The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number 2 exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270x its landmass. How on Earth have the Dutch done it? That copious output is made all the more remarkable by the other side of the balance sheet: inputs. 20 years ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “2x as much food using 50% as many resources.” Since 2000, van den Borne and many of his fellow farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by 90 %. They’ve almost completely eliminated the use of chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses, and since 2009 Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by 60%.
The way in which the Netherlands uses architecture to feed the world is best seen from above. Dutch agriculture is defined by vast landscapes of greenhouses which dominate the architectural landscape of South Holland. In total, the country contains greenhouses in an area 56% larger than the island of Manhattan.
1 proposition for the future of the countryside can be found in the Netherlands. On the Hook of Holland, a vast sea of greenhouses surrounds vernacular Dutch farmhouses, alive with high-tech, innovative food production. Despite its small size, and dense population, the Netherlands is the world’s second-largest exporter of food. Such an accreditation would not be possible using conventional farming methods. But the Dutch countryside is far from conventional. In place of plowed furrows and green grazing fields, there are extraordinary greenhouse complexes with climate-controlled farms, some spanning over 1 km2.
Over the past 60 years, greenhouse production has been focused on yield. If you compare a field in Spain with greenhouses in the Netherlands, we are more sustainable because we are using agricultural land more optimally. If you want the same yield in Spain, you need 20x as much land. But the best part of the story is because we grow under controlled conditions, we can use biological controls. There are hardly any pesticides used in greenhouse production, but it’s also more efficient with water. The 80 kilograms per meter in the Netherlands is achieved with 4x less water than the 4 kilograms of tomatoes in Spain.
but there’s a claim hydroponics don’t “taste” good:
Soil is fundamental for preserving an ecosystem, and for delivering flavor and nutrition. There is a lot of complex biology in soil, including fungal and bacterial networks, which enable the plant to absorb these micronutrients. When you farm hydroponically, it’s a very inert environment where you are growing from a substrate and you’re adding 5 inputs. It’s very hard, almost impossible, to argue that a plant grown in a hydroponic environment has access to the same nutrition as a plant grown in healthy soils.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 