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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

#151

Post by speleding »

jacquesm wrote: post #73
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…

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…

"quality" is a subjective term. You can optimise a tomato for color, flavour, longevity, size (automated picking), and several other parameters. The Dutch tomato industry is very good at optimising for what the market demands, that's how it got to be so big. The market apparently demands the flavourless 'wasserbomben', I don't see a reason to put blame at the producers. If the market would demand something else I have no doubt the Dutch tomato industry would be able to provide it (Dutch supermarkets typically sell half a dozen varieties).

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#152

Post by GlennS »

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…

Everyone here is mentioning Italy, but I associate it with Greece. The first time I walked into a grocery in Rhodes I learned what good tomatoes smell like.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#153

Post by aluhut »

hellofunk wrote: post #116
aluhut wrote: post #45

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

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

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...

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#154

Post by spiderfarmer »

enraged_camel wrote: post #139
spiderfarmer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

If you, by choice, never killed an animal, I absolutely respect that, but society is not ready to draw the line at the same height as you.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#155

Post by spiderfarmer »

codefined wrote: post #138
spiderfarmer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animal bashing is not something farmers do.

Most farmers do literally bash the animals before slaughtering them[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_bolt_pistol

I am talking about Dutch farmers. This is exactly what I mean. For example, early this year Dutch farmers had to explain themselves for something that happened in a Belgian slaughterhouse.

Do you like it when your mother blames you for bugs in her printer's Windows driver?

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#156

Post by Boothroid »

mcv wrote: post #144
stingraycharles wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nothing foolish about it. This was once a backwater, and then people starting draining swamps, and then lakes, and slowly turned this into one of the most fertile spots on Earth, and prospered. It was a good decision. Even with the increasing threat of flooding, it's still one of the nicest places in the world to live.

I suspect the inhabitants of Saeftinghe (and the hundreds of other Dutch settlements vanished beneath the waves, fascinating stuff) might disagree: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeftinghe

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_settlements_lost_to_...

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#157

Post by mcv »

hellofunk wrote: post #115
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.

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.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#158

Post by mcv »

thriftwy wrote: post #14

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?

We already produce enough food for 10 billion people. We just choose not to feed them all. World hunger is very much an economic-political choice.

We give that food to cattle instead. Or we just waste it.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#159

Post by rocqua »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #119
d215 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd like a quote on the NPO there. That is a public non-partisan institution.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#160

Post by spiderfarmer »

bostik wrote: post #137
enraged_camel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Flesh of an unstressed animal tastes better. I can dig the exact page from On Food and Cooking for reference if needed.

Although I always believed that was true, I started having doubts when I saw "Topchef" candidates having trouble distinguishing cow and pig meat when blindfolded.

Stress should be avoided, don't get me wrong, but I don't think our tastebuds are this advanced.

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