Non-stop innovation at Laarakker in Well

From organic to circular agriculture, from mechanical hoeing to cultivation without chemicals: vegetable grower Laarakker from Well will not shy away from innovation to develop his business.

Specialist

In 1938 the current Laarakker Groenteverwerking was created from the arable farm of grandfather Laarakker. Over the years the company has grown into a specialist in the cultivation, processing and sale of a wide range of vegetables for the frozen and canned food industry. Director Frank Laarakker: "We supply products to many European glass, canning and preserving companies, frozen food processors, drying companies and concentrate and juice producers. These companies supply their end products worldwide. You also see our products in American supermarkets."

Biological

Laarakker has been looking for innovations to develop the business from the beginning. Since the 1990s, Laarakker has been SKAL-certified so that organic products can be processed in the washing, cutting and peeling line. Initially this concerned organic carrots and wax carrots, but the company now has a wide range of field-grown organic and biodynamic vegetables. In 2020 Laarakker BIO is a business unit that represents a substantial part of the company's turnover.

Laarakker: "The combination with Laarakker Vegetable Processing also makes us a more interesting party for our European customers." He expects much to change in the processing of products. "You see, for example, that soy and legumes are becoming more important, especially since they are ingredients for the growing market of meat substitutes."

Harvesting

The cultivated area of Laarakker comprises a total of more than 7,400 hectares of conventional outdoor vegetable cultivation and 1,200 hectares of organic and biodynamic outdoor vegetable cultivation. Laarakker: "We see plenty of opportunities. Our many hectares are our biggest production factor, and with the right techniques and innovations we can still get a lot more out of them.

In the trend towards eliminating more and more chemical agents in conventional crops, Laarakker has already been working for some time on site-specific spraying between the rows. And this year the company wants to use large hoeing machines with a working width of 6 meters to control weeds. These are hoeing machines with the very latest camera techniques and RTK GPS. With these weeding tools, weeding is done mechanically in the rows.

According to the director, in the future, coarse arable products and field vegetables, such as cabbages, pumpkins and celeriac, will be sown or planted in a three-quarter (diamond) pattern. This creates the possibility of hoeing in two ways through the rows, which makes the hoeing result many times better.

Harvesting

In the field of harvesting Laarakker also thinks in terms of innovation. The company has 25 harvesting machines. One of these machines is a new Ploeger spinach mower. This machine can be unloaded directly into light bulk trucks, allowing more spinach to be transported per load.

It doesn't stop there, however. "We are looking along with various developers of robots. The time is not far off when autonomous robots will take over cultivation work in particular. This urge to innovate does not only come from the management itself, our customers are also making more and more demands on the products they buy," says the director.

Ecofuels

Even the now so often mentioned circular agriculture is nothing new for Laarakker. In 2006, the sister company Ecofuels was founded that produces energy, CO₂ and clean water from cutting waste and residual flows from the plant cultivation, food and beverage industries. The residual flows are turned into electricity, heat, methane (biogas) and pure CO2 via a bio-digester. Ninety percent of the water coming out of the plant is purified so that it can be used as irrigation water for agricultural plots or for flushing carrots. The remaining water is discharged into the Maas. It is being investigated whether the water can be retained in the adjacent National Park De Maasduinen.

The ideas have not run out by then. Laarakker sees improvements for the use of residual flows. Projects are now underway to make products with vegetable residues, such as pea leaf. "You could use the fibers from legumes to produce building materials, for example."

Source: New Harvest and Laarakker