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The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#81

Post by 21 »

mverwijs wrote: post #61
spiderfarmer wrote: post #39

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 l…

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.

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...

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#82

Post by oh_sigh »

mverwijs wrote: post #61
spiderfarmer wrote: post #39

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 l…

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.

Look at the bird density. They aren't packed in there in the slightest. Have you studied chicken raising? Do you have a better system? Do you really love all live animals or just intellectually love them and feel empathy when one is mistreated?

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#83

Post by jacquesm »

tpeo wrote: post #38

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.

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.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#85

Post by jacquesm »

charlesdm wrote: post #80
jacquesm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality has a price. If you buy the cheapest tomatoes you get the lowest grade, if you're prepared to spend more you get better quality and more taste. The Germans are extremely interesting in this respect deriding the lowest quality Dutch vegetables with all kinds of name-calling ('waterbombs') but at the same time they keep buying them because they are cheap. If you want quality you will simply have to be prepared…

As a Belgian, I'd happily pay x4 to x5 the price of the average tomato you can buy in the supermarket here. But I can't. There's an 80% chance tomatoes are tasteless, and a 20% chance they're amazing. I want amazing tomatoes, every single time. :(

You can learn how to tell them apart if you want. Stepdad was a greengrocer so to me this is second nature but when looking for tomatoes take the smaller ones and the darker ones. They're most likely to be the ones that taste better, even when you pick them from a batch. People instinctively seem to go for the brighter and larger fruits but those are almost always the bland ones.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#86

Post by adrianN »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #69
mverwijs wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These 150.000 birds are getting much better care from this single farmer than when they were spread over 10.000 households like they were 100 years ago.

Citation needed. Having a dozen chicken in a large yard seems to me to be pretty nice for the chicken.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#87

Post by 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.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#88

Post by maxerickson »

Brakenshire wrote: post #65
maxerickson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with tomatoes is that if you pick them ripe they are fragile. So if they are picked ripe, it makes it more difficult to ship them. And then this gets exacerbated when the varieties are selected for shipping and shelf life rather than flavor.

Dutch companies actually grow a lot of tomatoes inside the UK, in greenhouse conditions.

Which are then shipped to the supermarket.

US greenhouse tomatoes are generally bland and watery too.

My garden tomatoes got severely damaged by some fungus this year and barely produced and I'm still not at all tempted to buy store tomatoes.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#89

Post by spiderfarmer »

alsetmusic wrote: post #72
mverwijs wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I find it hard to believe someone loving live animals would put them in such a place. I read the parent post as a statement on production and media representation. I didn't see any claim about farmers loving animals. I'm sure many do, but your argument is addressing something different. I love animals. I eat meat. I want humane treatment of animals when they are bred for consumption. I know this is frequently not t…

This is exactly what happens in our media. All facts are useless because the farmer doesn't put same value on an animal's life as the hipster from the city who has distanced himself from nature more than humans should.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#90

Post by yilugurlu »

agiamas wrote: post #16
cirrus-clouds wrote: post #10

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…

Coming from the southern part of Europe, here in the UK groceries (save for Whole Foods 5pounds a bite..) are almost always tasteless. Except for the apricots at the Turkish deli down the street. I don't know where he gets them from, they are the best apricots I've ever had by far =)

They probably coming from Malatya - Turkey, which famous with its apricots. If you want to taste really good tomatoes ask your Turkish deli for Çanakkale tomatoes or pink tomatoes coming from Turkey.
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