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Comment by tbarbugli | Hacker News Reader

Only problem is that dutch vegetables have no taste and are still insane expensive compared to meat (which is also tasteless). So yeah, awesome thinkering and efficiency here, but quality is not there.

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Actually a bit of a myth (I'm Dutch). It's more a case of targeting different markets with different price and quality ratios. E.g. Germans love to complain about Dutch water bombs but buy them by the kilo anyway because the stuff is cheap. They don't realize the more expensive varieties also available to them come from the same country. You don't have to buy the cheap ones but they do; it's their poor tastes that are driving the demand for this.

Likewise, Italy imports a lot of tomatoes (more than they export according to this: https://www.freshplaza.com/article/2158667/italian-table-tom...). Most of those come from the Netherlands. Italians are of course famously picky when it comes to their food. Yet they seem to buy Dutch produce.

The other problem is the Netherlands are at risk of getting wiped out by rising sea levels.

Your example of Italy is bad news - in effect countries that could produce their own are buying Dutch because it’s cheaper, presumably because economies of scale now work in Holland’s favor.

In other words we depend on a country that’s at risk of being wiped out by flooding for food _and_ that same countrys dominant market position is also holding back food production in other countries.

Sounds like the back story for a bad movie.

Sea level changes are not that much of a challenge. We have centuries of experience building infrastructure to manage that and decades more to leverage that. Much of the country is already below sea level and already well prepared for extreme water levels. Some of the infrastructure will need some upgrading of course. The reality of sea level changes is that they will be most devastating in places where they won't be able to pull together the economic resources to put infrastructure in place or where they are making the historic mistake of assuming it won't happen.

This is a myth. Despite the global warming, Dutch sea level rising has not accelerated. See e.g. https://www.clo.nl/en/indicators/en0229-sea-level-dutch-coas...

I was worried about that too, only it turns out that due to the exact location the risks due to the sea level are much lower than in other countries. Having the British Isles as a buffer from the Atlantic really helps.

Changes to the weather pattern (particularly the rain) are a bigger cause of concern.

I wonder if Dutch tomatoes imported to Italy are canned and then branded as "made in Italy"?

That'd be illegal for food, which must state the country of origin.

You are probably right in the straight forward example. I'm sure most of the schemes below are legal though.

-"packed in Italy"

-Add herbs and seasoning to the can.

-Process it to pasata.

-Add lots of Italian branding, Italian head office address with "made in EU"

Labelling law is not that strict in the EU except for meat and fish. The idea of a single country of origin is pretty dubious anyway.

In the UK, supermarket tomatoes imported from The Netherlands are also common. The tomatoes are mostly tasteless, regardless of the variety. Even the premium-priced organic ones have little flavour.

That's what modern, mass-produced agriculture gives us: tasteless, low-cost produce all-year round because price mostly trumps other factors for many, if not most, consumers. But it seems that even expensive mass-produced varieties are just as tasteless as their cheaper counterparts.

Tomatoes flavour often gets killed by chilling them too far - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2109336-heres-why-putti...

There are probably other things going on as well, but this seems to be one of the major factors at play.

The UK used to be infamous for low quality bland food. So, it's not surprising that people tend to buy cheap low quality stuff there. Same in Germany (I live there currently). The quality of the produce in the super markets is quite poor. I recently was in Poland; they seem to have even lower standards/expectations there. Don't blame the Dutch, blame the local food culture (or lack thereof). The premium stuff gets shipped to where it most appreciated.

The UK, famous for bland food? The most popular dish in the UK is curry. The relative lack of spicyness in European food vs British food is very noticeable.

The reason that Italy imports Dutch tomatoes is probably for using them in tomato sauce and other tomato products.

Italy's export of tomato products is far greater than its raw tomato export: see e.g. http://www.tomatonews.com/en/global-tomato-products-trade-20...

So no, I wouldn't say that Italians like Dutch tomatoes as much as their own.

I live in the Netherlands and disagree with your point about the price. I usually cook meals for 2-3 people. They usually cost less than 3 euro for vegetables (in total, not per person). Meat and/or cheese are usually the most expensive. And those meals contain a lot more vegetables than the typical meal in the USA and southern or eastern Europe.

I can concur to this. I have a friend from Italy where he worked during the summers at family farms down south where they produced tomatoes the natural way. Eating tomatoes in Netherlands is like eating paper, he said. The same goes for lettuce. There is no taste and it goes bad/degrades much faster even if you keep it in the refrigerator

The same applies everywhere in Europe outside of Italy and France.

One of my biggest complaints about living in the Netherlands is the goddamned tomatoes. Even after seasoning them and trying many different kinds, I just couldn't find one that was like... a tomato, in the way that I know it.

I find the small cherry tomatoes (the "snoepgroente" ones) to be delicious, in the right season (of course quality varies throughout the year). With some buffalo mozzarella from Italy they make an excellent meal.

Well as you know tomatoes don't grow naturally in the Netherlands.

The whole thing about Dutch farming is efficiency. Produce vast quantities with minimal manpower or land use. Feeding the world>taste.

> Only problem is that dutch vegetables have no taste

The expression “like Dutch tomatoes” has become an insult for vegetables being sold on the local market exactly for the reason you mention.

Vegetables are only expensive because meat is heavily subsidised by the Common Agricultural Policy.

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