Due to the energy crisis, lighting in tomato cultivation is declining. Joop Verhoeven, Senior Advisor Tomato and Paprika at Delphy, speaks of a decrease from 800 to now 100 ha. "Because of that, you see growers capitalizing on it. You now see cucumber growers doing the same as they did 20 years ago. They are going to plant autumn tomatoes again. Normally you have cucumber growers who plant cucumbers three times, and they are now seeing that no exposed tomatoes are coming and plant two cucumber crops, followed by autumn tomatoes in September."
Autumn tomatoes at Dutch cucumber grower, end November 2022
Surprised
So it's back to the old days, and there are actually two reasons for this: "To make money and to keep the staff going. By the way, you see this development quite a lot. The seed house with the most autumn tomatoes, De Ruiter, was even surprised by it. They were completely sold out."
Joop thinks there are currently 150 hectares of autumn tomatoes in the Netherlands. "99 percent of that is truss coarse; that is easy for cucumber growers to process, a matter of cutting them and putting them away in the box, without having to sort."
For more information:
Delphy 
Joop Verhoeven
Senior Advisor Tomaat en Paprika
Regio: Nederland, Belgium
Tel.: +31 (0)6 53 42 72 30
j.verhoeven@delphy.nl