ISHS Acta Horticulturae 331: WOCMAP I - Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Conference: part 3 of 4
THE CULTIVATION OF HERBS AND RESEARCH ON THE CULTIVATION OF HERBS IN THE NETHERLANDS. |
| Author: | H. Mheen |
| Abstract:
In the Netherlands herb growing is only of very small importance. On a total of 800.000 hectare of arable land, approximately 450 hectares of herbs are grown (0.05%). This surface includes all more or less 'traditional' aromatic and medicinal herbs. Far the most of it is contracted and dried by three cooperatives, and marketed collectively by the United Dutch Herb Cooperation (the so-called VNK, of which you surely have heard during this congress). A small part of the production (mainly parsley and celery) is processed fresh by the preserving industry and only a very small acreage is grown and marketed strictly biological. Seed crops like caraway, poppy and, the recently introduced, evening primrose are not included in this surface. These are more freely produced crops, which are easier to be sold on more markets. Within this surface of 450 hectares about 20 different herbs can be found, in area variating from 1 to 150 hectare. Digitalis lanata is most important by far. This sheet gives a list of herbs grown in the Netherlands, more or less in order of their acreage (tabel 1). We can devide them in medicinal and aromatic herbs depending on the use of the dried product. Regarding to research, it's more useful to divide them as well, according to the used part of the plant into Herba-, Semen- and/or Root- herbs. In the Netherlands there are still no herbs grown for production of flowers. During the last decades, the total area of cultivated herbs didn't change a lot. There is a tendency to more different herb-crops, resulting in a further splitting up. of the acreage. Relatively new one's are, for instance, Plantago, thyme, Taraxacum and Chrysanthemum. By means of new selections and better cultivation techniques, the production of traditional grown herbs increased and could take place on a smaller surface. In total there are about 140 Dutch farmers involved in this production. For the so called free cash crops caraway and poppy we see a dramatic decrease of the cultivated area, since prices have become so low. From both of these crops there nowadays are only about 150 hectares in the Netherlands. Since the first cultivation of the evening primrose in the Netherlands, about ten years ago, the acreage of this crop has shown serious fluctuations. After a recent decline of the area to about 200 ha, this year a bit more then 1000 hectares of this crop are grown! The seeds are marketed by a few different traders, from which some are ordinary seed dealers. | |
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