Seed breeding

The Netherlands is renowned for its water management, ship and yacht building and successfully exporting dance music around the world. A less well known fact is that the Netherlands is also at the forefront in the seed breeding industry. The development of new vegetable and flower varieties, improved varieties that generate even higher yields, disease and bacteria resistant fruit and vegetables, are just a few of the many (high quality) areas where the Dutch have been successful in technological innovation.

Seed Valley

The term Silicon Valley is globally recognised. It is a term used to describe southern California, which is home to a huge number of leading technology companies. In the Netherlands, we have a slightly less well known but equally innovative area: Seed Valley.

The Seed Valley region (the area between Warmenhuizen, Andijk, Hoorn and Enkhuizen) is home to a group of companies dedicated to the breeding, production, processing and sale of high quality seeds. The nod to California’s Tech region is no coincidence, for five of the ten largest vegetable producing companies have established a branch in Seed Valley.

Seed Valley’s 28 seed breeding companies account for approximately 3,000 jobs and more than 1.3 billion Euros in annual turnover, more than half of which is generated outside of Europe.

Fertile soil

The Netherlands, and Seed Valley in particular, is a global player in the seed breeding sector. Research figures from Wageningen Economic Research confirm this: 1/3 of vegetable seeds and 2/3 of horticultural seeds come from Dutch soil.

Back to vegetable seeds. The most expensive variety of only one tomato seed is worth about 1 Euro, and provides a yield of more than 20 kg of quality tomatoes. The high yield increases the value of 1kg of tomato seeds to more than five time the price of 1kg of gold (44,000 Euros per kg at the time of research).

Globally active, commercially successful, future-proof and consisting of many family run businesses, the Netherlands provides fertile ground for global food production.

Seed breeding translations

Economically speaking, seed breeding is an important sector in the Netherlands. More than 80% of annual turnover is generated from trade with international customers. Due to the international nature of the sector, the demand for specialised and multilingual communication is high.

As an agricultural translation agency, AgroLingua has been supporting leading breed seeding companies in the Netherlands for years. Our expert native translators understand and speak the language of the seed breeder thanks to their acquired (practical) knowledge.

Are you planning to export seeds to international markets? Our expert team will gladly take care of translation into, amont many others, German, English, Chinese and Arabic...

Translation agency AgroLingua: 100% agricultural

Translation agency AgroLingua focuses entirely on the agri-food sector. Our strength lies in the broad knowledge and experience we have in the agricultural world. After years of sowing, nurturing and harvesting, our translation agency and our translations have become the standard! Would you like more information about AgroLingua’s services? We’d be delighted to explain more in person. Please don’t hesitate to contact us!