Sustainability Tour wraps up

Young anthurium plant production at Anthura.

What a week it has been.  The Sustainability Tour ended on Friday with visits to two premier horticulture producers, Anthura and Koppert Cress.  Anthura is a leading breeding and young plant producer of bromeliads and phalaenopsis orchids.  Their new 30-acre semi-closed greenhouses have sustainable greenhouse production practices in place including complete recirculation of water and nutrients; use of retractable energy curtains; a tremendous amount of automation and thus, low labor costs (only 3 growers for the 30 acres of growing space); and CHP engines.

At Anthura, we learned about Plantum NL, which is one of the four major grower organizations in the Netherlands.  Plantum has 16 staff, serve 420 member companies, and focuses on breeding and development of young plants. 




We tasted several of the Koppert Cress herbs, each one

served separately with narration from the company's
owner (below).

 Our next stop was Koppert Cress, a producer of distinctive herbs and micro vegetables that are used by top chefs throughout Europe.  We tasted about a dozen of the 40 products offered, each with distinctive tastes including ones that taste like oysters, licorice, sugar, garlic, sea salt, and wasabi.  My favorite was a single “Dushi Button”, where one tiny clover-like inflorescence tasted very minty sweet.  Most of the products are produced in just three weeks.  New greenhouses were being built with 26 foot gutters, LEDs from Lemnis, heated floors, etc. etc.  This company absolutely fascinated me.



Rob Baan, owner of Koppert Cress, shows us their trials

with LEDs from Lemnis.

While at Koppert Cress, Lemnis Lighting showed us their LED products, ones for photosynthetic (high intensity) lighting and fixtures for photoperiodic (low intensity) lighting.  Their high-intensity LED arrays are quite different from those of Philips; they use diodes that emit a very high intensity and are clustered very closely together.  They emit a lot of heat and thus are cooled with recirculating water.  Their photoperiodic LEDs are made to replace 100-Watt incandescent lamps and come in several different colors.

In the afternoon, many of people who we met with during the week joined us for a more formal discussion about sustainability in agriculture.  Chris Beytes of GrowerTalks magazine did an excellent job summarizing the key points that we learned as a group about greenhouse sustainability in the Netherlands and potential applications and limitations in the U.S.  We also heard perspectives from Dutch bankers, ministry officers, university researchers, and grower and organization leaders.  It was a great way to wrap up the very stimulating, energizing week.