This Tiny Country Feeds the World
这个小国，正在养活世界
The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant by showing what the future of farming could look like.
荷兰定义了未来农业的形态，跃升为全球农业强国。
In a potato field near the Netherlands’ border with Belgium, Dutch farmer Jacob van den Borne is seated in the cabin of an immense harvester before an instrument panel worthy of the starship Enterprise.
在荷兰与比利时边境的一片土豆田里，荷兰农民雅各布·范登博恩正端坐在一台巨型收割机的驾驶舱内。他眼前横铺着一排精密复杂的仪表盘，其科技感足以令《星际迷航》中“企业号”飞船的控制台都相形见绌。
From his perch 10 feet above the ground, he’s monitoring two drones—a driverless tractor roaming the fields and a quadcopter in the air—that provide detailed readings on soil chemistry, water content, nutrients, and growth, measuring the progress of every plant down to the individual potato.
在离地3米高的座舱里，他实时监控着两台自动化设备：一台在田间巡航的自动驾驶拖拉机，以及一架盘旋在空中的四旋翼无人机。这些“数字哨兵”能实时读取土壤成分、含水量、养分分布及作物长势，监测精度甚至能下探到每一株苗木、每一颗土豆。
Van den Borne’s production numbers testify to the power of this “precision farming,” as it’s known. The global average yield of potatoes per acre is about nine tons. Van den Borne’s fields reliably produce more than 20.
这种“精准农业”的威力，在范登博恩的账本上一览无余。全球土豆的平均亩产约9吨，而范登博恩的农田却能稳产20吨以上。
That copious output is made all the more remarkable by the other side of the balance sheet: inputs. Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “Twice as much food using half as many resources.”
高产只是表象，资产负债表的另一端——“投入”——才更令人震撼。早在近20年前，荷兰就确立了国家级的可持续农业愿景，并喊出了响彻全球的口号：“以一半的资源，产出双倍的食粮。”
Since 2000, van den Borne and many of his fellow farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by as much as 90 percent. They’ve almost completely eliminated the use of chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses, and since 2009 Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by as much as 60 percent.
自2000年起，范登博恩和他的同行们将关键作物的灌溉需水量削减了九成之多。在温室种植中，他们几乎彻底告别了化学农药；而自2009年以来，荷兰家禽与畜牧业的抗生素使用量也大幅骤降了约60%。
One more reason to marvel: The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass. How on Earth have the Dutch done it?
更不可思议的是，荷兰是一个人均土地极其匮乏的袖珍国，每平方英里的人口密度超过1300人。这里几乎缺失了传统大宗农业所需的所有自然禀赋。然而，按出口额计算，它竟然稳坐全球第二大食品出口国的宝座，仅次于国土面积是其270倍的美国。荷兰人究竟施了什么“魔法”？
Seen from the air, the Netherlands resembles no other major food producer—a fragmented patchwork of intensely cultivated fields, most of them tiny by agribusiness standards, punctuated by bustling cities and suburbs.
从空中俯视，荷兰的景象与任何农业大国都截然不同：它更像是由无数块精耕细作的地块拼接而成的“马赛克拼图”。即便以工业化农业的标准衡量，这些农田也显得微不足道，且往往与喧嚣的城镇景观紧密交织。
In the country’s principal farming regions, there’s almost no potato patch, no greenhouse, no hog barn that’s out of sight of skyscrapers, manufacturing plants, or urban sprawl. More than half the nation’s land area is used for agriculture and horticulture.
在荷兰的核心农业区，几乎任何一片土豆地、温室或猪舍，抬头都能望见不远处的摩天大楼、工厂或密集的城市社区。这个国家超过一半的土地面积都被投入到了农业与园艺生产中。
Banks of what appear to be gargantuan mirrors stretch across the countryside, glinting when the sun shines and glowing with eerie interior light when night falls. They are Holland’s extraordinary greenhouse complexes, some of them covering 175 acres.
放眼乡间，一排排宛如巨型镜阵的建筑绵延起伏，日光下波光粼粼，入夜后则散发出科幻般的室内光芒。这便是荷兰引以为傲的巨型温室群，其中部分单体占地面积竟达175英亩（约70公顷）。
These climate-controlled farms enable a country located a scant thousand miles from the Arctic Circle to be a global leader in exports of a fair-weather fruit: the tomato.
得益于这些气候可控的“植物工厂”，这个距离北极圈仅约1600公里的北方之国，竟然成为了喜温作物番茄的世界级出口领军者。
The Dutch are also the world’s top exporter of potatoes and onions and the second largest exporter of vegetables overall in terms of value. More than a third of all global trade in vegetable seeds originates in the Netherlands.
荷兰不仅是全球最大的土豆和洋葱出口国，其蔬菜出口总额也稳居世界第二。更具统治力的是，全球超过三分之一的蔬菜种子贸易都打着“荷兰制造”的印记。
The brain trust behind these astounding numbers is centered at Wageningen University & Research (WUR), located 50 miles southeast of Amsterdam. Widely regarded as the world’s top agricultural research institution, WUR is the nodal point of Food Valley, an expansive cluster of agricultural technology start-ups and experimental farms.
这组傲人数据背后的“最强大脑”，坐落于阿姆斯特丹东南50英里处的瓦赫宁根大学与研究中心。作为全球公认的顶尖农业学府，WUR正是“食品谷”的中枢神经。“食品谷”是一个广阔的创新集群，汇聚了无数农技初创公司与实验性农场。
The name is a deliberate allusion to California’s Silicon Valley, with Wageningen emulating the role of Stanford University in its celebrated merger of academia and entrepreneurship.
“食品谷”之名显然是在向加州的“硅谷”致敬。瓦赫宁根大学在此扮演的角色，正如同斯坦福大学之于硅谷，是学术巅峰与创业精神完美融合的催化剂。
Ernst van den Ende, managing director of WUR’s Plant Sciences Group, embodies Food Valley’s blended approach.
瓦赫宁根大学植物科学集团负责人恩斯特·范登恩德便是这种跨界融合模式的缩影。
A renowned scholar with the casual manner of a barista at a hip café, van den Ende is a world authority on plant pathology.
这位在植物病理学界享有国际盛誉的权威学者，举手投足间却透着某种时髦咖啡馆咖啡师的随性气质。
But, he says, “I’m not simply a college dean. Half of me runs Plant Sciences, but the other half oversees nine separate business units involved in commercial contract research.”
他自陈道：“我并非只是个传统的学院院长，我一半的精力用于管理学术研究，另一半则统筹着九个独立的业务单元，专门负责商业合同科研。”
Only that mix, “the science-driven in tandem with the market-driven,” he maintains, “can meet the challenge that lies ahead.”
他坚信，只有这种“科研驱动与市场驱动并驾齐驱”的混合动力，才能解决人类面临的终极挑战。
The challenge? Put in bluntly apocalyptic terms, he says, the planet must produce “more food in the next four decades than all farmers in history have harvested over the past 8,000 years.”
挑战究竟是什么？他抛出了一个带有“末世预言”意味的观点：在未来的四十年里，地球必须生产出的食物总量，将超过过去八千年人类农业文明史上的总和。
That’s because by 2050, the Earth will be home to as many as 10 billion people, up from today’s 7.5 billion.
这是因为到2050年，全球人口预计将从现在的75亿激增至100亿。
If massive increases in agricultural yield are not achieved, matched by massive decreases in the use of water and fossil fuels, a billion or more people may face starvation.
如果我们不能在爆发式提高农产量的同时，大幅度压低水资源与化石能源的消耗，那么将有超过十亿人陷入饥荒的绝境。
Hunger could be the 21st century’s most urgent problem, and the visionaries working in Food Valley believe they have found innovative solutions.
饥饿极可能成为21世纪最棘手的生存危机，而“食品谷”的远见者们坚信，他们已经握住了通往答案的钥匙。
The wherewithal to stave off catastrophic famine is within reach, van den Ende insists.
范登恩德强调，阻止灾难性大饥荒的“武器库”其实已在掌握之中。
His optimism rests on feedback from more than a thousand WUR projects in more than 140 countries and on its formal pacts with governments and universities on six continents to share advances and implement them.
他的乐观并非盲目，而是建立在WUR分布于140多个国家的上千个科研项目反馈之上，以及他们与六大洲各国政府及高校达成的技术共享与落地协议。
