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Re:Cutting-edge tech made this tiny country a major exporter... by someotherperson on Monday November 28, 2022 @11:46AM (#33775874)
> Vegetables grown in the Netherlands tend to taste very bland in my experience (personal taste)

I see this raised often. It's almost exclusively because the cultivars used are specifically chosen for yield and hardiness in transport and storage. The "organic" stuff grown in a farm 20km away and only needs to be transported for half an hour, on the other hand, are just cultivars that can be selected for reasons other than hardiness. This type of cultivar can also be mass-produced although it becomes a lot more expensive for the producer and the customer.

Re:Cutting-edge tech made this tiny country a major exporter... by ska on Monday November 28, 2022 @12:59PM (#33776980)
> the cultivars used are specifically chosen for yield and hardiness in transport and storage.

This is the core of the problem, and it's obviously not the Netherlands exclusively, it's a feature of modern agribusiness.

We've spend decades mostly optimizing for things that are not taste and nutrition, and it worked - at the expense of those things.

A lot of this is on consumers of course. Voting with your wallets for bland but uniform-and-pretty has a knock on effect.

Re:Cutting-edge tech made this tiny country a major exporter... by neves on Wednesday November 30, 2022 @09:47AM (#33801443)
A really good book about this is Michael Pollan's: The Omnivore Dillema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore%27s_Dilemma

I can't recommend it enough. It really changed my mind about food.