Strawberry Fields Forever? Netherlands Doubles Harvest Using Greenhouses

Strawberries, each summertime agelong successful nan Netherlands: Dutch strawberry growers person knowledgeable a play of unthinkable maturation owed to caller advancements successful increasing technology. According to statistic from Statistics Netherlands, aliases CBS, strawberry growers produced 86 cardinal kilograms of strawberries successful 2024, double nan magnitude being produced 15 years agone successful 2010.

This tremendous spike is owed chiefly to nan state embracing nan maturation of nan fruits successful greenhouses aliases integrative tunnels; nan cultivation area for these types of structures has much than doubled since 2010, reaching a full of 602 hectares successful nan Netherlands. The harvest of strawberries from greenhouses aliases tunnels has much than tripled to full 66 cardinal kilograms, representing 3 quarters of nan full strawberry accumulation successful nan Netherlands. In 2010, it only accounted for half.

At nan aforesaid time, nan full cultivation area for strawberries has decreased by much than 15 percent successful nan past 15 years, to 1,400 hectares. Last year, nan harvest of open-field strawberries decreased by 44 per cent compared to 2010, but nan harvest has seen minimal alteration contempt nan melodramatic simplification of strawberry fields: conscionable 4.2 per cent little compared to 15 years ago, erstwhile nan open-field harvest totaled conscionable complete 20 cardinal kilos.

Greenhouses, nan increasing method of nan future?

The truth that nan state has managed to double their full strawberry cultivation compared to 2010 while besides reducing nan area utilized to do it speaks to nan ratio of nan Dutch strawberry cultivation industry, and so its mini consequence cultivation industries successful general. Additionally, nan Netherlands is emission-conscious: greenhouses person demonstrated that it’s imaginable to turn strawberries year-round without emissions, by making usage of LED lighting, insulation, screens, and dehumidification. Pests and mould were besides easier to control, greenhouses are not weather-dependent for illustration unfastened fields thin to be, and pollination was orchestrated utilizing bumblebees and hoverflies. 

However, it should beryllium noted that greenhouses do travel astatine a higher first costs than open-field cultivation. Notwithstanding, nan output of strawberries, arsenic good arsenic nan easiness of power complete nan value of them and nan truth that they tin beryllium produced year-round, will surely outweigh this downside.

All these factors person contributed to nan patient harvest of nan strawberries, and person provided nan awesome output we saw conscionable past year, pinch numbers judge to beryllium expanding for this twelvemonth arsenic well. It looks like, successful nan Netherlands, location really will beryllium strawberry fields everlastingly – aliases astatine least, strawberry greenhouses year-round.