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Comment by cornholio | Hacker News Reader

If all arable land of Netherlands would be covered in datacenters, they would draw more energy than the entire world production, and would skyrocket the NL GDP simply from the services required, such as building, installation, guarding, decommissioning and recycling, powering them etc.

The capital density per square foot is 4 to 5 times orders of magnitude higher than agriculture, to suggest the two compete for land use is utterly ridiculous.

Agriculture competes with urbanization and it will always lose, as it should, because it's not an inherently superior or moral use of land: most of agriculture are ecologically disastrous monocultures drenched in herbicides and fertilizers. A corn field is not a bucolic utopia, but a carefully managed anthropic environment where nature was all but banished for the economic welfare of the rural population.

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Except in the Netherlands, where urbanization is actually losing from agriculture. We have a structural housing shortage while 54% of this tiny land's surface is used for agriculture, and then mostly for those disastrous monocultures.

Dutch farmers are probably the most privileged group in the country and they are fighting tooth and nail to preserve that status no matter the cost.

Anything they say or complain about should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

It sounds so arrogant to say farmers are privileged, while these families have worked for generations to build these farms. There are even people advocating to take the farms from them, if necessary by force. I don’t blame the farmers if they want to hold on to every inch, and to fight for every right they still have.

No one "worked for generations". We each get one lifetime, that's it.

My emotion don’t care about your prdantry. I worked on a farm together with my father and grandfather. My grandfather’s grandfather started it as a dirt poor peat digger who lived in a peat house and worked till the day he died. Say what you will about my brothers farm, but I will physically stop anyone trying to it from him. He does a great job producing quality products with minimal emissions, while maintaining the great landscape and animals around him. If you want the destroy all that in favor of datacenters, you’re the problem, not him.

That dubious take, even if true, doesn't give them the right to destroy nature of the entire country.

Among other things, their influence on the water management policy has an effect of private homes literally sinking in certain parts of the country.

They don’t destroy nature any more than cities and datacenters do. We just picked the wrong species to protect.

They are not taking the farms from them, they are buying them.

Agro-industry in the Netherlands is unsustainable and all the parties involved know it. Whatever they say, what we're watching here is just the buyout negotiations.

Buying them, while preventing they start over elsewhere. And also, all savings in emissions are used to expand emissions in other industries. That doesn’t sound fair, and isn’t.

First of all your claim that all savings in emissions are used to expand emissions in other industries needs a reference, but even if this claim were true, one could easily argue that more people on the Netherlands would benefit (for example) from affordable housing, than from exporting powdered milk or greenhouse tomatoes

Check https://www.ammoniakrechten.nl

Also, farmers don’t have to disappear for more housing. It seems the government does a great job pitting a lot of its citizens against farmers by lying that they are holding back new housing development, while the real issue is a lack of builders, too stringent guidelines and a lack of building materials.

> There are even people advocating to take the farms from them.

That’s the only option left on the table if they won’t shrink the livestock and diversify as farmers.

Let’s be real: it’s not like this legislation came out of the blue. Nitrogen deposition as a problem is something the sector has known about for a while. Instead of diversifying away from nitrogen emission these companies chose to double down on nitrogen washing technology. Turns out that technology doesn’t work.

Intensive livestock in the way it’s happening now doesn’t have a future in the Netherlands. I’d like to go even further and say that it makes a poor investment anywhere in the world.

Farmers are entrepreneurs. Being an entrepreneur means managing risks and they did that pretty poorly as a sector.

A lot of farmers invited the risk and harvested its profits. Had they diversified they would have been in much better shape.

You can’t eat your cake and have it..

No, it sounds arrogant and privileged to make it sound as if only farmers have worked hard for generations. We all have.

Saying you worked hard has nothing to do with privilege. You’re repeating some of the words you heard elsewhere out of context.

And unlike you, farming families invested almost everything they made back into the farm, for their children, in order to see it continue. And the children (like me) who don’t continue on that farm all have to agree that a large part of their inheritance is gifted to the brother or sister who does. That’s something you only see in well run family companies. The entire family wants to see it succeed.

That’s one reason why the BBB got a lot more votes anyone expected. Nearly everyone in NL is related to a farming family and they have gathered a lot of sympathy because arrogant unsympathetic politicians and citydwellers are bashing their heritage and preying on their land.

> You’re repeating some of the words you heard elsewhere out of context.

That is quite an arrogant claim, sir. You know not me, nor which words or contexts I consumed.

You certainly addressed the substance of my comment here.

You made assumptions and accusations about me ("Unlike you, ...") that I see no point in honoring that with any further comment.

Inheriting a farm is privilege.

Yes it was a real privilege to see my parents struggle financially, without enjoying things that are commonplace in other families, like ‘free weekends’ and ‘holidays’. All so they could make the investments that were necessary to keep the farm afloat. There was no glamour. They weren’t “millionaires” with the accompanying lifestyle.

And it’s not like you magically inherit a million dollar farm either. You saw the suffering that went into it from the day you were born. That has a cost and takes a toll. It just comes with a lot of responsibility and I don’t think you should envy that.

They spent their whole life working that job, not just 5 days a week from 9 to 5 and the kids started helping as soon as they were able to. Like 5 years old. They did enjoy it, because it’s honest work. But they didn’t get to reap the rewards like they would have gotten in other companies.

Saying that any result of hard work is a privilege with a negative connotation makes me puke. You know literally nothing about this life. And you should stop commenting on it.

> most of agriculture are ecologically disastrous monocultures drenched in herbicides and fertilizers.

In the EU they use substantially less pesticides and fertilizers than we do in the US, and have as good or better yields.

Maybe that’s just setting a low bar.

Dutch agriculture is anything but a bucolic idyl, instead consisting of very large industrial operations owned by an ever decreasing number of companies that produce vast amounts of food for export using imported feed and plowing the manure that remains, truly stupendous amounts, into the soil thereby rendering it effectively dead.

Large tracts of the province of Drente, formerly poor and backward and hence, in a way, pretty, have been taken over by lily plantations (yes, the flower) that are absolutely drenched in pesticides.

Most food crops are grown in enormous greenhouses that take monstrous amounts of energy to heat and that are lit up 24 hours a day to increase yields, making it difficult for people in surrounding villages to sleep. They are automated as much as possible and the work that can not be automated is done by underpaid immigrant workers living in horrible conditions.

So, yes, Dutch agriculture has “as good or better yields”, but it’s still ecologically disastrous.

It would be a lot more ecologically disastrous to move operations to less suitable areas.

Wouldn’t most other places in Europe be much more suitable though just because of lower population density (and energy prices in some cases)?

I meant that agriculture in our fertile delta is way more efficient than trying to do the same in other countries with less suitable areas.

So we're sacrificing the Dutch nature out of altruistic motives? And the rest of the Dutch people don't get a say about the biodiversity in their country, the farmers should make this noble sacrifice on their behalf, for the good of the world? Or is it perhaps just a transparent excuse to keep polluting until only grass, stinging nettles, and blackberries remain?

You’re not sacrificing Dutch nature. Your argument is based on what you hear from doomsayers who make a lot of noise based on incomplete research. The grass, stinging nettles and blackberries you saw on TV only went a couple of meters deep at the edge of forests. It’s not like it takes over entire forests. They are now researching how nitrogen from farms actually deposits, because everything we know until now has been modelled as a dome, while it’s much more likely it’s a low hanging mist.

The agricultural lobby puts this out a lot, but it’s not true. The pig farmers and the dairy farmers that are causing the most problems require vast imports of fodder grown elsewhere. The efficiency of a lot of greenhouse agriculture is questionable as well (which was made obvious when a not insignificant chunk of its production was wound down when supplies of cheap Russian gas dried up.

So energy prices increasing by 300%, eating away profits, on top of record inflation is proof that the whole business is inefficient? Lol, no. Even if a financial shockwave told you anything about the efficiency of green houses (it does not) you can’t base your argument on a war induced fluke.

If a business can only exist if energy prices are unrealistically low, then, yes, it is inefficient.

Were they unrealistically low though? Wind/solar/hydro are supposed to be much cheaper than fossil fuels longterm..

And gas prices are more or less back to where they were before the invasion.

So the only time energy is priced realistically is during wartime. Noted.

can the excess heat of the datacenter be used to heat up the greenhouses?

This was the promise originally but it turned out to be impossible. As it turns out, data center waste water is nowhere near warm enough to use for heating.

It would work if you would put the server directly into the greenhouses, 25°C is cool enough for servers and warm enough for plants. But the expense of having moisture, bug and dirt resistant servers and technicians would far outweigh the energy efficiency.

Hahaha - never thought of it that way. Given how dirt free a lot of modern greenhouse agriculture is, it could conceivably be done.

if that works, why doesn't it work to put them next to each other and pump the warm air from the server into the greenhouse? would that already have to much loss?

>Agriculture competes with urbanization and it will always lose, as it should, because it's not an inherently superior or moral use of land

Easy for you to say when you have a full stomach. See what happened in countries that disregard their farmers or agricultural sectors. Food price soared, and social unrest set in leading to crime, anarchy and governments collapsing.

People need to eat, simple. Hungry people will eventually turn to crime to survive, including the people paid form your taxes to protect you (police, military, etc)

Being agriculturally self sufficient is essential for any country.

The Netherlands is tiny and the 2nd largest agricultural exporter in the world by value, after the US. After the hunger winter in 1944 we became obsessed with food production but there is such a thing as too much.

The “export” argument is so stupid when you see how far it is exported. On a US scale this mostly would be within state borders.

It's not stupid, they're literally exporting it. And I have to add, it's a whole new level of Americentrism that I have never seen before to define the word "export" in terms of the distances between US states.

It is stupid, because it just makes sense to have agriculture in a fertile area like the river delta in NL. And it doesn’t make sense to focus on protecting the very species that are not able to flourish without human intervention.

So, focus on protecting species that do well in nitrogen poor areas in the areas that are actually nitrogen poor.

If we move production around to average everything out we’ll end up with a more homogeneous Europe, less production and less biodiversity.

You're turning things around. These species are suffering because of human nitrogen pollution. Where does all the excess nitrogen come from that is preventing these species from flourishing? Oh hey, turns out it's mostly agriculture.

Most species we want to protect now only thrived/peaked because people extracted nitrogen from the area, like in the case of heath fields and woodlands. Or became sand plains because we repeatedly burned down the forests for military reasons.

I don’t know if you know the history of your environment, but farmers do.

why? export within countries of the european union is comparable to export within states of the USA. i don't see the problem here.

>Being agriculturally self sufficient is essential for any country.

This is nothing to do with Netherlands’ own food self-sufficiency.

Let them eat datacentres indeed.

The counterpoint here is what gross tonnage per annum does the population of the Netherlands consume .. and in the event of supply chain disruptions, should (say) NATO hiccup, to what degree are they self sufficient?

Farming and urban land uses aren't a straight either|or, they're a complex need both.

60 percent of dutch meat is exported, we can do with a whole lot less.

Interesting, but that doesn't particularly address why it's important to keep agricultural skils current and land viable.

eg: In a pinch meat animals can be slaughtered and eaten and what they once ate can be fed instead to humans.

It's the insurance of being not far removed from near sufficiency.

Exported doesn't mean throwing in the trash, somebody is using and depending on it.

I know this meat is still used ofcourse. But with a country as small as ours, there simply are better uses of the space for our country and people.

There is no space. The land belongs to the farmers. It’s not up to you to decide what should be done with it.

Perhaps we can stop their subsidies and see if they're suddenly willing to sell voluntarily.

Most NL farmers are in favor of stopping all subsidies if it means that it also stops in other countries. Because unlike in other countries subsidies in NL come with lots of strings attached.

We can then have "you won an argument" sticker for breakfast.

Also, most of it is only exported for a couple of miles to our nearest neighbors.

This is a moot point for about 60 years. Europe, like the US, have massive agricultural overproductions which distort the world markets, due to subsidies. Most of the disastrous monocultures are used to feed bovines, a very inefficient source of protein for the human diet.

Basically, it's a lifestyle and politico-economic choice, not a need.

Indeed, it hasn't been an issue since the last big war in Europe and we can all see how unlikely such a thing is to happen again and that there's no need to have an insurance policy of any sort.

Where does this need for an insurance policy stops? If Europe's trade and defense agreements are insuficient, then perhaps each country should aim for a 3x overproduction, to cover those bad agricultural years? Maybe each city should too? Or perhaps each citizen, we should all retreat to rural homesteads and live on pasture-fed cow meat - a demonstrably unsustainable dystopia that will turn the entire planet into a giant ball of dung and guarantee eventual starvation for every sentient creature inhabiting it? But at least the rural voters would be among the last to die, so there's that.

Now you're just being silly.

The answer lies between your initial zero and your over dramatic 3x imaginary ball of dung.

If your government is sensible and transparent I'm sure there are public domain white papers that cover their discussions and recommendations which might make for an interesting read and put an end to this silly posturing.

>The answer lies between

Where? You are just expressing a political preference and hand-waving to unnamed experts. By all accounts, Europe is overproducing agricultural products and the large part of EU's policies are aimed at limiting this surplus while limiting ecological impact.

There is much more dung than we should have, yet people continue to peddle this idiotic 19th century starvation worldview, where a nation's agricultural output is a measure of its success. An extreme form of this ideology, cognate to Lebensraum, has survived to this day in Russia's internal political discourse, so perhaps you are a bit confused about what's really going on now at Europe's borders.

Yep, plenty of space to grow food is metaverse.

Where and how do you get your food?

The Netherlands are the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world. They can severely reduce farming without endangering domestic food supplies.

Of course these products that are consumed would have to be produced somewhere else, but since the pollution (nitrogen) is a local problem, this would still be a net win, and not just moving the problem around.

>>The Netherlands are the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world.

Amazing! Good for them. One would think such agricultural and engineering powerhouse could solve the nitrogen problem with technology and not resort to destroying one of it's most innovative industries.

>>They can severely reduce farming without endangering domestic food supplies.

That's probably what the Germans thought when they closed their nuclear power plants. And then the invasion of Ukraine happened.

>>Of course these products that are consumed would have to be produced somewhere else, but since the pollution (nitrogen) is a local problem, this would still be a net win, and not just moving the problem around.

TIL: polluting some other third world country, with severe lack of environment standards and inefficient agriculture is called a net win.

From the restaurant and the supermarket of course? What does "arable land" and "fertile soil" have to do with my vegaburger? It comes neatly wrapped in vacuum-sealed plastic from a factory which from the outside is nearly indiscernible from one of those data centres. As long as I can get my factory-made food from building A while streaming a video of me unwrapping the stuff to the data centre in building B I'm fine so you should be as well.

For those who have read Asterix there is this scene in 'The Great Crossing' [1] where the fish monger - Kostunrix in the Dutch version, Unhygienix in the UK, Epidemix in the US - asks what the sea has to do with his fish since he gets it 'fresh from Lutetia' (Paris).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix_and_the_Great_Crossing

Combine this with automation and you get what is happening in the western world from 1970 onward, making the rich richer the poor poorer and stagnating middle class at best.

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