How the Dutch Farm the Ocean Floor
In Holland we found another of mankind's great achievements--the reclamation of the
ocean floor for farming. Holland is a land of about 8 1/4 million acres, divided into
two almost equal parts-above and below high-tide level. It is inhabited by 8 million
industrious people. Its land included the great delta of the North Sea built up with the
products of erosion sculptured out of the lands of Germany and Switzerland and
northeastern France, brought down by the Rhine, and Meuse Rivers. Now 45 percent of the
area lies below high-tide level and one-fourth lies below mean sea level. The Dutch from
time immemorial have been carrying on an unending battle with the sea. They have become
expert in filching land from the grasp of the angry waters of the North Sea.
If the United States were as densely populated per square mile of cultivated Of land as
Holland, the population of the United States would be 1 1/4 billion. The density of
population of Holland has called for an increase of its land area. Rather than to seek
additional land by conquest of its neighbors it has turned to the conquest of the sea.
The Zuider-Zee project, two centuries in the planning, is Holland's masterpiece in a
2,000-year battle with the North Sea. This project adds more than 550,000 acres of new
land to Holland's territory, converting the old salt Zuider-Zee into a sweet-water lake
renamed the Yssel Meer.
The Dutch have built great dikes to dam off the sea and have pumped the water out of
the basins with great pumping plants. They have diked off the sea and dewatered the land,
leached it of its salt, and converted it into productive farm land. We stood on fertile
farm land that was the floor of the sea only 7 years earlier, but now is divided into
farms equipped with fine houses and great barns (fig. 14). At a cost of about $200 an
acre, this land was reclaimed from the sea and divided into farms.
FIGURE 14. A Dutch farm in the Wieringermeer
Polder of the Netherlands. Only 7 years before this picture was taken this land was
covered by the North Sea.
The Dutch by this means have created a new agricultural paradise into which only select
farmers may enter. Out of 30 applications for each farm, one applicant is selected on the
basis of character, the past record of his family, and his freedom from debt. The
successful applicant is put on probation for a period of 6 years. If he farms the land in
accordance with the best interests of the land and of the country, he will be permitted to
continue for another period. If he fails to do so, he must get off and give another farmer
applicant a chance.
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