China overtakes the Netherlands in food tech

The Netherlands faces a growing strategic risk in sustainable food production, according to Sjoukje Heimovaara, president of Wageningen University & Research (WUR). Writing in the Dutch financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad (link in Dutch), she warns that the country risks repeating the mistakes made with solar panels, becoming dependent on China for technologies it once helped pioneer.

Dutch agriculture is built on a long chain of family businesses, tens of thousands of farmers, and hundreds of suppliers. “It all fits together wonderfully, but it is far more fragmented than ASML,” Heimovaara notes, referring to the Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer as a benchmark for strategic industrial cohesion.

Her comments come in the context of an innovation agenda (link in Dutch) being developed by the Dutch government. Heimovaara, along with the Dutch agricultural organisation LTO, observes that plans exist but no additional funding has been allocated — something she considers urgently necessary.

The data underline the shift in global competitiveness. Between 2000 and 2002, the EU invested nearly three times as much as China in new agricultural technologies. Two decades later, that gap has effectively closed. The number of Chinese students enrolled at Wageningen University has also declined for the first time in years. “That tells us that the Chinese can now access the best agricultural knowledge at home,” Heimovaara says.