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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

#271

Post by tirant »

jules wrote: post #12
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…

There are flavourful varieties such as Tasty Tom or small plum tomatoes, but they are much more expensive at €10 per kg versus €2 per kg for a basic variety and less than €1 per kg for the most tasteless variety.

Even Tasty Tom or small plum from AH are terrible compared what you can get locally in Spain or Italy to give an example.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#272

Post by tirant »

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.

Even the most expensive tomatoes at AH suck in flavour compared to the cheapest you can get in Spain or ITaly.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#273

Post by rusk »

mlangdon wrote: post #225
mcv wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since growing myself, I have found a whole new appreciation for vegetables. For all these reasons the stuff you buy in the shop can never be as good (at a reasonable price anyway). It takes very little expertise to grow vegetables yourself, that are better than 90% of the stuff you can buy in the shops.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#274

Post by raugustinus »

ricardobeat wrote: post #203
raugustinus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling modern farmers most competent , intelligent, sustainable is an interesting point of view. Agreed it's very hard to blame the farmers because few would survive not scaling out in the current system. Farming tech is far from sustainable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsoil#Erosion And vertical farming, hydroponics is cool tech and RGB LED's are cool to increase size, weight etc for increased profits. None of…

> And vertical farming, hydroponics is cool tech and RGB LED's are cool to increase size, weight etc for increased profits. None of that has a positive influence on sustainability. Did you even bother to read the article? That has massive implications on the amount of water, energy and chemicals used.

Yeah read the article, and worked with hydroponics for a while. I choose not to eat food grown like this. Squeezing nature for yields is a sure way of depleting your resources. Factory farming like this in reality reduces nutrient levels. But hey I don't believe science is going to save the food chain. Which is why I'm taking my money elsewhere.

Regarding the story of feeding the world. How about the West changes their diet? We don't need to go all out right now on farming, we could fix obesity levels, healthcare cost, excess levels of waste before we need that. But that's not cool science, and there's a lot less profit to be made. So I guess that's not what's going to happen.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#275

Post by mcv »

askvictor wrote: post #224
mcv wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If people found taste so important, tasteless vegetables wouldn't have been so successful. And it wasn't just tomatoes either; the most common potato, the bintje, and later the superbintje, are also famous for having very little taste. In my youth, this was considered normal.

During my student days in the early 1990s, I started buying organic whenever possible, and organic potatoes weren't bintjes. When fellow students came over to eat, they were stunned at the taste. "What did you do with your potatoes?" I just boiled them, nothing more. (I'm a pretty mediocre cook.) They just had no idea that potatoes could taste like that. Tasteless crap was the standard. Even when people could afford better, they didn't know it existed.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#276

Post by mcv »

bogomipz wrote: post #211
mcv wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>"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." Do you have a citation for or more info about this? Were genetically modified tomatoes introduced after the war? I would have thought that came much later with the rise of Monsanto[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr

They're not genetically modified, merely bred for specific attributes, like people have been doing for thousands of years.

Just regular evolution with human selection still works fine, with no need to directly interfere in the genetic makeup.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#277

Post by mcv »

sambe wrote: post #143
mcv wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't find it to be better or worse than any other Northern European countries. And I can't find good tomatoes at any price - the more expensive on-the-vine ones smell good initially but only taste slightly better.

In that case, what do you consider to be good tomatoes? If you don't like any of them, maybe you just don't like tomatoes?

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#278

Post by jacquesm »

chewz wrote: post #268
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…

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 re…

> 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.

That's pretty simple: Poland is now importing a lot of stuff that it used to grow at home. And since Poland is not the wealthiest country it doesn't get the high priced quality stuff.

A lot of stuff that worked under communism does not work equally well under capitalism until a long period of leveling has passed. And on that front Poland has done exceptionally well compared to some of the alternatives, even so there is still a long way to go.

Incidentally, I lived in Poland before the wall fell, and of course what you should add to your story is that if tomatoes were available they tasted better, but they really weren't available all that often.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#279

Post by mcv »

Boothroid wrote: post #156
mcv wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

Perhaps, but the inhabitants of the other thousands of settlements, including many in polders that were once lakes or seas, would probably agree.

Re: The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant

#280

Post by riffraff »

YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 wrote: post #269
riffraff wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

sorry, I should have phrased it better, I don't mean that hunting is declining because of moral reasons, I mean that as it declines and people grow more detached from it it will be considered more morally reprehensible.

It is obviously an opinion not a fact, but as an example, you can consider the attitude of people to eating animals that they ate in the past and not now (porcupine, turtle, cat, dog).

Not only it's considered disgusting, but it's often considered worse than eating other animals.

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