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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

#101

Post by calpaterson »

user5994461 wrote: post #25
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…

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

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.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#102

Post by guelo »

jacquesm wrote: post #85
charlesdm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my experience smell is the best indicator. You want your fruit to smell like fruit. If it has no smell it doesn't have any flavor either.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#103

Post by pakitan »

bbvnvlt wrote: post #4
madmax108 wrote: post #3

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…

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 'me…

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?

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#104

Post by jorams »

ars wrote: post #54

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.

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...

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#105

Post by jacquesm »

guelo wrote: post #102
jacquesm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my experience smell is the best indicator. You want your fruit to smell like fruit. If it has no smell it doesn't have any flavor either.

Smell and taste are so intricately related that loss of the sense of smell usually translates into a significant loss of the sense of taste so you are absolutely right. But smelling the produce before buying is considered pretty bad form where I live.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#106

Post by spiderfarmer »

oh_sigh wrote: post #82
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.

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?

For animal rights activists there is no acceptable way to keep an animal. They want to regulate farms until it's economically impossible to produce meat (from living animals). I get that, but in my view nature is brutal and I have no problem killing an animal for a nice BBQ. Who is closer to nature?

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#107

Post by bbvnvlt »

pakitan wrote: post #103
bbvnvlt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'me…

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?

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)

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#108

Post by spiderfarmer »

raugustinus wrote: post #70
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…

Calling modern farmers most competent , intelligent, sustainable is an interesting point of view. Agreed it's very hard to blame the farmers because few would survive not scaling out in the current system. Farming tech is far from sustainable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsoil#Erosion And vertical farming, hydroponics is cool tech and RGB LED's are cool to increase size, weight etc for increased profits. None of…

You are misquoting me. On purpose?

Compare our farmers to the rest of the world. Study it. Please tell me in detail how they are not among the most intelligent, competent and sustainable.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#109

Post by d215 »

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…

Hmm, I am from the Netherlands too. Not sure which media and lobby against farmers you're exactly referring to. Who would be putting up this lobby and to what ends?

Now I know that there is a big lobby in favour of agriculture in the Netherlands, that is highly successful and had basically a political party in its pocket up until the mid-90s - the CDA, you might want to google Gerrit Braks for example. This lobby was one of the enablers of the rise of the high-tech agri-cultural industry in the Netherlands as we know it today.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#110

Post by spiderfarmer »

usaphp wrote: post #79
alsetmusic wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> large part of our country thinks that our farmers are incompetent, stupid, nature-hating animal bashers

Animal bashing is not something farmers do.
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