The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant • Hacker News Board

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#241

Post by ajmurmann » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:00 AM UTC

spiderfarmer wrote: post #47

edwinjm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dutch farmers recognised this and focused on new/other kinds of tomatoes with much better taste like cherry tomatoes and vine tomatoes.

If you compare a typical Dutch tomato to a supersized watermelon type tomato from California, the Dutch tomatoes are ten times more flavorful.

What do you mean by "supervised watermelon type tomatoes"? Are you referring to some of the the huge heirloom tomatoes? I find there yellow ones particularly flavorful. Much better than there Dutch stuff.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#242

Post by edwinjm » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:11 AM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #182

21 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There are two types of chickens: the ones grown for their meat, and the ones grown for their eggs (I'm not aware of the English terminology on either). There have been campaigns for both types of chicken to improve their quality of life. Here in NL they were conducted by an NGO called Wakker Dier. There's the campaign against the 'plofkip' (huge chicks who are unable to move, and are force fed) so that grocery stores…

Ah, so farmers never can do good. And when they do good, it's an "propaganda picture".

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#243

Post by prawn » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:14 AM UTC

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…

Generally, a lobby represents one body/industry. If it's working against a group (say, farmers) it's because it represents something else rather than is solely against farmers. In which case, you should be able to guess and identify the lobby from its attack pieces. It might be someone who stands to benefit from sales of pesticides, or an environmental group, etc.

I can't speak for the Netherlands, but in Australia, while there is an active and growing green movement, I would consider the industry-specific lobbying groups to be more successful at landing media pieces to influence the public. These would be lobbyists representing mining, banking, meat production, etc. This is usually because those industries are very well-funded and consolidated compared to environmental groups.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#244

Post by deepGem » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:20 AM UTC

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…

As an Indian, who has lived and worked in USA, UK, Singapore and LatAM, I can attest that produce in supermarkets in all these geographical regions are tasteless. Mostly because, as someone mentioned below they are now bred for ease of shipping. Even in India, vegetables are slowly going the tasteless route, particularly chillies and garlic, but they are a lot more flavorful than their western world counterparts. I remember as a kid garlics were so pungent, you could smell them from a mile. Not the case anymore.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#245

Post by kbart » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:28 AM UTC

davedx wrote: post #120

hellofunk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be hard to find a country with worse food than UK, so no big surprise here. Just my personal experience reflected by many friends acquaintances living there.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#246

Post by kbart » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:41 AM UTC

tuyguntn wrote: post #58

Really interesting, are there any resources I can read about techniques used in Netherlands agriculture industry. I have 5 ha (1 ha = 10.000 m2) land in my home country, but I do not know how to use it, even for what I can use. I will be really glad if someone points out me profitable/most profitable things for this land. (I am from Central Asia, traveling and working abroad)

Farming is a very localized activity as it greatly depends on a climate, soil type, irrigation, demand etc., so I doubt anybody from outside can help you with that. See what neighboring similar sized farms are growing, chances are that they have been doing this for years and have already optimized for the best value.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#247

Post by danmaz74 » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:50 AM UTC

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. :(

Two suggestions:

- smell them. Smell is part of flavor and also correlates with the other parts of flavor. Odorless tomatoes are 90% of the time tasteless

- choose tomatoes which are still attached to a part of the plant when possible. They keep their flavor a bit longer.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#248

Post by danmaz74 » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:52 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #105

guelo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But smelling the produce before buying is considered pretty bad form where I live.

Doing that in supermarkets here is also looked upon as a bit weird. But I don't care, I prefer to look weird and eat the best tomatoes ;)

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#249

Post by krageon » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 7:53 AM UTC

spiderfarmer wrote: post #106

oh_sigh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is simply untrue. You can try spending some time having an actual conversation with real animal rights activists, you might find out that they're real nuanced people (just like you, hopefully).

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#250

Post by hycaria » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 8:02 AM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #182

21 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There are two types of chickens: the ones grown for their meat, and the ones grown for their eggs (I'm not aware of the English terminology on either). There have been campaigns for both types of chicken to improve their quality of life. Here in NL they were conducted by an NGO called Wakker Dier. There's the campaign against the 'plofkip' (huge chicks who are unable to move, and are force fed) so that grocery stores…

>Its very important to be critical of farmers.

I've always felt that it's a bit ironic for people consuming animal products to be critical of breeders. Kinda passing responsibilities on them so tadaaa ! No more consumer guilt.

If you really want to reduce animal exploitation and world GHG emission, cut down your consumption instead of putting even more pressure on producers without accepting to get more money out of your pocket for products. Because generally speaking, people don't want to spend more money on food, as there is so much other essential trash to buy. To each his priorities...