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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

#111

Post by hellofunk »

EliRivers wrote: post #87

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 permanen…

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.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#112

Post by pjc50 »

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.

Have you got them confused with Iceland, or are thinking of wind energy?

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#113

Post by tigershark »

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…

I'm always sad at how tasteless are vegetables that you can find in uk compared to Italian ones..

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#114

Post by cool_username »

adrianN wrote: post #86
spiderfarmer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of curiosity, do you genuinely believe there is a citation out there relating to the treatment of chickens on this farm today vs. treatment of chickens on 10000 small household farms 100 years ago?

It comes across as though you are demanding impossible standards of evidence here in order to cut off a side of an argument you don't agree with, and don't want to begin to consider?

"Citation needed" is not a universally acceptable reflexive alternative to discussion of things you don't personally agree with.

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

Citation needed.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#115

Post by hellofunk »

Someone wrote: post #84

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.

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.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#117

Post by hwillis »

stingraycharles wrote: post #59
farnsworth wrote: post #41

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.

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.

> 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

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#118

Post by davedx »

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…

I don't know about that? "Boer zoekt vrouw" is incredibly popular. One of my listening exams for NT2 was a farmer giving an interview about his life which was very interesting. I have relatives here who grew up working in the greenhouses. I admittedly don't read much mainstream Dutch news, but I don't get this impression.

The one thing that jumps out if I think about Dutch farming and the news lately is the Fipronil incident. But even that was obviously one bad actor - however bad it is that it spread through so many farms and had such a large impact on Dutch farming.

There are some farms with bad reputations, but farming in general seems to do quite well here!

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#119

Post by spiderfarmer »

d215 wrote: post #109
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…

This piece, from a foreign media outlet is the only positive story about Dutch agriculture I saw in nearly a month. The last one was about how little antibiotics we use compared to the rest of the world.

Stories about how our farmers are bad? Missed the whole fipronil hype that completely unsubstantiated?

Talk to a farmer. Ask him who speaks for him nowadays. The lobby is "doodgepoldert". There is none.

Check how the NPO, Wakker Dier, Pvdd, Milieudefensie and Greenpeace are connected and you'll see the size of that lobby.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#120

Post by davedx »

hellofunk wrote: post #111
EliRivers wrote: post #87

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 permanen…

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 veg…

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.
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