[hagbard_c]

I had a look at the maps in the article and noticed they somehow managed to forget the Netherlands, the #2 exporter of agricultural products in the world. This makes me wonder about the quality of the rest of the article given that Nature, once a journal of note has rapidly gone down the ideologically biased slide like many other publications and as such lost a lot of credibility.

[317070]

The Netherlands is also the #4 importer of food in the world. I reckon with these transport heavy countries it is very hard to estimate how self-dependent they actually are, versus how much is settlement lag on the transport portion.

https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/WLD/Yea...

[dbcooper]

Yes, very questionable. They also missed New Zealand which is the largest exporter of dairy products (~ 21%).

Nature Food is one of those also ran journals that sully the brand. None of my colleagues in related fields bother with it.

[Cthulhu_]

I was wondering about that because it doesn't make sense given how small a country it is. It's a bit of creative bookkeeping, ultimately: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2026/03/value-of-agricultural-...

The biggest export product is dairy and eggs; I get that, most of our country feels like it's pastures lmao. And eggs / chicken farms are relatively compact, not sure what they feed them though.

But second is "cocoa and cocoa preparations"... the Netherlands cannot grow cocoa itself, wrong climate, so this is all processed imported raw materials as well as re-exported cocoa beans. Third is "horticultural products", so that's all the flowers and tulip bulbs coming from the greenhouses and tulip fields, but also keep in mind a lot of that is grown in e.g. Africa and just passes through.

We're in a strategic location, sea access, rivers going deep into Europe, and we have a lot of trade connections, is the gist of it. Oh and good cows / pastures.

[myrmidon]

Dismissing the dutch agricultural output as "creative bookkeeping" goes waaaayy too far IMO. Your own article distinguishes local production and re-exports and those make up less than half.

[fransje26]

Ah yes..

The country of plofkip disappearing into water and steam as you cook it, of south-american chicken re-labeled as a dutch product, and the country of absolutely tasteless, hard-as-rock tomatoes as a great export product.

A quick cycling tour through any of the greenhouse areas will quickly remind you why such an agricultural model is maybe not the greatest of ideas.. The lingering chemical smell is all telling.

[karmakurtisaani]

Don't like what an article is saying? Just declare them ideologically biased and call it a day. Works every time!

[croisillon]

gotta love how an alert about increasing food insecurity still turns into a recrimination against blue haired vegans