This is in preparation for the multisectoral mission to Beijing and Shanghai with the Royal couple, minister Ploumen and the state secretaries Dijksma and Van Rijn at the end of October.
The goal is to give the journalists of the large national newspapers more insight into Dutch products and innovations so that they can publish better on Dutch products and companies at the end of October.
They were visiting pepper grower Hans van der Waal in Zevenhuizen at the invitation of GroentenFruit Huis on Thursday afternoon.
GroentenFruit Huis has been working with the ministry of Economics and the Chinese government towards market access to the Chinese market for years. This resulted in an export of over 1 million kilos of pears last year. At the moment they are working on peppers and the procedure for tomatoes and apples has started.
During the tasting of Dutch products for which market access has been granted or is being requested, they turned out to hit the spot. To show that the product can be eaten straight from the packaging, the Chinese journalist asked all of the Dutch people present to taste the products. Especially for this a number of children were invited and who enjoyed the peppers, pears, apples and tomatoes. Of course, everything was caught on camera.
Respect
The enthusiasm of the journalists was also for the tour and the presentation by grower Hans van der Waal. He spoke about the differences in production methods at the start in 1970 and now, about IPM and organic protection, the strong quality control and GlobalGAP. Van der Waal is one of the participating companies in the pilot China pepper with his yellow and red peppers, which was set up by GroentenFruit Huis.
In China, family and age are respected. This became clear when the 84 year old founder of the pepper grower was received with loud applause from the Chinese journalists in the canteen. Now Jurian, the third generation of Van der Waal, is the front of the company.
Wim Rodenburg, responsible for crop matters among other things at GroentenFruit Huis, held a short presentation on GroentenFruit Huis. This included the importance of the Netherlands in the production and trade of fruit and vegetables and the healthy aspects of fruit and veg.