How are Arjan Kouwenhoven and his wife Tatjana doing? In Andradas, the southern region near São Paulo, Brazil, they realized a 2-hectare greenhouse for tomato growing. A broadcast on Brazilian TV about the remarkable greenhouse farming project Fonte Verde Agro shows us what they are up to.
There are hardly any high-tech glass greenhouses in Brazil, let alone the total planned 12 hectares, so the project Arjan initiated has gained the attention of television program Globo Rural. And even those who do not understand Portuguese can see that the Dutchman and his Russian wife are having a good time in Brazil, where they are using Dutch techniques to grow tomatoes in a high-tech greenhouse. In the broadcast, the viewer gets a detailed explanation.
That it is 'not an easy task' to start growing tomatoes in Brazil, Arjan emphasized in an earlier interview. "We want to see if we, with a glass greenhouse with all the high-tech facilities available, can grow with a biological balance, as is done in the Netherlands. Should we succeed in growing in that way, we can serve as an example here and we will certainly include the growers here in our process."