of Italy is bad news - in effect countries that could produce their own are buying Dutch because it’s cheaper, presumably because economies of scale now work in Holland’s favor.
In other words we depend on a country that’s at risk of being wiped out by flooding for food _and_ that same countrys dominant market position is also holding back food production in other countries.
I live in the Netherlands and disagree with your point about the price. I usually cook meals for 2-3 people. They usually cost less than 3 euro for vegetables (in total, not per person). Meat and/or cheese are usually the most expensive. And those meals contain a lot more vegetables than the typical meal in the USA and southern or eastern Europe.
I can concur to this. I have a friend from Italy where he worked during the summers at family farms down south where they produced tomatoes the natural way. Eating tomatoes in Netherlands is like eating paper, he said. The same goes for lettuce. There is no taste and it goes bad/degrades much faster even if you keep it in the refrigerator
One of my biggest complaints about living in the Netherlands is the goddamned tomatoes. Even after seasoning them and trying many different kinds, I just couldn't find one that was like... a tomato, in the way that I know it.
"Food Valley"? Oh, come on... they could have done better! How about "Sustenance Valley"? But that brings up a secondary point... a valley?? In Holland??
Calling anything in the Netherlands a hill or valley is a bit of a stretch. However 'Food Valley' refers to the regional nickname 'Gelderse Vallei' and is in fact a valley between the following ridges:
The hills in the Bay Area range from 350m to 1300m, so they're not huge, but drive/hike up over them and they definitely feel mountainous. The "Valley" can best be seen from Skyline Blvd running along the peaks to the west: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/San_Jose...
The region is called the Valley and it is - thanks to Wageningen University - a world leader in agricultural research. So the name makes sense.
I also live there; but to be honest they could rename it to "Randstad Valley" given the amount of people who are moving here from Amsterdam and Utrecht.
"A farm atop a former factory in The Hague produces vegetables and fish in a self-sustaining loop: Fish waste fertilizes plants, which filter the water for the fish."
If people should know something about how diseases & parasites appear and develop is that the existence of exactly this kind of "self-sustaining loop" is the essential part. Even in the outside environment, any given organism bares the risk of taking part in development of a new parasitic creature's life-cycle, but that risk is greatly reduced by having an inconsistent pattern of interaction with other symbiotic creatures. Here the people involved are just asking for it (unless they go out their way to sterilize the substances circulating in that plant-fish loop).
Impressive, to be sure, especially the technical side of things.
However I really dislike greenhouses like these for the huge amount of light pollution they cause (speaking as an amateur astronomer). Sure, it probably doesn't matter much in a densely populated area like the Netherlands, but they start to also pop up here in Eastern Europe, in (previously-) dark-sky locations.
Readit News
Total monetary value of agricultural exports is a terrible way to measure output. It doesn't take into account: 1. Re-exports (Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe) 2. Specialisation in the production of certain goods (i.e. high imports and exports) 3. The high price of agricultural goods in Europe, driven by high trade barriers. 4. Low domestic consumption compared to more populous nations.
For a better analysis of the monetary value of Dutch agricultural exports see here: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2018/03/dutch-agricultural-exp...
Note for example the 22.5 billion Euros in re-exports of agricultural goods.
90% reduction in water usage is also hard to judge without looking at changes in other advanced agricultural nations.
It would be more interesting to see the yields per-hectare the Dutch are achieving compared to other advanced agricultural nations.
At some point during Ceausescu’s later years Romania (my country) was one of the largest exporters of bananas in the world, as Romania was trading with many African countries using barter: we give you tractors and Romanian-built replicas of the AK-47, you give us bananas. Those bananas were later re-sold by the Romanian Government for much needed foreign currency.
http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?PA=7100oogs
Few examples (2017 data):
Low transport costs also helped The Netherlands achieve this position. Numerous highways, railways and waterways connect it to it's neighbours.
Though that’s a global average, and may be just as amazing in the US.
The only problem with greenhouse food is that it tastes like nothing. A tomato grown on soil has much more taste than grown on water.
They tend to pump CO2 into them to increase growth, that has the unfortunate effect of decreasing nutritional content. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27308720
I'm sure I've seen research for other veg also, but my google fu is failing me at the mo.
Greenhouses in the Netherlands are heated with natural gas. The Dutch government subsidises the gas so they can keep their costs low and be competitive. So that's another reason to eat organic food; it is more sustainable because it uses natural sunlight. And tastier as well!
Is this some weird side effect of the tariffs and CAP? It's cheaper for Europe to burn fossil fuels and build robots to grow tomatoes in cold climates with expensive labour, than import them from warm climates with cheap labour?
You mean they use hydroponics?
Likewise, Italy imports a lot of tomatoes (more than they export according to this: https://www.freshplaza.com/article/2158667/italian-table-tom...). Most of those come from the Netherlands. Italians are of course famously picky when it comes to their food. Yet they seem to buy Dutch produce.
Italy's export of tomato products is far greater than its raw tomato export: see e.g. http://www.tomatonews.com/en/global-tomato-products-trade-20...
So no, I wouldn't say that Italians like Dutch tomatoes as much as their own.
That's what modern, mass-produced agriculture gives us: tasteless, low-cost produce all-year round because price mostly trumps other factors for many, if not most, consumers. But it seems that even expensive mass-produced varieties are just as tasteless as their cheaper counterparts.
Your example of Italy is bad news - in effect countries that could produce their own are buying Dutch because it’s cheaper, presumably because economies of scale now work in Holland’s favor.
In other words we depend on a country that’s at risk of being wiped out by flooding for food _and_ that same countrys dominant market position is also holding back food production in other countries.
Sounds like the back story for a bad movie.
The expression “like Dutch tomatoes” has become an insult for vegetables being sold on the local market exactly for the reason you mention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utrecht_Hill_Ridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veluwe
That said I was once in Silicon Valley and there were hills on the left and water on the right. Not really much of a valley either.
I also live there; but to be honest they could rename it to "Randstad Valley" given the amount of people who are moving here from Amsterdam and Utrecht.
If people should know something about how diseases & parasites appear and develop is that the existence of exactly this kind of "self-sustaining loop" is the essential part. Even in the outside environment, any given organism bares the risk of taking part in development of a new parasitic creature's life-cycle, but that risk is greatly reduced by having an inconsistent pattern of interaction with other symbiotic creatures. Here the people involved are just asking for it (unless they go out their way to sterilize the substances circulating in that plant-fish loop).
However I really dislike greenhouses like these for the huge amount of light pollution they cause (speaking as an amateur astronomer). Sure, it probably doesn't matter much in a densely populated area like the Netherlands, but they start to also pop up here in Eastern Europe, in (previously-) dark-sky locations.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Westland/@51.9915637,4.190...
https://www.google.com/maps/place/El+Ejido,+Almería,+Spain/@...
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