Is the Dutch Farming Miracle Real, or Just Dependence Wearing a New Face

Behind the Glass

Lately, a story keeps making the rounds: the 'Dutch miracle.' A country of forty-one thousand square kilometers - roughly the size of Konya province. A hundred and twenty billion euros in agricultural exports. Soilless farming, smart greenhouses, artificial intelligence, robots. And at the end of it all, a single sentence whispered to us: 'This is the future of farming.' I'm a little skeptical of that sentence. Because what we're always shown is the storefront - the glass greenhouses, the spotless production facilities, plants tamed by technology. What almost no one talks about is what stands behind that glass: the energy consumption, the imported inputs, the dependency on the outside world, the environmental cost. 'Look how beautifully the technology works,' they say. Fine, but what does this system actually breathe on? Electricity. Natural gas. Imported fertilizer. Imported feed. Imported inputs. Removing soil from the equation doesn't remove dependency - sometimes it just changes its costume.

What Keeps the Greenhouse Standing

I won't deny the success of the Netherlands' high-tech greenhouse farming. They measure light, they measure temperature, they measure humidity, they calculate exactly what the plant needs and recycle the water - all of that genuinely matters. But it's worth asking: what is the cost of all this? How much steel does it take to raise a greenhouse? How much glass, how much energy? What happens when natural gas gets expensive? What happens when electricity gets expensive? What happens when you're forced to import your fertilizer, when you become dependent on imports? Because agriculture isn't measured only by how many tons you harvest per hectare. Agriculture is also measured by how independent you remain.

The Invisible Soil Behind the Livestock

There's a livestock side to this too. The Netherlands is a tiny country, yet it holds millions of animals - cattle, pigs, chickens. All of them need feed, and a large share of that feed comes from abroad; the soybean question surfaces right here. We look at the Netherlands and say, 'their land is small, but their livestock and their farming are remarkable.' But where is the land that grew the feed those animals eat? In Brazil? In Argentina? Somewhere else entirely? Then you can't do the accounting only within Dutch borders - you have to count the environmental cost of the feed you import too. It's very easy to look clean at home while using another country's soil, water, and forest. The real task is doing the whole accounting together. The ammonia emissions and nitrogen pressure created by the Netherlands' intensive livestock farming have themselves been one of the country's heaviest environmental problems for years. So even the model we're told to imitate is wrestling with a serious environmental crisis of its own. Now we're told, 'adopt the Dutch model.' Which part, exactly - the greenhouse? The energy dependence? The imported-feed system? The intensive livestock farming? The nitrogen crisis? Or just the pretty part?

Soil Is Not Merely a Growing Medium

Soilless farming certainly has its uses: you can control water more precisely, yields can rise for certain crops, you can regulate climate. I'm not denying any of that. But if we arrive at the conclusion that 'we no longer need soil,' that's where we need to stop and think. Because soil isn't merely a substance that anchors a plant's roots. Soil is alive. Fungi live inside it, bacteria live inside it, earthworms live inside it, millions of living things live inside it. It carries organic matter, holds carbon, stores water within itself. All of that together adds up to an ecosystem. If you see soil only as a 'growing medium,' then of course you'll grow food inside a pipe instead. But if you don't see farming as merely producing tomatoes, the matter isn't that simple.

The Memory Carried in a Seed

I'm not someone who talks about this from behind a desk. I grow heirloom seeds - I work to preserve and propagate local and ancestral seed varieties and to put them back into growers' hands. Because to me, a seed isn't merely a production input; it's a culture, a memory, the history of a region. And it's a freedom - the freedom to reproduce it yourself whenever you need to. Not having to buy a seed anew every single year is, in itself, a question of independence. That's exactly why I care about food forests, why I plant them, why biodiversity matters to me. Because to me, the agriculture of the future can't be built on the idea of 'let's just produce more.' It's entirely possible to build a system where trees, shrubs, fruit, vegetables, soil, insects, and birds all work together in the same space. It's possible to see nature not as an obstacle to production but as its partner. That's exactly what I care about. On one side, we're pulling the plant out of its soil and placing it inside pipes, calculating and supplying everything from outside. On the other, we're trying to strengthen the soil's own cycle - making compost, using mulch, holding water in the ground, planting trees, growing different species together, propagating heirloom seeds, treating bees, birds, and insects as part of the system. What we call a food forest is exactly this - not just growing apples, pears, and tomatoes, but building an ecosystem.

The Quiet Rights Living in the Soil

I'm not only on the side of soil. I believe the microorganisms within it have rights too. Just because we can't see them doesn't mean we get to deny their right to exist. A single handful of soil holds billions of living things, most of which we never even see - yet they're the ones keeping the soil alive, feeding the plant, breaking down organic matter, and making the continuation of life possible at all. Plants have rights; measuring a tree only by how many kilos of fruit it yields doesn't sit right with me. Animals have rights; we need to stop seeing them merely as machines that produce meat, milk, eggs, or manure. A cow, a bird, a bee, even an earthworm inside the soil - each has a place in this world. And perhaps most importantly: I don't believe that, simply because we're human, we have the right to use every resource on this planet however we please. Draining water to its last drop, exploiting soil until it's barren, cutting down forests, driving a species to extinction, valuing animals purely by their economic worth, killing the life inside the soil with chemicals, and then calling all of it 'development' - we need to question this seriously. Because the world wasn't left to us as an inheritance; we belong to the world. Water isn't only ours. Soil isn't only ours. Forest isn't only ours. Seed isn't only ours. The other living things sharing this planet have a claim here too. We may be stronger because we're human, but being strong doesn't mean having the right to use without limit. Quite the opposite - if you have power, you also carry responsibility.

Where Technology Belongs

I'm not against technology - I spent many years working at one of the world's largest telecom companies. Of course technology should be used: use sensors, use drip irrigation, use satellites, use artificial intelligence, use climate data. But technology should teach us to live more justly with nature, not find new ways to exploit it further. Technology shouldn't replace the soil; it should assist it. Take a farmer's soil away today, and tomorrow he buys his seed from a company, his fertilizer from a company, his pesticide from a company, his system from a company, his software from a company, his energy from outside - and still believes himself a producer. He isn't. At that point he's no longer a producer; he's a customer of the system. That's exactly what I'm afraid of.

Looking at Our Own Soil

What we need to do in Turkey isn't copy the Netherlands - it's look at our own conditions. We still have our soil. We have our sun. We have our water sources. We have our biodiversity. We have our heirloom seeds. We have generations of accumulated farming knowledge. We have Cukurova, we have the Soke Plain, we have Harran, we have Bafra, we have Carsamba, we have the rain of the Black Sea coast, we have Anatolia's incredible diversity. If we set all of this aside and say, 'let's remove the soil and put technology in its place,' I think we'll end up somewhere deeply wrong.

Standing on the Side of the Soil

My choice is clear: rather than exhausting the soil for more yield, I choose to keep producing by healing it. Today we call this regenerative agriculture - though it isn't really anything new. Protecting the soil, using animal manure, protecting trees, not letting water run to waste, growing different crops together, saving seed, keeping the soil alive - our elders already knew most of this. We simply forgot some of it, and now we need to remember it again. So don't come to me and say 'soilless farming is the future.' Maybe soilless systems will have a place in the agriculture of the future too - maybe. But we don't have to surrender the whole future of farming to whatever technology a handful of large companies happen to be selling. I stand against that. Because the future of agriculture isn't written only in a laboratory - it's written in the field, in the hands of the farmer, in a heirloom seed falling back into the earth, in a food forest someone plants, in a child eating fruit picked straight from their own garden, in soil growing a little stronger every year. That's why I stand on the side of the soil. On the side of the heirloom seed. On the side of the food forest. On the side of the farmer's ability to be self-sufficient. On the side of the microorganisms' right to exist. On the side of plants' rights. On the side of animals' rights. And I believe that being human, being strong, doesn't give us the right to use every resource on this planet however ruthlessly we please. Because the question isn't only how to feed people - it's how to let all of life continue. Perhaps the question we now need to ask ourselves isn't 'can we do this,' but 'do we have the right to do this.' That, to me, is the real matter at hand. Because the world isn't our property; we're a part of it. And if we lose the soil, even with the most advanced technology on earth, we'll eventually have to stop and ask ourselves: what did we lose? I don't want to be asking that question on that day. That's why I stand on the side of the soil.