The owner of the greenhouse, tomato grower Yob de Sijn from Steenbergen, is happy with the accidental shift towards rooftop gardening. "I always thought this 'urban agriculture' thing was something for hippies. But now that my own greenhouse is standing on top of our local Albert Heijn, I can ask four times much more money for my harvest. I never knew that consumers are all of a sudden spending more money on their tomatoes when they are grown on top a supermarket."
The structure, a state of art Venlo structure with diffuse glass and supplemental lighting was originally built in the town of Steenbergen in 2008. De Sijn: "Over the last years, we experienced very strong winds in our town, but the greenhouse could withstand them because we were growing very large heavy beefsteak crops. However, the wind from last Tuesday was way too strong. I knew I was in trouble when it started to shift towards my neighbours property. All of a sudden a heavy wind came under the greenhouse roof because I had the windows opened, and the entire structure was airborne. The landspout took my entire greenhouse in the air and I saw it disappearing. I expected that it would never return, but after 10 minutes I saw on twitter that a greenhouse fell out of the sky on a local grocery. It was mine!"
"When I arrived at the store, I thought a miracle was taking place. The structure was placed perfectly and fitted exactly on the 40,000 square meter store! Wow. It reminded me of the recent greenhouses that were built in North America. I knew this was a sign that Holland was ready for rooftop greenhouses as well."