“This summer, iceberg lettuce did worse and worse. We were about to start flying in iceberg lettuce, but at the last moment, product grown closer to us became available, and we blew it off,” says Kees van den Bosch of Freeland. It’s still challenging to get plenty of iceberg lettuce. Prices are around 8 to 10 euro per box. “Freeland thinks quality is very important, but it isn’t easy to find the right quality under these circumstances, although many customers now accept more.” Salad was naturally on a lot of menus this summer, and buyers were willing to pay considerable prices. “Perhaps because the salad as a whole wasn’t too expensive, because tomatoes were very cheap in recent weeks,” Kees says.
The company therefore had to search for available product this summer. Freeland’s network is spread across Europe, and even outside of it. “We could be compared to communicating barrels. We bring product to regions that have shortages and vice versa. This summer, we drove back and forth a lot. The differences between countries and even regions are enormous. In the Southern Netherlands, there were a lot of quality problems with iceberg lettuce. It was warmer by 5 degrees Celsius there than in the north of the country, where they had plenty of water available as well. For cauliflower, for instance, it was a strange situation that one region in the UK had a surplus, while another had a terrible shortage.”
The extreme weather situation resulted in a challenging summer. “The summer in the Netherlands was extreme, but it was even more so in other countries. In Poland, entire fields of cauliflower were lost because of the heat. Trade-wise, extreme weather circumstances are favourable. We were able to do a lot for our customers because of this, and we had a good year. If there are more and longer dry summers, it becomes more questionable whether we can continue solving problems. Particularly because it was a very difficult year for a lot of growers, especially for those who have obligations to deliver, and they’ll have to wait and see if they can keep up. Climate change is causing a tense situation: plants are becoming confused, causing a lot of problems, and pesticides are much less effective when the weather’s dry. Growers can’t use a lot of pesticides in any case, and because of the heat, they evaporate too quickly. That’s why a lot of the leek is now affected by thrips.”
Freeland B.V.
Kees van den Bosch
Nijbracht 126
7821 CE Emmen, the Netherlands+31 (0)591 670 570
+31 (0)6 514 066 94
kees@freeland.nl
www.freeland.nl