As I write this, the southern provinces of the Netherlands, together with parts of France and Germany, are once more fighting extreme weather events. Heavy showers in the past few days have led to flooded streets and houses, and extremely high water levels. And it isn’t the first time this has happened.
“Welcome to the new climate,” said the weatherman in the Netherlands, introducing the evening’s forecast. “These are examples of the sort of weather conditions that we are likely to be confronted with in the Netherlands and neighboring countries more frequently in future. It is going to rain more often and more heavily in winter, while in summer heavy downpours will become more intense. Hail and storms will also become more fierce. So perhaps something we need to be prepared for.”
It is definitely my opinion that this goes for glasshouse horticulture too, and also for nurseries. The agricultural sector as a whole needs a strategy to respond to this vision of extreme weather patterns. Not just in the Netherlands: in other countries, too, because climate change is something that is becoming increasingly prevalent.
In the face of such extreme weather conditions, it is important that we are able to properly store water and let it run off carefully. In the Netherlands, for instance, it is important that not all the stored water is released into the surface water immediately. If that were to happen, the result would be high water levels with the risk of flooding.
However, in dry areas it is important that we store water that falls in a short period of time as well as possible, so that we can use it at a later date on our crops. Naturally, storage is of great importance in that respect. In Brazil, for instance, I notice that there is sufficient water available, but that storage is a problem.
With the ErfGoedFloor, many of these problems have been consigned to the past. I’m confident that our cultivation floor is the floor of the future. Its vast buffer capacity means that water can be stored in the floor instantaneously. A modern ErfGoedFloor has a capacity of around 40,000 liters per hectare! From that point, the stored water can be pumped at a leisurely pace out into the surface water, which is less of a problem for the surrounding environment.
And if the grower could do with saving the rainwater to use at a later stage, it can be pumped into the storage reservoir. In that way, our cultivation floor offers you the best possible water storage solution, coupled with the option of controlled discharge. Compare that with an impervious surface, such as asphalt or concrete. With that sort of surface, you’d be faced with flooding in no time. The porous ErfGoed cultivation floor, on the other hand, offers the ideal solution to extreme weather conditions. So bring on that water, I say.