Feeding and greening the world

Greenhouse horticulture has lots to offer the world. With our knowledge and experience, we can feed the world with healthy and tasty vegetables and fruit.

The world's population is expected to increase from seven billion now to nine billion by 2050. There are already more than 600 megacities around the world, each one with millions of inhabitants. Each and every day, some 180,000 people around the world relocate from the countryside to live in a city. And, last but not least: There are 1.5 billion people who don't have enough to eat.

With flowers and plants we can make cities greener. Plants purify the air and help create a healthier and more enjoyable living environment. They help boost productivity and reduce absenteeism in the workplace due to illness.

West-Holland is home to a concentration of innovative greenhouse horticulture companies. In the past 120 years, West-Holland has developed into the worldwide hotspot when it comes to indoor crops. It is an unprecedented cluster of greenhouse horticulture and related companies. There are breeders and growers, seed enhancers, importers and exporters, packagers and repackagers, transport companies, suppliers, cold stores and warehousing, and R&D companies. The concentration of this entire cluster in such a small area is truly unique in the world.

As the same time, new technologies ensure new linkages and new applications. There are links to other sectors such as the pharmaceutical, chemical, energy and water sectors. A high-tech greenhouse in West-Holland can produce a kilo of tomatoes using just four litres of water, while in other countries that can require as much as 60 litres of water. The world's first leaf-cutting robot, offering growers an economically sound alternative to the manual removal of leaves, is of Westland origin.

The same holds for the newly developed, low cost horticulture computer for growers worldwide who want to start growing crops indoors.

Greenhouses also function as a source of energy. Left-over greenhouse heat is being used to heat an entire neighbourhood, for example. We are working on the Smart Grid, a competitive energy infrastructure involving the complete integration of electricity, heating, CO2 and, for the time-being, also gas.