Onion cultivation is moving more and more from the southwest of the Netherlands to the northeast due to increasing drought and limited water availability. Whiskerke chaienne from the Whiskerke onion.
This shift is especially true for seed onions, according to the director of Zeeland’s largest onion grower and exporter. This year, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, 3,382 hectares of seed onions were grown in Zealand. This represents 12 percent of the total onion area in the Netherlands, and for the province, almost 2,000 hectares less than 5,210 hectares in 2018.
In Drenthe, the area under onion cultivation in 2018 was only 765 hectares. In 2022, its area has grown to 1909 hectares. Wiskerke: ‘The soil in Drenthe is cleaner and most farmers can irrigate there. While I don’t think the Zeeland crop will ever disappear, the growing problems are getting bigger and bigger. Especially when it comes to drought.’
Fertigation test
To cope with the drought, Wiskerke Onions is conducting fertigation trials for the second year in a row in 2022, and the result speaks volumes. This year, the onion yield in the fertigation test field was 60 tons per hectare. This is an increase of 37 tons compared to off-design plots in Zeeland, which did not exceed 23 tons per hectare.
“Good irrigation water is not available everywhere in the province, partly due to salinity,” says Wiskerke onion buyer Werner Verschueren. “During the growing season, we don’t have to extract water everywhere. That’s why I see opportunities to handle good water more efficiently by storing it in water basins in combination with fertigation.”
