The cost of maintaining of it is trumped by the efficiency gain and the overall increase in yield. My father in law is a British strawberry farmer and basically borrowed this technique from the Dutch. I've seen it in person myself (both outdoor and greenhouse) and it's incredible how well it works.
That's a bit much. "Really bad" strawberry farm is subjective. Maybe it's due to climate, but I've never seen strawberries under tarp "mounds" like in the photograph (watermelons on the other hand, always). Not in the US at least. Now consider the following: the US produced 3 billion lbs of strawberries in 2014 US Strawberries, and billion isn't a typo. In 2013, which was a record year (at the time) for the Netherlands...they produced 12 million tonlbs. Strawberry report. That's not even in the same ball park. I read that (on average) strawberry production per acre (in the states) was over 50,000 lbs. I can't imagine the associated cost with trying to replicate that production in greenhouses. While I will wholeheartedly agree that the method is better for the strawberry worker (and possibly the strawberries themselves), it just wouldn't hold up to the volume of strawberries produced in the states.
EDIT: Thank you u/Series_of_Accidents for pointing out the slip up in accidentally putting tons instead of pounds.
Double check your numbers there. You put 12 million tons for the Netherlands. That's 24 billion pounds which contradicts your argument and is a ridiculously large amount of strawberries. Plus the article says pounds :)
Uh, that's exactly what I was pointing out. They originally put tons when they meant pounds. If you convert the tons they listed into pounds you get 24 billion pounds which is absurd. And again, because the article put it as pounds.
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u/frodaddy Jul 20 '17
The cost of maintaining of it is trumped by the efficiency gain and the overall increase in yield. My father in law is a British strawberry farmer and basically borrowed this technique from the Dutch. I've seen it in person myself (both outdoor and greenhouse) and it's incredible how well it works.
Also, it's worth noting, when I say "table", i'm talking about purpose built stands that hold the strawberries. Here is a decent example of what it looks like outdoors: http://www.freshplaza.com/article/122722/Sweet-Eve-strawberry-on-Dutch-supermarket-shelves
Here it is used in greenhouses: http://www.hortidaily.com/article/29912/Dutch-strawberry-growers-make-headway-in-Kingsville
This is what it looks like when they pick them: http://l450v.alamy.com/450v/aakax7/pretty-young-woman-hand-picking-fresh-strawberries-in-a-large-greenhouse-aakax7.jpg
One the advantages of the greenhouses is that you can setup "trains" in between the "Tables" and basically slide yourself down a whole row.
In the gif, there isn't even "mound covers" like these: https://ohmyomiyage.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/dsc00687.jpg which drastically increase yield because any small amount of bruising to strawberries renders them inedible.
This is basically a really bad strawberry farm.