Nohl van Wyck is a master of shock and awe. From the time you enter his 6.5-meter high, 2.5-hectare greenhouse (about 6.1 acres), the tall Dutchman not only wants to educate you, he wants to dazzle you by unveiling the wonders of Holland’s glasshouse technology and industry.
Sweeping his long arm over a vast sea of potted pink, red, and white anthuriums, Nohl starts the tour with a question: “How many ways are the plants watered?” Looking around I spot overhead nozzles suspended from the house’s superstructure. I respond, “one,” knowing by Nohl’s grin that I guessed wrong. “There are three,” he pronounces triumphantly. “The overhead sprinkler, yes, but there is also a misting system that gives off a spray so fine you barely feel it on your skin. Lastly, the concrete pad [upon which all the plants sit] is flooded to the depth of 7 millimeters and then drained into below-ground tanks for re-use. All three methods are controlled by a computer which adjusts the amount and timing for temperature and light conditions.”

When I say, “Wow!” out of a sense of genuine awe, Nohl responds with a throaty chuckle, satisfied that I’ve been well shocked. When he adds later in the tour that much of the water is rainwater collected from the roof and gutter, and that every drop is recycled and carefully controlled, I say “wow!” again. My exclamation evokes another chuckle, and so it goes over our three days together.

The Dutch glasshouse industry (they call it that even though all the glazings are plastic) is an amazing creation. Producing hundreds of varieties of cut flowers, potted plants, and a few vegetables, the people of the Netherlands – a country the size of Maine – so thoroughly dominate the market that it’s hard to imagine anyone successfully challenging them.

How do they do it? Clearly, the industry’s focus on technology and organization is critical, as is an uncanny knack for sensing a good business opportunity. But while an outside observer may characterize the Dutch as fierce competitors, they are in fact fierce cooperators. Growers, distributors, and government work hand-in-hand to assure that their system is second to none.

The drive to van Wyck’s glasshouse passes through an entire zone of individually owned glasshouse farms, which are built cheek-to-jowl and very nearly the same size (there are a total of 10,000 ha under glass in Holland and the average farm size is 1.5 ha). The overall impression is of a well-planned U.S. suburb that rigorously adheres to style and design standards. The phone, electric, gas, sewage, and high-speed internet lines are discreetly buried beneath the roadways which are lined by well-manicured grass buffers. The farmers’ homes are tucked into small nooks next to their glasshouses in spaces so small that it appears as if they grudgingly granted the farmer permission to live there. In a country where dry land is at a premium, a big backyard means a sacrifice of income producing space.

At Rotterdam’s edge where Nohl’s farm is located, the land is set aside for the glasshouse industry. Indeed, there is no need for government to worry about encroaching development and its harmful effects on farmland prices – the Dutch government will only allow this land to be used for agriculture.

Cooperation with government extends to the greenhouse workforce as well. Like other industries in Western Europe, Dutch horticulture is increasingly dependent on immigrants from Muslim nations like Morocco and Turkey. And like other European nations, Holland has its share of difficulties assimilating large numbers of people from radically different cultures. But so far, these conflicts have not altered the social contract between government, business owner, and worker. Among Nohl’s 10 full-time employees, those on the lower wage rungs make between (EURO) 3,000 and 4,000 per month (about $5,000), but about half of this sum is deducted for taxes as well as health and pension benefits, which are generously financed by the national government. With regard to paid vacation benefits, the only time I made Nohl say “wow!” was when I told him that U.S. workers typically receive two to three weeks of paid vacation per year. Dutch workers under 50 years of age receive six weeks and those over 50 eight weeks!

While these arrangements may seem extreme by U.S. standards, they mean that growers are not constantly snipping away at their employees’ wages and benefits to remain competitive. Everybody must live by the same rules. This notion also comes into play with respect to crop selection. Nohl grows anthuriums, his neighbor grows tomatoes, and a third nearby grower produces cut flowers. One business – generally speaking – one plant. Specialization allows the grower to gain efficiencies of scale by designing his greenhouse for one plant while avoiding the often destructive problem of flooding the market with too much of one item.

Finally, cooperation is just as evident with purchasing. Since the Dutch greenhouse industry makes up 10% of the country’s total energy demand, it receives volume purchasing discounts that make energy costs considerably less than residential energy. And by locating their businesses in such close proximity to one another, they are sharing the cost of infrastructure.

The Dutch Distribution God
Early in the afternoon, somewhere deep in the bowels of Nohl’s heavily secured computer room, one of his computers registers a plant order from an exporter at the nearby Naaldwijk FloraHolland auction house. Only a few hours earlier, that exporter received a series of orders for anthuriums directly from dozens of individual Aholde-owned supermarkets across Europe. Using a specially designed forklift, conveyers, and rolling carts, Nohl’s crew assembles the order coding each pot to the specific store. His lorry delivers the order to the exporter (a distance of 35 kilometers) late that afternoon where it is loaded with flowers and plants from other nearby growers for shipment to Aholde stores in Holland, France, and Germany. Those stores will have their orders within 24 hours of their original placement.

Almost 60% of Nohl’s plants are purchased directly by exporters in this manner. The rest are sold through the Naaldwijk flower and plant auction house – the world’s biggest. And it is within this facility that the Dutch penchant for order, efficiency and scale has reached its absolute pinnacle. It was also the place where I uttered my biggest “wow!”

A visit to Naaldwijk evokes superlatives ordinarily reserved for the likes of the Pyramids and the Himalayas. It has the world’s biggest cooling hall (43,000 square meters on two storeys, about the size of nine football fields), the highest volume of horticultural sales (EURO 7 million per day or 2 billion per year), and the most horticultural transactions per day (35,000, most completed in less than one second on the Dutch auction clock).

A view from the visitor’s gallery of the multi-acre distribution floor is a heart-stopping experience. With electric powered scooters, hundreds of workers shuttle trains of flower-laden carts in a dizzy swirl of patterns. Nohl, who was formerly a member of the auction’s board of directors, a body elected by its 6,000 grower member/owners, attempts to explain to me what’s going on, but I’m so stunned that I can’t even say “wow!” To give me a little air, we drive to an outdoor viewing platform that sits at the auction’s highest point. Nohl sweeps his arm in a full circle encompassing hundreds of acres of warehouses, conveyor tracks, parking lots, and thousands of lorries dedicated to just one thing – distributing highly perishable agricultural products as efficiently and as profitably as possible. Immediately adjoining this monstrous expanse of buildings are glasshouses marching in every direction to the horizon.

The part of me that can’t help but say “wow!” is genuinely impressed by what I saw. After viewing greenhouses that think for themselves and distribution facilities that have rationalized every step in the movement of goods, you could easily imagine a small spaceship of Dutch farmers landing on the moon, and with not much more than a screw driver, a pair of channel locks, and a laptop computer, making the place green and profitable in no time.

Yet as breathtaking as this is, the lack of human scale and proportion is disconcerting. As the zenith of industrial agriculture (or the nadir, depending on your point of view), the Dutch glasshouse industry has turned something as beautiful and unique as a flower or houseplant into commodities that are produced in computer-driven factories and distributed with robot precision. It has sacrificed diversity, decentralized production and local attributes and marketing channels for a highly routinized system that is now the virtual God-head of agriculture. I may never be able to look at that bouquet of gerberas sitting on my bookshelf the same way again.

But in spite of all that, I might hope that the values of grower cooperation and government support that were so evident in Holland might find expression in their own unique form here. Production systems and supportive infrastructure that are human in scale and respect a diversity of place, style, and even quirky idiosyncrasies could be built on a foundation of partnerships, shared values, and a common vision for a new agricultural future. Should that vision come to pass, we might all be able to say “wow!” ï ¹

Mark Winne is a freelance writer living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He can be reached by email at win5m@aol.com.