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Comment by misja | Hacker News Reader

It's not the soil but the lack of sun that deprives the tomatoes of their taste.

Greenhouses in the Netherlands are heated with natural gas. The Dutch government subsidises the gas so they can keep their costs low and be competitive. So that's another reason to eat organic food; it is more sustainable because it uses natural sunlight. And tastier as well!

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That fact about natural gas was one of the most surprising things to me. I realise the Netherlands is right next to some huge oil and gas fields, but surely burning gas to heat greenhouses filled with tomatoes in a cold climate, can't make sense compared to just importing those vegetables from countries where they grow naturally? Shipping fuel isn't that expensive?

Is this some weird side effect of the tariffs and CAP? It's cheaper for Europe to burn fossil fuels and build robots to grow tomatoes in cold climates with expensive labour, than import them from warm climates with cheap labour?

I’m fairly certain nobody would buy the Tomatoes if they didn’t have any taste.

Depending where you live you probably already do and think that ‘no taste’ is the taste of tomato. In the Netherlands (where I am from) and the south of Spain (where I spend a lot of time) the difference is huge in taste buying an average tomato; the ones in NL taste like nothing compared but seems people are used to it.

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