It is becoming a familiar sight in more and more fields in Drenthe: rows and rows of harvested onions, waiting for transport. The Drenthe onion is on the rise.
Onions from Drenthe are of good quality worldwide, says regional director and arable farmer Erik Emmens from Zeijen of the agricultural interest group LTO Noord. “We can now say that onions are doing well on the sandy soils of Drenthe. ‘Our’ onions are successfully shipped all over the world.”
This shows a clear development. For a long time, Dutch onion cultivation was reserved mainly for the fields in Zeeland and Flevoland, because it was seen as a clay crop. Emmens: “But thanks to new knowledge and experiments with other crops, farmers in Drenthe, among others, have started working with onions over the past twenty years, and with success.”
The latter is also reflected in figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). In 2000, ten hectares of onions were grown in this province, last year the counter stood at 1,910 hectares.
Not only that, the Drenthe yield also appears to be good. Last year, an average of 52.8 tons of onions were harvested per hectare in this province, while the national average remained at 44.3 tons, as can be seen from the figures from Statistics Netherlands. Since 2015, the Drenthe harvest has been higher than the national average every year.
Emmens also hears that. “We indeed generally see good yields on the plots, although it can vary greatly. The latter is related to the options that arable farmers have to irrigate their plots.” There is also a difference in the type of onion: yellow onions generally have a slightly higher yield than red onions.
The ‘siepel campaign’ is currently in the tail end. About 80 percent of the harvest has now been harvested. “Last week, many onion farmers were able to make a big success thanks to the beautiful and especially dry weather. It is now a bit wetter again and that makes it a little more difficult to harvest. I think the last parts will be harvested next week.”