Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

nationalgeographic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 297 posts

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#221

Post by gvd »

polskibus wrote: post #52

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 swit…

You obviously never had boerenkool. Probably the reason they don't grow beyond 5f5

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#222

Post by jcfrei »

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…

In my opinion a big problem in developing as well as developed countries is the idea that farming should be a family business. Here in Switzerland the government is very slowly introducing legislation that favors big farms over smaller ones. This is usually one of the hardest things - convincing society that farming is better done as a profession within a company rather than by a family as a sort of vocation. Usually farmers will lobby against laws that favor bigger farms thereby limiting the productivity of agriculture while maintaining their traditional socio-economic status. The Dutch society might have a different historical understanding of farming (being a seafaring nation that heavily relied on trading) which made the introduction of these new laws easier - but I'm just guessing on that last point.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#223

Post by 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.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#224

Post by askvictor »

mcv wrote: post #53
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…

Netherland is quite famous for its ability to grow completely tasteless vegetables. After WW2, people didn't consider taste very important; only appearance, size, cost, and maybe nutritional value mattered, so lots of tasteless vegetables were bred. Eventually customers started revolting, and now there are plenty of very tasty tomatoes available. They're more expensive, though, and not everybody can afford them. To a…

I disagree that consumers didn't find taste important, but probably was trumped by other factors. The major factor (not mentioned in your list) was a result of the industrialisation of farming and marketing (I.e. supermarkets). Vegetables had to be able to transport and store well, and maintain appearance at the end of that. So process (both breeding and other) were adapted to those goals.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#225

Post by mlangdon »

mcv wrote: post #53
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…

Netherland is quite famous for its ability to grow completely tasteless vegetables. After WW2, people didn't consider taste very important; only appearance, size, cost, and maybe nutritional value mattered, so lots of tasteless vegetables were bred. Eventually customers started revolting, and now there are plenty of very tasty tomatoes available. They're more expensive, though, and not everybody can afford them. To a…

You are missing the key quality for which industrial scale produce has been selectively bred over the past century: shippability. The ability to be placed in a box and moved thousands of miles without falling apart is the paramount quality of mass produced produce. Go to a farmer's market, be anything but delicate with a large heirloom tomato and you will understand what I mean.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#226

Post by Amygaz »

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…

Are tomatoes grown in the UK more tasty, or is it all the same?

I am asking because I've moved back/forth a couple time between the US and Canada, and tomatoes made in the USA or central/south America are tasteless in the US. When I see tomatoes made in Canada in a US store that's what I buy, no matter what the price is, organic or not. Savoura is the brand that I prefer, but then again, I am not sure it is Canadian, and they make it all over the world and it taste different depending where they come from...

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#227

Post by mamcx »

ciconia wrote: post #172

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.

That maybe in USA/Europe. Here in latin-america most food is great.

Obviously USA-style food is already here that taste bad.

For example, Mac Donalds is always considered terrible here...

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#228

Post by NicoJuicy »

jorams wrote: post #198
NicoJuicy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did the Netherlands had to do with this? The only thing I know is that done Dutch people sold illegal medecine to Belgian farmers and the Dutch were informed, but didn't alert Belgium That's what they had to explain, because it endangered the did supply

You are talking about different things. What spiderfarmer is talking about is a scandal in a Belgian slaughterhouse, where animals were being abused. This was filmed[1] by an animal rights organization, sparking outrage. What you are talking about is the Fipronil scandal[2]. A Belgian company, Poultry-Vision, bought Fipronil from Romania and mixed it with DEGA-16. A Dutch company, Chickfriend, bought the mixture and…

But what did (1) had to do with the Netherlands?

(2) was the only link I knew, so I was aware that I probably talked about something else. If I'm not mistaking, Poultry Vision didn't deliver to farms in the food sector, while Chickfriend did ( chicken farms) -> illegal

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#229

Post by westiseast »

GlennS wrote: post #152
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.

Yeah, i stopped eating tomatoes in the U.K. after a holiday in Crete.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#230

Post by flomo »

hwillis wrote: post #173
selimthegrim wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume this is why they reversed the river too?

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... 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.

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_...

Post reply on HN