About time we adopted science

ISRAEL and the Netherlands are tiny countries, yet, surprisingly, they export premium farm products to Europe and the world because they have adopted the latest knowhow and technology.

Israel made the dessert bloom decades ago and they have shared with the world their expertise in agriculture and husbandry. They export fruits and vegetable to Europe in winter, when the continent is wrapped in snow, and get premium prices for their produce in return.

Israel has trained Filipinos there in an attempt to impart to us their success.

The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant and shown what the future of farming and husbandry could look like.

Its not-so-secret solution to sustainable agriculture is converting their farms into greenhouses, acres and acres of climate-controlled greenhouses.

Indoor farms are free from the ravages of insects or the vagaries of weather, so they plant potato, cucumber, tomato, carrots, and what have you and export these all around the world.

Why is the Netherlands achievement not-so-secret? Because right here in the Philippines, in Zambales, a Taiwanese national adopted the same greenhouse farming, albeit on a smaller scale, more than 10 years ago.

He started with a one-hectare plot planted to Taiwanese and local vegetables and after more than a decade, he now has a 10-hectare vegetable farm that supplies the needs of restaurants, malls, and other outlets as far as Metro Manila.

There is also a similar but more sophisticated greenhouse farm in Tagaytay City. The farm produces top-quality tomatoes and bell peppers which the owner distributes to five-star hotels in Metro Manila.

This greenhouse sits on a threeacre farm, which by the standards of the farms in the Netherlands, is tiny in comparison.

The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass. How on earth have the Dutch done it?