- 4 months ago
A worker harvest tomatoes grown in Dutch greenhouses.
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00:00The Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world, despite
00:06being only a little bigger than the state of Maryland.
00:09How does a country this size even come close to the U.S., the world's top exporter?
00:15By devoting more than half of its land to farming, and focusing on high-value goods
00:20like eggs, meat, cheese, tomatoes, and peppers.
00:25We are sweet and tiny. It's in our genes, you know. It's our DNA.
00:30In 2024 alone, the Dutch farmed goods worth over $140 billion.
00:36The country pioneered greenhouse growing and now uses robots and algorithms that predict
00:41yield, optimize water use, and can even tell when a tomato is ripe.
00:48But its position at the top is being threatened. Soaring energy prices, labor shortages, and
00:53new rules limiting pollution, or squeezing the industry.
00:57So how did the Dutch become a global agricultural powerhouse?
01:01And more importantly, what can its model teach the rest of the world about how to grow more with less?
01:09In the 13th century, nearly a fifth of what is now the Netherlands was underwater.
01:14So the Dutch built dikes to hold back the sea, and pioneered the use of windmills to pump out
01:18the leftover water. Over centuries, a complex system of pumps kept low-lying land dry.
01:24And from this reclaimed land, small family farms fed the country.
01:34But that all changed during World War II, when Nazi Germany took over.
01:40In 1944, Dutch rail workers went on strike, protesting the occupation.
01:44In response, the Nazis cut off food supplies. Over five months, 20,000 people died from
01:52starvation. It became known as the winter of hunger. After the war, food security became
01:58a national priority. Under the new agricultural minister, Siko Mansholt,
02:03the government industrialized farming.
02:15He subsidized important agricultural products and merged farms into bigger, more efficient ones.
02:21Public investment in research and education transformed Wageningen University into the country's
02:27secret weapon. Its research has been used in over 150 countries. Over the years,
02:34it has spun off dozens of startups. This one gathers electricity from living plants,
02:39and this one builds robotic harvesters. You can find Dutch-inspired greenhouses covering
02:45thousands of acres in Spain, Canada, and China. It all started in Westland, an area just outside of
02:52Rotterdam, with one of the world's largest concentrations of greenhouses. After dark,
02:57they light up the horizon in orange, purple, and green hues from the powerful lamps used to speed up
03:02plant growth. Some people say it will never be really dark in Westland. Here, Marguerite Loya runs
03:08a third-generation tomato farm called Loya Kukers. How did your grandfather grow vegetables? I'm guessing
03:14it didn't look like this. No, no, not at all. It was completely different than in these days.
03:25In these greenhouses, plants can grow a foot a week. Marguerite's team prunes, wraps, and lowers each
03:31one by hand. If you didn't control the vines... Oh yeah, then you then you will get the jungle.
03:37The Netherlands exports more than 900,000 tons of tomatoes a year, despite having a climate that's
03:46naturally too cold and rainy for these warm-weather fruits. While high-tech solutions help them grow
03:53faster and year-round, they still need bees to pollinate every plant. You cannot do it without
03:58them. So they are probably one of the most important tools that we have in our glasshouse. When they're not
04:06pollinating, they live in these bee hotels. In each box are around 800 bumblebees. You can hear them
04:13making more noise. Now, they are still cool. Overhead, LED lights mimic the sun and create optimal summer
04:25conditions year-round. Developed by scientists at Wageningen, these lights run more efficiently than
04:31older sodium bulbs. With the same electricity, you can get almost double light. Watering these plants
04:38has also become more efficient. Over the last two decades, greenhouses have reduced their water usage
04:43by as much as 90 percent. The water will fall here and it will go back at the end of the row and then
04:51it will go into a drain silo. We will clean this water and we will reuse it. That means it takes just four
05:01liters of water to grow a kilo of Dutch tomatoes compared to the global average of more than 200
05:07liters. While tech has optimized much of the growing process, humans still pick tomatoes better than
05:12robots, which struggle to see the fruit through these dense vines. It's ready to be harvested when the
05:18last tomato, this one, is completely red. For example, these two are just perfect. These are ready to be
05:24harvested because that's the moment when they have the best taste. Workers follow this chart to harvest
05:30tomatoes at peak flavor. This is green, so it's color number three, so not ready. This, oh, then this is
05:38quite red, but it's still not red enough. It's color number eight. So this one will be harvested with the
05:44second round this week. Because Loya only picks ripe fruit, it has a small window to get it into cold
05:50storage before it spoils.
06:04Today the tomatoes came. We packed them in the night shift and tomorrow morning everything goes
06:09away with the trucks. So it helps speed up production? This tomato camera.
06:14He's looking for damage, splits. The machine takes two pictures, one from the top and one from the bottom.
06:23This one we see there he had found one split.
06:31Must be somewhere.
06:35Workers still check the bigger tomatoes by hand.
06:37We are checking for the size. It must be between 47 and 62 millimeters. If you see like this,
06:44here you missed one tomato. It's not so nice. And then you look like this. And then we say,
06:53this is nice, but these two are too small.
06:58Robots do a lot around here. This machine on the main factory floor helps sort out tomatoes that are too
07:04small or too yellow for the premium brand. The green one we throw away because it costs too much
07:09time and it's older tomatoes. The taste is not so well. Machines also sort the reddest and sweetest
07:15tomatoes one last time. Then workers package them by hand at these stations so they're ready to ship out.
07:22But tomato greenhouses aren't the only ones relying on lots of tech.
07:35Just a few miles away, Arnaud de van Dijk runs one of the largest pepper operations in the country.
07:41The biggest challenge in the market here is to keep it healthy. It asks every day
07:48a lot of attention to the nature. The nature is a very complex thing.
07:53Every year VD Holland grows 85 million peppers. Like tomatoes, these peppers are grown hydroponically,
08:01meaning not in the ground. And here too computers monitor and adjust everything from temperature
08:07and watering schedules to lighting. These yellow cards track pests like white flies or thrips.
08:13It's in a small layer of lime. Insects are tracking to the color of the color of the color.
08:20And soon cameras will be able to read the sticky cards themselves.
08:24So we're going to a situation where we can monitor which insects are located in the store.
08:31And the sooner we detect a plague, the sooner we can control them, the sooner we can control them.
08:36Together these innovations have allowed Dutch growers to achieve yields 12 times higher than the average
08:42pepper farm globally. Since 2007, the company has also used automated carts guided by wires in the
08:50floor to move harvested peppers from the greenhouse to the processing hall.
09:03On the packaging floor, AI-powered cameras take pictures of each pepper, comparing the images to
09:08a database of ideal fruit. That information is used to sort the peppers by size, weight, shape, and color.
09:16Ones with small imperfections don't go to waste. The company sells them to salad producers and other
09:20food processors. The ones that do pass the camera stage go on to packaging.
09:28This machine drops nearly 400 pounds of perfect peppers into each crate.
09:33More and more automatic palletizing and self-driving forklifts are replacing humans in this factory.
09:42The Netherlands is facing a growing labor crisis, with two-thirds of businesses struggling to find workers.
09:49VD Hollen introduced all this new technology to automate as much of the packaging process as possible.
09:55As much as 95 percent of VD Hollen's bell peppers are exported,
10:00and about 60 percent of all crops produced in the Netherlands leave the country.
10:05Its position on the North Sea makes it easy to ship from giant ports in Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
10:11Germany is the top buyer, but Dutch produce also reaches the UK, China, and the US.
10:19Producing and packing all of this food requires a lot of energy. Greenhouses across the Netherlands use
10:26nearly 107 petajoules, enough to power more than 2 million homes a year. And not everyone's happy about this.
10:34Some studies estimate that a greenhouse-grown tomato could have six times the carbon footprint of a
10:39field-grown one, but that largely depends on the energy source used to grow them. That's why Dutch
10:45growers are trying to change how their farms are powered. Until recently, much of their energy came from
10:51Russian gas. But the war in Ukraine forced the Netherlands to cut off imports. Energy prices
10:57soared as a result, forcing many greenhouses to look for alternatives. Loya already had its own
11:03power plant on site. Heat from the energy-producing process actually warms the greenhouse,
11:08and any extra energy is sold back to the power grid. VD Hollen, meanwhile, turned to a different source.
11:14The company invested 46 million dollars, along with a few other growers, to drill for the renewable
11:25energy source. Valkenning University is working with growers to reduce their energy consumption. Leo
11:37Marcellus is largely credited for the widespread use of LED lights in Dutch greenhouses.
11:42Without light, there is no plant growth. Custom LED light recipes have helped farmers grow strawberries,
11:49cucumber, and asparagus faster. His research on these lights got glasshouses in the country to cut
11:55their power usage by nearly half. And now Leo and his team are seeing if they can take it further.
12:01The question is, can we make as efficient use of the LED lighting as possible? Now he's studying how
12:08LED light color, intensity, and timing can influence growth and lower energy bills.
12:13And here we are doing an experimental setup where we are growing lettuce with different light.
12:21In this lettuce trial, his team figured out that by increasing the light intensity in the final week
12:26before harvest, they can raise vitamin C and sugar content and extend shelf life.
12:31What gives a good growth, what gives a good taste, what gives a good nutritional value,
12:38but also what is most sustainable in terms of less use of energy. And usually that can be a balancing act.
12:47In another room, his team is working with the Singapore Food Agency on bok choy.
12:51Here I can choose any condition. If I give them low light and a low temperature, they will grow slowly.
12:57By adjusting temperature, CO2, and light, they can speed up plant growth.
13:01Many of these testing rooms are pink because red LED lights are better for growing plants.
13:06Red LEDs are the most efficient in converting electricity into light. So a high fraction of red
13:13is normally, I would say, advisable. But it has to be the perfect balance of red,
13:18blue, and white light. For example, this bok choy likes a little more white light.
13:22If it is only red, most plants don't like that.
13:25Leo's colleague, Elena Vincenzi, is studying how barely visible red light affects a tomato's
13:31plant's ability to convert light into energy.
13:33Here you can see that there is a chamber that can be clipped on a leaf. And then,
13:41because the chamber is transparent, the leaf can still receive the light that we give to our normal
13:48treatments. And we are able, through the machine, to actually see what is the rate of photosynthesis.
13:54If the photosynthesis rate is higher, then perhaps the plant, with the same amount of light,
13:59can grow more and faster.
14:03She's also trying to reduce water use. Swapping in different kinds of growing bases for tomatoes
14:08can help with that. They're also studying how more robots can help reduce labor costs.
14:13Several things are studied. One of them is about robotic harvesting of the plants.
14:19There's a lot of interest, of course, in replacing the manual labor by robots.
14:25Much of what's discovered at Wagening ends up back on farms like Loya and Vidi Holland.
14:30Growers often also partly fund the research that we're doing here.
14:35This tight feedback loop between scientists and farmers may be the secret to what makes Dutch
14:40agriculture so efficient. It dates back to the post-war era, when the Dutch government encouraged
14:45researchers and farmers to work together.
14:48When I was a kid, my father, every Monday or Tuesday evening, I think, he had a study club. And then they
14:56were with a few growers and they visited their greenhouses. I think things like that were very,
15:04very positive for the development of our industry.
15:07Now Wageningen's research is pushing innovation beyond growing plants.
15:13The Netherlands is Europe's top exporter of meat, raising 4 million cows, 13 million pigs,
15:20and 104 million chickens every year. All that livestock, especially cows for beef and dairy,
15:27comes with a high environmental cost. And it's not just carbon emissions. The bigger issue here is
15:32ammonia, a nitrogen-rich gas released from fertilizers, manure, and urine. In 2017,
15:39the Netherlands emitted more ammonia per hectare than any other European country. Why? Because it has
15:44the highest livestock density on the continent. Environmentalists say this type of pollution is
15:50stressing the native ecosystem. Excess nitrogen means tall, fast-growing grasses overtake more delicate
15:56native species. And it causes algae blooms and waterways.
16:00To cut emissions, the Dutch government started buying out high-emitting farms.
16:05But calls to limit these emissions have triggered mass protests across the country.
16:18One place trying to find a solution is Wageningen's dairy campus.
16:22This is not a commercial dairy farm. It's a research center.
16:25We can run trials where we separate the urine and the solids.
16:42The separated waste is stored in tanks under the barn to prevent emissions from escaping.
16:46They've also experimented with robot cleaners. But each one costs nearly $30,000. A steep price
16:53for most farms, which would need at least two. The more accessible solution? Changing the cows' diets.
16:59So, can we feed cows in such a way that we have less ammonia emission or less nitrogen losses?
17:07They're testing different feed combinations with the help of AI-powered troughs, which track how much
17:12each cow eats and how much methane and ammonia it produces. They've already found that replacing
17:17fermented grass with maize or fresh grass helps cut methane emissions. And when they lower protein
17:22and nitrogen levels in the feed itself, the cows will release less ammonia. Researchers are also using
17:28AI to track cows' health. The technology can spot issues like foot rot and identify low-emission cows for breeding.
17:34The Netherlands turned its flood-prone country into an agricultural powerhouse and exported that
17:42knowledge around the world. But does Dutch innovation hold the secret to feeding the globe?
17:47The fact is that there is almost a billion people on the planet that go hungry every day.
17:54Jonas Jägermeier is a climate scientist and crop modeler at Columbia University. He points out that
18:00half of the calories humans eat come from crops that are grown outdoors — grains like wheat, rice, and corn.
18:06But we're not going to grow staple crops or calorie-providing grain crops in a greenhouse
18:14environment anytime soon, simply because of financial requirements. To reproduce an equal number in
18:23harvest in caloric production in a desert environment, coupled with a desalination plant that is using
18:33renewable energy, that is a sci-fi scenario that is promising, but we're not quite there yet. So to
18:41replicate those millions and millions of hectares of cornfields somewhere indoor is simply not feasible.
18:47The farms of the future will have to rely on more than just tech. They'll need water, seeds, energy,
18:53local knowledge, and adaptable systems.
18:56There is no silver bullet. Any implementation strategy that would help change how farmers do
19:02practice, how food is processed and transported, and how food is then brought to the consumer,
19:08needs to be in a locally tailored strategy.
19:12Jonas is now building AI tools that can give farmers early warnings of seasonal forecasts,
19:20fine-tune water use, and more importantly, connect growers across continents, allowing them to share
19:25insights in real time. Maybe the real Dutch export isn't tomatoes, beef, or robot harvesters. It's a
19:33mindset — one that values collaboration over competition and policies that drive efficiency.
19:38The Dutch can't feed the world alone, but they've forever changed the way it feeds itself.
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