
The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant - deegles
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/
======
cirrus-clouds
Here in the UK, tomatoes from the Netherlands are the most common sold in
British supermarkets.

Unfortunately, they are quite flavourless. The type of tomato (and price)
makes no difference (organic, vine-ripened, salad). Most of them are usually
semi-ripe. Even if you allow them to ripen at home for a few days, they are
still quite tasteless.

Presumably, Italy keeps its best tomato produce for themselves and I don't
blame them (although Italian tinned tomatoes are widely available in the UK,
just not the fresh variety).

~~~
user5994461
It's not just the tomatoes. Everything in the UK supermarket is quite bad.
It's a cultural thing I suppose.

~~~
calpaterson
Where are you shopping? My experience is that UK supermarkets are normally
higher quality (esp in fresh and refridgerated goods) than other countries.
Often lower priced too. Supermarkets I've seen in other western countries
(Italy, France, US, Finland) have invariably been pretty disappointing.

~~~
Boothroid
Seconded. I don't think the parent comment to this has a strong basis in fact.
The UK retail sector is one of the most competitive and dynamic in the world.
I live in a small town and within 10 minutes' drive I have 3 large
supermarkets open 7 days a week, stocking thousands of lines, with products
ranging from budget to expensive. There are many smaller grocery shops also
open 7 days a week. There is fantastic local produce if you eat in season. For
range, price and convenience few other countries are close to the UK as
regards mass retail. I studied this in a uni course and also speak from
personal experience of living abroad.

~~~
user5994461
The prices are competitive and the stores are open 7 days a week, but the
choice of products is quite bad and limited.

~~~
Boothroid
The implication of competitiveness is competition, and one aspect of
competition is choice, both of type, and of quality. If you cannot create
great tasting food with the plethora of choice available in the average UK
supermarket the problem is not with the products on offer. The range and
quality are near the best civilisation has ever had to offer.

------
spiderfarmer
I am from the Netherlands and I have to say that regretably a large part of
our country thinks that our farmers are incompetent, stupid, nature-hating
animal bashers because of how the media treats them.

It's gross how strong the lobby is against our farmers, even though they're
clearly among the most competent, intelligent, sustainable farmers around the
world.

They always use cherry-picked facts (and even blatant lies), decades old photo
and video materials and examples from foreign farms against our farmers, in
order to put pressure on the government to regulate our farmers even more, to
the point where our farmers feel that they are nothing more than underpaid
workers for a huge governmental organization.

~~~
mverwijs
From the article: " This high-tech broiler house holds up to 150,000 birds,
from hatching to harvesting"

No 'decades old photo' either. I find it hard to believe someone loving live
animals would put them in such a place.

~~~
21
Funny, looking at the associated picture tells me a different story. Look at
how uncrowded the chicks are and how much free space to move they have, and
compare with US where they are so packed together that they can't even turn in
place.

[http://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/magazine/right...](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/magazine/rights-
exempt/2017/09/hunger-solution/hunger-solution-chickens.adapt.1190.1.jpg)

~~~
enraged_camel
It seems strange to point out how well you are treating an animal when you are
slaughtering it for consumption in the end. In fact that is the animal's only
purpose of existence.

~~~
spiderfarmer
Maybe I, like all my predecessors, am not yet 'evolved' enough to give up on
eating meat. In the meantime I like the fact that the animals are growing up
disease free in relatively humane conditions.

~~~
enraged_camel
It's not about being evolved enough, whatever that means. Eating meat is a
conscious choice. Humans can do without meat. We are omnivores, not
carnivores.

I mean yes, in the grand scheme of things, treating animals well before
slaughtering them is better than treating them poorly, but it misses the
forest for the trees.

~~~
21
I would be highly surprised if in 100 years we'll still do this.

It's only a matter of time until lab-grown meat is as good and cheap as the
original, and then society will turn. Eating real animals will be something
like hunting is now, a tiny thing and with huge image costs.

~~~
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6
Hunting has huge image costs where you live? Are you sure it's not just inside
your specific bubble?

~~~
riffraff
I'm fairly sure hunting is declining in all of the western world.

As anecdata, consider the outlawing of fox hunting in UK, declining hunting
love in France[0], and a similar decline in the US[1].

The more hunting becomes unusual, the higher the number of people who will
consider it in negative light compared to those who view it favourably.

[0]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37865215](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37865215)
[1] [http://deerfarmer.com/wiki/hunting-
decline](http://deerfarmer.com/wiki/hunting-decline)

~~~
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6
You should've spent more time sourcing that last claim, considering it was by
and large the most bold one.

Furthermore, whilst it may not be obvious in activist circles, seeing the
topic was about eating animal produce, the obvious counterpart in hunting
would be game animals, and not a sport (which fox hunting is, more or less).
My (unsourced) guess would be that most non-vegetarians do not condemn
hunting, and it would also be a somewhat hypocritical stance. Furthermore,
meat consumption isn't exactly on declining in the world, but you can make
your own conclusions about that.

(I'm a city dweller, and haven't hunted anything in my life. I'm not saying
that to validate my opinion, but regardless I know quite a bit about the
realities of hunting that probably apply to most places, and the reason it is
in decline may well not be because of a shift in the moral landscape. It is a
consuming hobby, but that doesn't in itself imply that all non-hunters would
automatically start to disapprove it more and more.)

~~~
riffraff
sorry, I should have phrased it better, I don't mean that hunting is declining
because of moral reasons, I mean that as it declines and people grow more
detached from it it will be considered more morally reprehensible.

It is obviously an opinion not a fact, but as an example, you can consider the
attitude of people to eating animals that they ate in the past and not now
(porcupine, turtle, cat, dog).

Not only it's considered disgusting, but it's often considered worse than
eating other animals.

------
madmax108
Coming in from a country (India) which even today has a large agricultural
community which still uses ancient tools for farming (tractors are pretty much
the most many get up to, with proper cold storage facilities, greenhouses etc
practically a pipe dream), looking at countries improve their techniques in
such a manner makes me wonder what it will take to move my country to similar
scale. Is it simply technical, or is there a major push by government
involved? Is it the community embracing technology, or is it other factors
which make farming unsustainable without technology? Is it simply that farmers
in these countries are overall more well to do? Or is it a combination of all
of this?

Especially in India, farmers have been moved even to suicide [1] during times
of drought and flood, which seems to come up every other year (and farming is
a very climate sensitive field anyway), I really wonder how tech can work to
improve the status quo

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India)

~~~
bbvnvlt
I only scrolled through TFA (added to read later list). I am Dutch though.

A lot of these systems require enormous (and growing) up-front investments,
not feasible for small independent operations. There are a lot of family
business in Westland, but they require massive mortgages and/or loans to keep
up with the times (and the investments that they require). There are fewer and
fewer small farms and more and more 'mega-barns'.

Little space is needed, but a lot of it is high carbon and high capital.

~~~
pakitan
Yeah, I was wondering about that. Some of those farms look like they have
million(s) dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure. And farming isn't
exactly a high-margin industry so starting a new farm must be quite a risky
venture. Are there government programs that help with the financing or it's
all private capital?

~~~
bbvnvlt
There are both subsidies and loan programs.

As far as I know (I am not a farmer, nor do I know any greenhouse farmers very
well), lots of it is private capital though.

One of the biggest banks in the Netherlands (Rabobank) has a (positive)
reputation for financing farmers and other agricultural firms. (also a
negative one due to the LIBOR scandal, incidentally)

------
farnsworth
The Netherlands will soon be a massive exporter of flood-control knowledge and
technology as well. It's like they've been practicing for global warming for
the entire lifetime of their country.

~~~
stingraycharles
Well we "foolishly" decided to build half our country below sea level. We've
seen this interest in the past in the afterwake of Katrina, and we've been
exporting this knowledge for quite some time. Unfortunately, it's probably a
difficult problem to solve on the massive scale the US needs.

~~~
hwillis
> We've seen this interest in the past in the afterwake of Katrina, and we've
> been exporting this knowledge for quite some time. Unfortunately, it's
> probably a difficult problem to solve on the massive scale the US needs.

Interestingly, this is a nearly 200 year old problem in America. Most
spectacularly in Chicago[1], where the city was barely above the natural water
table (Lake Michigan). As the city grew they produced more sewage and the
ground was unable to absorb water quickly enough, so water began to backflow
into the sewage system. A single Cholera outbreak in these conditions killed
6% of the population.

The solution at the time was to just build the sewers above ground, which was
obviously a terrible idea. Over 20 years they began raising most of Chicago
over 6' into the air. I think this isn't necessary with modern sewage, but in
the coming decades we may see stuff like this again for east and west coast
cities in the US. It's cheaper to raise entire cities than rebuild them.

More energy in the atmosphere means more violent storms, so Southern coastal
cities will probably have to move inland.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago)

~~~
selimthegrim
I presume this is why they reversed the river too?

~~~
hwillis
The sewage drained into the river, which drained into the lake, which was
where they got their fresh water, so they built a new river to reverse the
original one:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sanitary_and_Ship_Cana...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sanitary_and_Ship_Canal)

It's kind of amazing that such a poorly-formed plan didn't go catastrophically
wrong, but it's worked okay for over a century.

~~~
flomo
Interesting. Clicking around from that link and found that the famous Chicago
cholera outbreak was a myth:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_1885_cholera_epidemic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_1885_cholera_epidemic_myth)

~~~
hwillis
although for the record that one is not the same as the one that killed 6% of
the population, which happened in 1854.

------
EliRivers
The amount of privileged, snotty complaining here about how they don't like
the taste. If you don't like the taste, don't buy it; pay extra for something
you do like the taste of. They're able to make a lot more food on a lot less
land using a lot fewer resources. As far as I'm concerned, it's basically
magic and given that the spectre of starvation has loomed over humanity almost
forever, and is by no means permanently banished to the past, coming up with
ways to make more of the thing that keeps every human alive using less space
and fewer resources is not deserving of snotty replies about how people don't
like the taste. Nobody's forcing you to eat it.

~~~
hellofunk
I agree, there are a lot of strange comments here. First of all, you can get
all kinds of tomatoes in the Netherlands, but everyone is talking about the
super budget tomato that is so cheap it's nearly free. Second, there's a lot
more than tomatoes to enjoy in the Netherlands. They have great asparagus,
excellent bakeries, high-quality and cheap milk and yogurt, reasonably-priced
and delicious fish. Lots of other vegetables are no less tasty in Holland than
I've experienced in the U.S. or Asia, such as potatoes, cabbage, onions,
broccoli, carrots. That the Dutch have figured out how to fill a demand for
cheap vegetables for those who want them is not a bad thing.

~~~
davedx
Yep. I moved to the Netherlands from the UK 8 years ago, and I've found the
quality of food in general to be consistently better than back home.

~~~
kbart
It would be hard to find a country with _worse_ food than UK, so no big
surprise here. Just my personal experience reflected by many friends
acquaintances living there.

------
polskibus
The food from the Netherlands is tasteless compared to Spanish or Italian in
all seasons of the year, in the summer, all produce in Europe beats it.

High yields in a country that does not have record sunlight throughought
entire year, can only be achieved by abusing chemicals in the process, faking
natural conditions, etc. Low amount of natural sunlight can easily be tested
using your taste buds.

If their farmer switch to other varieties, without slowing down and reducing
the yields, they will still harvest tasteless produce in comparison to other
countries that have better conditions or "slower" production.

~~~
zappo2938
You sound like every French, Spanish, and Italian chef I've worked for.

~~~
polskibus
I'm actually a casual Polish consumer. While we get similar amount of sun as
the Dutch do, our produce is much better in the summer than theirs.

Poland has lower yields, we have much more land than they do (lower pressure
for efficiency), being a bit backwards to the Western Europe actually results
in better food.

In early Spring and late Autumn, I'd always pick imported French or Spanish
produce over Dutch.

------
tzury

        The Hague produces vegetables and fish in a self sustaining loop: 
        Fish waste fertilizes plants, which filter the water for the fish. 
        Local restaurants proudly offer the veggies and “city swimmers.”
    

As a result, it takes about 1/10 of the amount of water it takes to grow 1
pound of tomatoes in the US.

See more at [https://qz.com/907971/the-netherlands-basically-
reinvented-t...](https://qz.com/907971/the-netherlands-basically-reinvented-
the-tomato/)

------
hownottowrite
The Dutch are also one of the largest landholders in the US with 4.8 million
acres of farmland.[0]

[0] [https://www.agdaily.com/insights/not-just-u-s-farmland-
forei...](https://www.agdaily.com/insights/not-just-u-s-farmland-foreign-held-
whats-intentions/)

------
Soviet
I'm afraid Netherlands is only good for food that's over-engineered,
cardboard-tasting and geneticaly modified for quantity. But that's future I
guess.

~~~
harigov
It will probably improve as time goes by.

~~~
gumby
As long as there's an incentive for it to get better. Based on my experience
in the US the incentives run the other way :-(. All about cost.

------
cyphunk
Oh my, NL tomatos taste like water sponges. This fact depresses me more than
it should :/ They are the predominate tomato sold in DE, UK and others.
Really, try a tomato from southern europe or some places in eastern europe,
preferably while in southern or eastern europe.

------
abalone
What’s the energy cost of all that artificial lighting? The article notes that
one of the farms produces its own (geothermal) energy. But is this generally
true?

The article makes much of exporting knowledge. But how much of the
“sustainability” of this model is tied to cheap renewable energy sources? Like
geothermal in the Netherlands.

One researcher notes “on the assumption of efficient LED lighting, I estimate
that plants like potato or tomato that produce a fleshy food product require
about 1,200 kilowatt-hours of electricity for each kilogram of edible tissue
they produce.” About the same as what a refrigerator uses in a year.[1]

For example there’s a New York indoor farming startup called Bowery Farms. Its
gotten some tech VC and coverage in the tech press. Its marketing is all
“green”. They claim to use “far fewer resources” while producing “100x more on
the same land... 365 days a year.” They mention how very little water they
use.

But if you look closely, they’re suspiciously silent on energy use.[2]

[1]
[http://www.salon.com/2016/02/17/enough_with_the_vertical_far...](http://www.salon.com/2016/02/17/enough_with_the_vertical_farming_partner/)

[2] [http://boweryfarming.com/](http://boweryfarming.com/)

~~~
pakitan
That 1200kWh figure doesn't make any sense. It says that "edible tissue"
excludes water content. Each kg of tomatoes has about 950g of water. That
means 60kWh per kg of tomatoes, which will cost about 5 EUR. You won't be able
to sell your produce at that price.

------
ciconia
For all those complaining about the (lack of) taste - the best tasting
tomatoes are the ones you grow yourself in your back yard, and this is from
personal experience. You can muse all you want about how Italian tomatoes are
superior to Dutch ones, but nothing can beat the knowledge that what you have
in your plate was grown by yourself on your own little plot of earth, with
just a bit of patience and diligence.

~~~
nickserv
Quite right, and even apartment dwellers can easily have a few tomato plants.
One thing that's critical is not to use hybrid (F1) seeds, they don't breed
true / aren't reproducible, so you need to buy seeds every year. This means
the plants will never adapt to your particular soil and climate. Unfortunately
these are the most common seeds found on the market.

------
5_minutes
In the whole Dutch food line, shortcuts are being made for saving a cent here
and there, at any expense - resulting in inferior products, over the whole
line.

Grapes without pits, soft bread that stays good for 2 weeks, chickens that
shrink to half after baking, everything is full of sugar, ...

This is what we can appreciate about the South, lots of things are done not so
efficiently but quite often with higher quality.

------
pvaldes
> More than a third of all global trade in vegetable seeds originates in the
> Netherlands.

This is the point. Dutch earn a lot of money with vegetables because they sell
most of the seeds of vegetables that Spain, Italy, Morocco and other
mediterranean countries use industrially. Because disease resistance,
homogeneity of size and time of production, research, availability, and
sometimes... plain piratery and renaming of old varieties. Read about the
napoleon cherry for example.

1) Tomato is a tropical plant that loves warm and light. More sun means more
flavour. You can pick the seeds of the same variety of tomato and culture some
in Germany and other in Spain. Unless you can afford to spend a lot of
electricity, the last will be always better. The reality is that the bland and
the yummy tomato will often belong to exactly the same industrial variety,
because...

2)... different grades of quality. Wouldn't be fair to match the cheapest
tomato against the better.

3) Consumers do not select only by flavour, they have other interests and will
reject a soft and dented tomato. You can sell the first strawberries of the
year for a higher price, even if they have virtually no time to develop any
flavour. People still love it because strawberries with low flavour is still a
better deal that no strawberries at all.

4) more rippen tomato taste better, but if you want your tomato to travel 3000
Km before to reach your table in perfect shape and colour you need to
sacrifice something. Small farmers and amateurs that sell locally can afford
to pick the fruit more ripe.

5) Antique varieties "taste better", you can enjoy the different flavour
variations that came with a bigger genetic diversity, but tomato is a short
living species and, unlike good antique apples or plums, seeds of good and
true heirloom varieties of tomato are very difficult to find and there is
almost not profit in selling it online.

------
victornomad
Lots of comments here about tomatoes without flavor.

Tomatoes are seasonal too, best ones are in summer. That's why people made
sauces and kept them for the winter. Willing to have fresh tasty tomatoes
during the whole year is not an easy task...

Another factor is that tomatoes are harvested green and ripened using ethylene
gas just before hitting the shelves.

------
tpeo
I think that how much a country is "feeding the world" would be more properly
measured in metric tons, rather than dollars. So saying that the Netherlands
are "feeding the world" on account of the total value of their agricultural
exports seems to me a bit misleading. Staples are cheap.

~~~
jacquesm
This is actually where the story gets really interesting. NL is producing an
incredible amount of tonnage for such a small country. The division between
lower grade (tasting poorly) vegetables and more tasty quality stuff (which is
far more expensive) is severely lopsided (towards the poorer tasting variety).

Because vegetables are mostly water by weight quite a lot of produce leaves
the country in freeze dried form to save on shipping.

------
Someone
Yields are high, yes, but ranking by export volume isn't fair to larger
countries. If you group the Netherlands with neighboring Great Britain,
Germany, Belgium and France (combined ballpark half the population of the
USA), export volume halves.

~~~
hellofunk
Yet if you look at the total value of the exports, the Netherlands is second
in the world only after the U.S. For a tiny nation that is quite impressive.

~~~
mcv
A tiny and very densely populated country. That we manage to produce so much
food is amazing enough in itself, but you'd think we'd need it for ourselves.
Maybe we import all our own food, or maybe we really have such a gigantic
surplus.

------
thriftwy
There will be 10 billion people on Earth. Growing food for them needs a tiny
area in highly developed countries via industrial farming. But what would that
10bn people do then?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Are you seriously asking what productive work people can do other than
farming?

~~~
thriftwy
I'm seriously asking what productive work can billions of people from
underdeveloped and unstable countries do. Without access to lucrative markets,
too.

~~~
forkLding
Move from primary to secondary and then tertiary or just jump to tertiary or
even reach quanternary sector

Talking about three sector theory

~~~
imtringued
I think the parent implies that automation and lack of capital to invest into
automation will make those sectors inaccessible to untrained and unskilled
people in developing countries.

Usually inequality between countries or people is reduced by rich and poor
trading with each other.

But what if the poor have nothing to offer to the rich? Then the only option
is to work for their own sustenance which means farming.

~~~
thriftwy
There's this saying about comparative advantage. But what happens when poor
country doesn't have any comparative advantages over rich country? Or a few
really tiny and disgusting ones which definitely won't support hundreds of
millions people?

------
disordinary
I can see this being a good option for fruit and vegetable production but I
don't see this sort of intense farming being good for animals no matter how
humane. There has been a big movement for completely free range and outdoor
reared animals, although there are a lot of issues to do with CO2 emissions
and run off from farms that are configured this way.

------
tuyguntn
Really interesting, are there any resources I can read about techniques used
in Netherlands agriculture industry.

I have 5 ha (1 ha = 10.000 m2) land in my home country, but I do not know how
to use it, even for what I can use. I will be really glad if someone points
out me profitable/most profitable things for this land.

(I am from Central Asia, traveling and working abroad)

~~~
kbart
Farming is a very localized activity as it greatly depends on a climate, soil
type, irrigation, demand etc., so I doubt anybody from outside can help you
with that. See what neighboring similar sized farms are growing, chances are
that they have been doing this for years and have already optimized for the
best value.

------
eggie5
produce is remarkably cheap at the markets in Amsterdam compared to southern
California. Chicken is much more expensive.

------
aluhut
I just wish they would fix that taste problems. I'm sick of tasteless
tomatoes...

~~~
hellofunk
Just buy any of the many other tomatoes available at a Dutch grocery other
than the cheapest option.

~~~
aluhut
I live in Germany and this was a general statement (even though we get very
much from the Netherlands). Most of them taste like nothing. Sometimes even
those who are especially marked as "something something sweet" taste like
nothing most of the time.

I rarely buy the cheapest option. Most of the times we get the most expensive
Bio (organic) ones. This legend needs to die. Just like the one that says that
marked as "local" tomatoes (vegetables) taste better (or taste at all). For
some times I thought I could smell it. Doesn't work anymore. There is no
system anymore as long as you buy in a supermarket here. Unfortunately I'm
asleep at local market times or they are when I'm at work but I'm sure you can
get the good stuff there because my parents grow them in their garden. But
this is not the problem we are talking about here. This is the 21st century. I
can't believe that I can't get something as simple as tomatoes with taste for
pretty hefty prices in a supermarket.

It's not like it was always this way. I can remember very good the moment
where we switched from big tomatoes to those cocktail ones because they did
not taste like water. Then those became tasteless, I've now seen micro
tomatoes. Maybe there is some taste left...

~~~
hellofunk
I have definitely noticed a big difference in flavor among the common
different tomato varieties available at a typical Dutch grocery.

------
dep_b
I was actually surprised that in Argentina most fruits and vegetables are
exactly the same as in Holland. No difference at all! It must be the same
efficient way of growing things all year round that the supermarkets use.

------
novalis78
Makes me wonder how much of this could be replicated and what it would yield
in states (Florida) with amazing sunshine and access to fresh water and cheap
power.

~~~
kogepathic
_> in states (Florida) with amazing sunshine and access to fresh water and
cheap power._

Actually the model would work better in states with less arable land or with a
colder climate.

Reasons:

1\. Better food security, less reliance on imported food

2\. As the article states, water use is much lower than open field farming, so
it's better for places with constrained resources

3\. More environmental if the food is grown closer to the consumers as there's
less need for storage and transport. Similar to #1

4\. Sunshine doesn't really matter for these greenhouses since a lot of them
are using LED lights tuned to the species they're growing to increase output.
[0]

[0] [https://www.verticalfarmingconference.com/indoor-
farming/jap...](https://www.verticalfarmingconference.com/indoor-
farming/japans-panasonic-moves-vertical-farming-singapore/)

------
gumby
Quite interesting that the Duijvestijns facility is allegedly close to
fertilizer and energy self-sufficient. What about the economics?

------
IkmoIkmo
I'm so freaking tired of seeing articles about exciting agricultural tech,
just to click on them and find a whole bunch of lettuce. (and tomatoes)

I mean, really, try measuring it yourself. They're virtually always all about
lettuce.

Lettuce doesn't feed the world, staple foods do. Virtually nobody eats a whole
head of green leaf lettuce a day, but even if they did, it'd be 50 calories.
That's less calories than in a lollipop.

Lettuce is 95% water. It means if you want to eat say 10% of your daily energy
intake in lettuce, you need to eat 250 calories of lettuce, that means 5 heads
of lettuce and basically a soda can full of water.

That's not food, the way we normally talk about food. It's water, with a bunch
of fibers and a tiny amount of minerals and nutrients.

Which is also the reason it's so easy to grow. You can grow a head of lettuce
indoors under artificial lighting in a shitty growth medium in 3 weeks flat
from start to finish, because you're basically mixing a tiny amount of energy
with a bunch of water.

And that's precisely why all these new companies demo it. Look at us, we can
grow a gazillion pretty green nature looking things you put in salads, the
pinnacle of healthy foods, in no time, using much less water, factory-style.
It's a joke.

Same with tomatoes. Five regular tomatoes is about another 55 calories, just
like an entire head of lettuce, or a lollipop. And who eats five whole
tomatoes on a daily basis?

And don't get me wrong, I've eaten about 1/3rd of a head of lettuce and two
tomatoes pretty much every day of my life for more than 20 years. I like
eating them and will continue to do so. Oh and I'm Dutch, too.

But I also get tired of 'revolutionary' food tech pretending as their new ways
of cultivating it changes agriculture. It doesn't. It's just a fancy story for
a fancy urban farm that sells overpriced produce to a fancy 'local' salad bar
that has zero impact on our environment. I want to see revolutions in the
production of staple foods, too, as well as a cultural change in the way we
shape our diets and the food we choose to consume.

So no, the Dutch don't feed the world because we've got a bunch of high-yield
lettuce/tomato installations.

Nonetheless a lot of interesting points in the article, but I just wish it was
a lot less about lettuce and tomatoes. It's really becoming a bit of a parody,
anyone else feel the same? You could literally do an Onion piece on an article
featuring a 26 year old design student who runs a hydroponics lettuce factory
in an old city office.

------
ars
You can do some amazing things with enough energy! And the Netherlands have a
_lot_ of extra energy because of all the geothermal energy they get.

This is not [yet] replicable to other places though.

Hopefully soon - unlimited energy would utterly change the world.

~~~
jorams
Do you have more information on this geothermal energy? Clicking around
here[1] suggests the Netherlands doesn't actually use much geothermal energy
at all.

[1]: [https://www.geothermal-
energy.org/direct_uses/netherlands.ht...](https://www.geothermal-
energy.org/direct_uses/netherlands.html)

~~~
mcv
It's also news to me. Most of our energy still comes from coal and gas, I
believe. I believe we were once ahead of the pack in wind energy, but the
conservative politics of the past decade and a half has made us fall behind
the rest of Europe in switching to sustainable energy.

------
lucideer
Can we put "(Netherlands)" after the word "country" to overcome the clickbait
title?

~~~
lucb1e
As a Dutchman I had no idea it was going to be about us. We feeding the world?
Mkay, that's new. Anyway, +1 on making it less clickbait.

~~~
microcolonel
I'd go for "Netherlands feeds the world, despite its size."

