Photos Show How Tiny Country Became 2nd Larger Agricultural Exporter

The Netherlands Dedicates More than Half of Its Land to Farming. While itle Its customte is relatively mild, it can’t grow Certain crops like tomatoes year-roast in outdoor Fields. SO, it relies on massive greenhouses to the grows of pounds of the red fruit and other crops years-Round.

The Westland Region in the Netherlands Has One of the Large Concentrations of Greenhouses Worldwide are also some of the World’s Most Efficient, Using Climate Control, Water Recycling, Earth.

Overhead, Efficient Led Lights Mimic the Sun and Help Create Optimal Growing Year-Round Conditions, Speeding Up Plant Growth.

These LEDs Run on Almost Half The electricity as a high-period sodium lamp.

After Dark, The Powerful Lamps Light up the horizon in orange, purple, and green hues.

This Greenhouse, Belonging to the Family-Awned Dutch Company Looye Kwekers, Houses Thousands of Tomato Plants.

The Plants Grow Close to a Foot a Week by climbing up strings that hang from the ceilings.

Farmers take scissors lifts to the top each week, Lower the strings by a foot, and wrap the tips of the tomato plants around the new string, so they’ll kep growing.

Computers Manage Everynding From Lighting and Temperature to Watering Schedules, but pruning and Harvesting are Still by Hand.

That’s Because Machines have a hard time seeing the fruit through the plants’ Thick foliage.

There’s the Growing Interest in Replacing More Manual Labor Jobs, Like Harvesting, With Robots in ORDER TO REDUCE LABOR COSTS.

Bees pollinate every tomato plant in the Greenhouse.

“You cannot do it with. So they are probably probably of the most important tools that have had in our Glassshouse,” Stefan Lazar, A Cultivation with Looye Kwekers, Told Business Insider Abby Narishkin During A Visit to the Netherlands in September 202.

When they’re not pollinating, they live in boxes that lazar calls “bee hotels.” Each Bee Hotel Contains About 800 Bumblebees.

Machines Sort the Redest and Sweetest Tomatoes. Then, Package workers say by Hand.

There’s a tight window to eather ship say out to the story or get say into Cold storage before they go.

Because they’re picked when they’re already ripes, workers have to get processed, packaged, and into go store with 24 hours.

IT TAKES 4 LITERS OF WATER TO Grow a kilo of dutch tomatoes, compared to the global average of more than 200 liters.

Looye Kwekers Farmers will this by Reusus the Water. There’s a drain pip on each aisle that Collects the condensed water sweat off plants, it flows to the end of the aisle where itn, sanitized, and reused.

Like Looye Kwekers, Vd Holland Its Pepper Hydroponically Plants, Producing About 85 Million Peppers Annually, Said Arnaud van Dijk, Vd Holland’s Co-Wood and Director.

Despite Being Indoors, Pests Are Still a Problem in Some Of These Greenhouses. These Sticky Yellow Cards Snag Some of the Intruders. Van dijk said the pests are attracted to the Yellow Color.

Van dijk is working on training Computers to Read the Cards and Identify Who Pests Are On The So Thats Can Quick Action.

“The sooner we detect a pest, the better and easier we can control it biologically,” van dijk Said. That May Include Releasing Friendly Mites that eat the pests.

VD Holland has ben uses these automated carts SINCE 2007. Like Looye Kwekers, Humans Harvest the Red Bell Peppers by Hand, and THEN CARTS TRANSPORT THAT TO THE PROGRAM GUIDED BY WIRES IN THE FLOOR.

On the Packaging Floor, AI-Powered Cameras Photograph Each Pepper and Compare It to A Database of Ideal Fruit.

That information is saying to sort the peppers by size, weight, shape, and color. The peppers that pass the Camera Stage Go on Packaging.

Some studies estimate that a greenhouse-grown tomato coulud have six the times the carbon footprint of a Field-Grown one.

That’s Because Unil Recently, some of the Energy Came from Russian Gas, but the War in Ukraine forced the Netherlands to Cut Imports. SO MANY Greenhouse Had to look for alternatives.

VD Holland, for Example, Tourned to Geothermal Energy, Investing $ 46 Million, Along With A Few Other Growers, to Drill. Van dijk said it has cut the Company’s Gas Consumption in Half.