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Comment by partingshots | Hacker News Reader

Doesn’t the Netherlands export the majority of Europe’s fresh food? As long as the supply chain doesn’t break down, I don’t see how it would be possible for Spain and Germany to run out of food.

Especially since they’re all in the EU, even if the Netherlands wanted to close off their borders, there’s no way they really could.

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I'm not sure what you mean by countries in the EU not being able to close their borders, they can.

They can and recently did.

A drop in supply in food all at once could raise the price causing considerable issues.

Based on the greenhouses I could identify on google maps spain's part seems much larger.

Netherlands - https://www.google.com/maps/@52.021357,4.5405597,46292m/data...

Spain - https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7995257,-2.4654344,60237m/da...

I am not sure about fresh food, but The Netherlands is world's second largest agricultural exporter (and no, it's not only flowers):

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...

Also, it's not only about size, also efficiency. Scroll down the article and look at the insane yields per square mile for tomatoes, chilies + green peppers, and cucumbers. No other country comes even close.

That's import+export for you. It's not all local produce.

The Netherlands are the biggest re-exporter of fruits and vegs. In terms of both quantity and value, they are behind Spain:

https://www.freshplaza.com/article/2135083/netherlands-world...

> The Netherlands is the biggest exporter of fresh vegetables though, both looking at quantity and value

Not sure if blind test can determine whether you are eating Netherlands' tomato or styrofoam.

The only good tomatoes from these parts of the world I have tasted were cherry ones. Not sure whether it is cultivar, climate, agricultural practice or terroir. But they taste nothing like real tomatoes.

I think most people never tasted a real tomato...

That's not how it works. There are numbers and the Netherlands exports as twice as Spain. Probably because they have a smaller population, so they consume much less internally. Also it rains a LOT in the Netherlands while Spain is mostly Mediterranean. There is a reason why North Africa didn't have a big population until very recently.

Spain grows most of the fruit and veg, whilst the netherlands grow mostly flowers.

The demand for flowers has somewhat waned and recently saw an article of flower farmers in Africa suffering as nowhere to sell and case of piles of flowers composting away. The impact in that market will be very impacting.

Netherlands does lots of pigs and tomatoes too. Apparently a fair amount of dairy as well.

The Netherland's flower exports top the charts, but they export almost as much (each) meat, dairy and vegetables.

https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2020/03/agricultural-exports-h...

You might try searching the term "Netherlands feeds the world" and perusing the many articles that turn up and perhaps reassess your ideas about the Netherlands.

You are on a different continent, we can just look at the labels on food to see where it comes from.

We also get to see the trucks carrying the food. Go on any French autoroute and 2 out of 3 of the trucks will be from Spain.

You mean registered in Spain. Where is the trailer registered? And what does the place of a vehicle registration has to do with the origin of the cargo they carry?

The trailers have the names of Spanish vegetable companies written in big letters on their sides.

> whilst the netherlands grow mostly flowers.

38 km² of flowers in glasshouses and 272 km² of flowers on open ground.

Total agricultural land use is 18163 km², 11815 km² of which is for growing grass and fodder, most of the remaining 6347 km² is food for human consumption, dominated by potatoes and grain.

So not even 3%.

We do not grow mostly flowers.

Aha, thank you for the correction.

The flowers, however, are overrepresented in most satistics of production and export measured by value - there's a world of difference in the harvest value from an acre of wheat and an acre of roses.

Netherlands provide seeds to all Europe and Spain buy a lot of their seeds to them. They do extensive research on vegetables

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