The Netherlands is a small country.
It’s so small, you could fit it into the U.S. two hundred and seventy times.
But it’s big when it comes to making food.
Remarkably it has the second largest agricultural exports in the world,
mainly through being able to produce vast amounts of food on tiny plots.
The Netherlands isn’t exactly designed for mass farming.
Because of limited space farmers have learned to eke out as much as possible from the land.
With a third of the country under sea level, the Dutch mastered how to make land using
levees and built windmills to drain marshland to create fertile soil.
This area just outside of Amsterdam - Flevopolder - is the largest artificial island in the
world and didn’t exist half a century ago.
Nowadays over half the ground in the Netherlands is used for agriculture.
It makes more food than it’s people can eat.
But there was a time when the Dutch faced starvation.
1944 - and the Allies begin to liberate Europe.
The Nazis occupy the Netherlands and begin a blockade of the North.
It created a food shortage so severe, the Dutch Government encouraged its people to
forage for acorns and chestnuts.
Tens of thousands perished from famine.
After the war, as the Dutch rebuilt, ensuring food security became a priority.
The issue was important to the new Minister for Agriculture Sicco Mansholt -
a former farmer and a resistance fighter in the war.
He would begin to drive changes that would turn farming into big business.
Before the war, Dutch farms operated like those in most other countries. Small plots
had a few livestock and produced a mixture of seasonal crops to service local populations.
Mansholt wanted mass production
and built on a decades-long system of state support for farming.
He pursued a policy of land consolidation. Larger, more productive farms were encouraged
to absorb smaller, less profitable farms.
It was all about using less labor to improve yields.
In 1963 the Government launched a fund to help older farmers sell up
and to help young farmers start new businesses.
State funding into research and technology such as fertilizers and machinery followed
and thanks to aid from the US Marshall Plan, numbers of tractors rose quickly,
helping farmers work more land.
Dairy production grew fast as cooling tanks and milking machines were invented.
In 1960 the average Dutch dairy cow would produce 4200 kg of milk per year;
in 2007 this had nearly doubled to 7,880 kg.
Oversupply of milk wasn’t a problem - the Dairy Board created Joris Driepinter
and he encouraged kids to drink plenty of it.
But technical innovation didn’t stop with machines.
The dutch pioneered specialist greenhouses, creating conditions that would result in many
more plantings than ever before.
“These greenhouses are in the south western section of the Netherlands
and they enable farmers to grow crops the year round.”
“With temperature and humidity carefully controlled,
an elaborate water system keeps the crops properly moist”
If you were to put all of the Dutch greenhouses together today they’d cover an area the
size of Manhattan.
“Farming under glass, another example of dutch ingenuity!”
Then there was a huge discovery in 1959.
The vast Groningen gas field would offer Greenhouse horticulture a huge boost.
Farmers profited from the cheap energy, as their crops benefited from the heat
and the added CO2.
The Netherlands now has the world’s highest yields per hectare for cucumbers, chili peppers
and tomatoes; all carefully picked for their profitability.
Reducing water use is part of making efficiencies too - today some farms use just four litres
to grow a kilo of glasshouse tomatoes. The global average is 214 litres.
All this built on a rich culture of farming that already existed. The Dutch were master
breeders of plants and livestock and were a nation of traders thanks to the ports at
Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
The State built on this expertise to transform farming, including a focus on education and
research, as part of a holistic approach to benefiting the entire industry.
It hasn’t all been good though - The Dutch have been criticized for getting ahead with
over-intensive methods and using synthetic fertilizers to boost production.
They’re now working to change this
In 1999 the country used more fertilizer than any other European country, spreading on average
500 kilos per hectare. By 2014 though, the figure had more than halved.
By working together farmers, scientists, businesses and the state turned the Netherlands into
a world leader in modern farming.
Its knowledge and state of the art technology will be vital in tackling the future of a
rising global population, with billions more mouths to feed.