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Voices of ACES Blog

IBIP Day 6 | Exploring the Netherlands! Small country, great farmers

Students standing in front of a building

Where we went:
SolyCo Tomato Cooperative
Boerderij Het Lansingerland (dairy farm)
SoNatural Orchid facility

Who we met: Gertjan van der Spek, Peter Gille , Dirk-Jan Uittenbogaard, and Niek Botden

Our first stop of the day was at SolyCo Tomato Cooperative, and we visited their green house. They showed us every step of the tomato growing process and explained the steps from growing to harvesting to packing and distribution. They do not use chemicals, but rather use biocontrol to manage their tomato crop. SolyCo exports tomatoes to Spain. Their family has been growing tomatoes for the past three generations, and they are very specialized in this field.  We got to see how the tomatoes were categorized and boxed.

Our second stop of the day was to a gorgeous touristic dairy farm owned by the Gille family: Boerderij Het Lansingerland. This dairy farm is considered an agro-tourism site and started as a 60 head dairy farm, beginning with the owner's father. Now the farm houses about 120 cows, which are milked through a high tech machine. The milk is not organic, but they are looking to produce organic milk in the next few years. A few years ago, the government requested to purchase the land that the dairy farm was located on, but since it was at such a low price the owners needed to be innovative in order to keep the land. With this change, a day care teaching students about agriculture, a completely organic on-site store, a restaurant, and a camp/”glamp”-site were all added to mold the land into a usable space for both recreational activities and agriculture. (What is glamping you ask? Why glamorous camping, of course!)

Afterward we went to the So Natural Orchid production warehouse, the largest orchid production facility in the world. It is owned by the five brothers in the Smaal family. They produce 13 million plants per year and export 8 million of them to the United States. SoNatural produces their plants organically. It takes about two years to grow their orchids, starting from the laboratory until it reaches the retailers. We saw the different stages of the orchid production and learned about the production facility. It is completely natural and uses no harmful chemicals. The orchids are sold to multiple retailers, and there is no middle man. The orchids are also placed in decorative pots and some are sold in the store. Our entire day was extremely interesting!

Some Interesting facts:
1. The tomato greenhouse we went to produces 86 kilo/square meter. This is much higher than the competitors from Spain and other tomato producing countries.

2. No one knows the difference between the Netherlands and Holland (no joke).

3. Many farms are turning into agro-tourism sites to help diversify. The dairy farm we visited had not only dairy milk production, but also a small retail shop, "glamping", a restaurant, and pretty soon a small sustainable farm.

4. During orchid production, spiders are welcome in the greenhouse. The spiders help trap pests that could be damaging to the orchid. They don't use pesticides to remove the spiders before shipping them off for retail.