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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

#261

Post by Fnoord »

hycaria wrote: post #250
Fnoord wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Its relative, not absolute, and history teaches us we need to be critical of farmers. The recent fipronil scandal only underlines that. Our government failed as well, don't get me wrong.

If you want to reduce harm done to sentient beings (or animals with a CNS) there are many ways to achieve that. Yes, the best way would be going vegan overnight, but that is tough for an individual and quite unrealistic to achieve society-wise. Right now, we are better off reducing meat consumption (ie. via 'meatless monday' initiative) since we don't need to consume that much meat to begin with. If you eat less meat, you can use that money to eat quality meat. Eventually we can irregularly eat lab meat. So, yes, we should be critical to ourselves as well. But that's a different, and very complex discussion (I'm on a Facebook group where this is the main subject, finding the grey between the two extremes and supporting each other).

(Also as a side note there are some non-animal products which are rather bad for GHG emission, btw.)

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#262

Post by jacquesm »

DonHopkins wrote: post #234
jacquesm wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, here in NL it certainly would if you went through a crate of tomatoes at the local supermarket and smelled all of them one-by-one.

You've got two nostrils, so sniff them two at time and take half as long.

That got me laughing but being the serious kind I am now wondering if we're wired up in such a way that if one tomato is bland and the other is rich in smell that we can tell the two apart reliably enough to know which is which?

I always think of us as having two eyes, two ears for stereo vision and sound but never think of us as having 'two noses' to determine the direction of a small or two different smells at the same time.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#263

Post by pvaldes »

> More than a third of all global trade in vegetable seeds originates in the Netherlands.

This is the point. Dutch earn a lot of money with vegetables because they sell most of the seeds of vegetables that Spain, Italy, Morocco and other mediterranean countries use industrially. Because disease resistance, homogeneity of size and time of production, research, availability, and sometimes... plain piratery and renaming of old varieties. Read about the napoleon cherry for example.

1) Tomato is a tropical plant that loves warm and light. More sun means more flavour. You can pick the seeds of the same variety of tomato and culture some in Germany and other in Spain. Unless you can afford to spend a lot of electricity, the last will be always better. The reality is that the bland and the yummy tomato will often belong to exactly the same industrial variety, because...

2)... different grades of quality. Wouldn't be fair to match the cheapest tomato against the better.

3) Consumers do not select only by flavour, they have other interests and will reject a soft and dented tomato. You can sell the first strawberries of the year for a higher price, even if they have virtually no time to develop any flavour. People still love it because strawberries with low flavour is still a better deal that no strawberries at all.

4) more rippen tomato taste better, but if you want your tomato to travel 3000 Km before to reach your table in perfect shape and colour you need to sacrifice something. Small farmers and amateurs that sell locally can afford to pick the fruit more ripe.

5) Antique varieties "taste better", you can enjoy the different flavour variations that came with a bigger genetic diversity, but tomato is a short living species and, unlike good antique apples or plums, seeds of good and true heirloom varieties of tomato are very difficult to find and there is almost not profit in selling it online.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#264

Post by spiderfarmer »

Fnoord wrote: post #260
edwinjm wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I gave two plausible options each explaining the picture. I find both of those explanations more plausible than tons of empty cages. YMMV. I never said farmers are 'evil' people. Farmers can do good (and if you read my post well you'd have seen my examples), but we live in a capitalist world where profit is an important factor, if not the most important factor. So we need others to force the farmers to keep checks an…

There was no potential health damage. The biggest scandal is how such a small issue was made this big by everyone involved. Read up on it. You can swallow 10.000.000 times as much fipronil as maximally allowed and still walk home from the hospital.

Putting the blame on the farmers is wrong too. How on earth could they have known that what the cleaning company used was illegal?

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#265

Post by spiderfarmer »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #228
jorams wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

(1) Nothing. But that doesn't stop activists from bashing Dutch farmers:

https://www.volkskrant.nl/opinie/de-vee-industrie-is-de-grot...

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#266

Post by deepGem »

timje1 wrote: post #256
deepGem wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Devil's advocate: It's possible your sense of smell and taste is less sharp than what it was when you were a kid.

You're killing me. I thought only vision took a hit with age :)

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#267

Post by pombrand »

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…

From going through this whole thread. Best bet Tomato rankings are as follows:

1. Homegrown (in good soil) 2. Italian 3. Albanian (heirloom) 4. Spanish

Smaller, darker and more aromatic are generally better (cherry a good bet), and they're all best in the summer. Did I forget anything?

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#268

Post by chewz »

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…

I disagree. I have grown up in Poland, in 70-ties and 80-ties. We were agricultural but poor country with communist economy. The meat - ham and sausage were rationed, so were sugar. Some of largest strikes in 1976 broke out when government attempted to raise the regulated price of sugar. My mom's salary equalled to 8 USD per month at black market exchange rates.

But the quality of basic food stuff was amazing. The real black bread with honey (razowiec) at every shop, good white bread, fresh milk delivered to your door by 6am every morning, cheese, cottage cheese, butter, potatoes, tomatoes, apples. Most people were first generation city dwellers and they knew how to select good potatoes and tomatoes. And it was all dirt cheap.

Now tomatoes - imported or grown in Poland are tasteless and potatoes are just a commodity - you cannot find any tasty variations. Sausages are mostly disgusting and unhealthy - few years ago it had been discovered that multiple companies are using chemical salt (for de-icing roads in winter) in sausages. Ham is mostly water.

The comparable black bread, good cheese, real sausages etc. one can buy in fancy, hipster, organic shops but at prohibitive prices. Prices that lower class cannot afford.

The income levels in dollar term over last 30 years had grown expotenially in Poland, farms are heavily subsidies also through EU CAP.

So how can one explain that the economy cannot deliver relatively cheap and tasty basic food products (at much higher profit margins as the consumers are now more wealthy and more health conscious) - a task that ineffective, communist economy fulfilled with relative ease.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#269

Post by YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 »

riffraff wrote: post #239
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunting has huge image costs where you live? Are you sure it's not just inside your specific bubble?

I'm fairly sure hunting is declining in all of the western world. As anecdata, consider the outlawing of fox hunting in UK, declining hunting love in France[0], and a similar decline in the US[1]. The more hunting becomes unusual, the higher the number of people who will consider it in negative light compared to those who view it favourably. [0] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37865215 [1] http://deerfarmer.com/wiki…

You should've spent more time sourcing that last claim, considering it was by and large the most bold one.

Furthermore, whilst it may not be obvious in activist circles, seeing the topic was about eating animal produce, the obvious counterpart in hunting would be game animals, and not a sport (which fox hunting is, more or less). My (unsourced) guess would be that most non-vegetarians do not condemn hunting, and it would also be a somewhat hypocritical stance. Furthermore, meat consumption isn't exactly on declining in the world, but you can make your own conclusions about that.

(I'm a city dweller, and haven't hunted anything in my life. I'm not saying that to validate my opinion, but regardless I know quite a bit about the realities of hunting that probably apply to most places, and the reason it is in decline may well not be because of a shift in the moral landscape. It is a consuming hobby, but that doesn't in itself imply that all non-hunters would automatically start to disapprove it more and more.)

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#270

Post by tirant »

Udik wrote: post #186
jules wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy this type of cherry tomato, they're nice and still relatively affordable: http://rooi.versuit.nl/media/catalog/product/cache/6/image/9... They won't beat summer sun grown tomatoes in warmer climates, but they're available all year round. A bit of sugar and a bit of acidity can boost the flavor of sub-par tomatoes, for example for a sauce.

My favourites, I eat tons of them, from Albert Heijn (common Dutch supermarket). But they're better in the summer, if I'm not wrong.

Albert Heijn tomatoes are terrible. Actually most of the fruit in AH is terrible. Ironically it's also the most expensive.
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