Van der Knaap Group concludes agreement with NatureFresh Farms
On Thursday 21 September, the Van der Knaap Group and Canada's NatureFresh Farms reached agreement that would see NatureFresh Farms grow peppers organically using Van der Knaap's new cultivation system. Both parties regard the new method as a sustainable and reliable way of organically growing fruit and vegetable crops.
The cultivation system will be used to grow six hectares of peppers in 2018, which will rise to twelve hectares in the years to come. NatureFresh Farms has already been growing peppers organically for some time, but by using Van der Knaap's cultivation concept they aim to increase production and improve quality even more.
Breakthrough in sustainable organic cultivation
Van der Knaap's R&D team and its partners have set themselves a goal to develop a cultivation system that enables organic growing above soil. A team led by Karel de Bruijn, Van der Knaap's R&D Manager, has developed a reactor to convert proteins into nitrate (NO3) nitrogen. The nutrition solution produced with the reactor is free of organic residues, moulds and bacteria. A group of growers in the Netherlands has been cultivating products with this patented concept under HarvestHouse since 2016.