new videoclip - future food source

For every newsletter we publish a new videoclip on our HOA YouTube channel. In our new video clip ‘future food source’ we show you why the world's largest agri-food companies have their most important R&D sites in the Netherlands. Read more »

Holland Onion, a resilient vegetable

Dutch onion crops have a much higher yield than comparable crops in other countries and demonstrably need less resources. But still, the productivity in the Netherlands can increase by half. We must continue to strive for more. We didn't become the world's largest onion exporter by Read more »

full steam ahead towards a new world record

Once more, the Holland Onion seems to be full steam ahead towards a new export volume record this season. With volumes well above 30,000 tonnes for the 11th week in a row, the export has already exceeded the previous best season by 11%. For the Read more »

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In the previous century, we already managed to increase the global annual food production by 2%, while the world population doubled from 3 to 6 billion people. That was not because the area under cultivation grew substantially, that only grew by 10%.

Norman Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 as the father of this green agricultural revolution. He developed disease resistant crops that had a much higher yield. When introduced in South America and Asia, the crop yields quadrupled.

‘The realisation of sustainable food systems that can continuously yield healthy food for the growing world population while using less water and other resources, is nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution', says Professor Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. And that's certainly true.

By 2100, we might have 12 billion mouths to feed on this planet, of which 4.2 billion will be on the African continent. Onions are an extremely important source of food. The onion is the absolute number one in terms of production volume and is the world's most consumed vegetable.

So, Dutch scientists are working hard and in innovative ways to increase the resilience of the Dutch onions to make sure that we in the Netherlands can continue to make our important contribution to the global food supply. From the farm to the fork.

Season’s greetings and best wishes for 2021!

Gijsbrecht Gunter
President