Turning tulips "eco"

An interview with “Tulip Man” Jeroen Koeman.

While kneeling in the soil, our hands full of bulbs, we chatted with EcoTulips co-founders Jeroen and Keriann about how they got started, why they do what they do, and the state of the organic bulb market. Here is what Jeroen had to say:

	Keriann and Jeroen Koeman

A new job offer brought me to Charlottesville, Virginia. It was only a temporary position—working from September to May—but I met Keriann and had a good reason to stay. She actually introduced me to organics. She had a friend with an organic farm in Madison County. I started working on the farm and saw how incredibly interested the customers were in organics and that it actually worked! Growing up in a traditional tulip-growing family, I really believed you had to use all the chemicals to produce a quality product.

Keriann and I decided we wanted to start our own business. At first we thought we’d start our own organic tulip farm, but there is a lot of overhead involved and it requires a lot of up-front cost. Instead, we looked into importing. There are 25,000 acres of conventionally managed tulips in Holland and only 25 acres of organically managed tulips. We definitely want to change that.

An organic education

In 2009, I visited Wilbrord Braakman. He had been growing tulips organically for over 25 years in Holland. I was completely blown away by the quality of his bulbs. But in 25 years of production, he had only managed to expand from 1 acre to 5 acres. The market just hadn’t caught up to what Wilbrord had been doing for a quarter century! So we struck a deal. We would build a market for, import and sell his bulbs in the U.S.

To sell organic tulips, you first have to educate people. America imports 800 million tulip bulbs a year. That’s hundreds of millions of bulbs literally dipped in toxic chemicals. Convincing people to spend more for something organic that they don’t actually eat is a challenge. But I think people are starting to see how connected even non-food products are to our health. The colony collapse disease (CCD) affecting our honeybees is a big red flag. Although they haven’t made a final determination on the cause, researchers have pointed to agricultural chemicals as at least one of the problems.

Growing organically

The thing about organic bulb production is we still have a lot to learn. There aren’t many established best practices yet. What we do know is that healthy soil, weed control with manual labor and the use of organic mulch can create a beautiful product. Some examples of how organic bulb management compares to conventional are in the approaches to two pests.

Aphids are considered a big problem by the conventional growers specifically because of the viruses they spread. The aphids themselves are not actually harmful. So, if the farmers are doing good virus control, you don’t have to worry about the aphids.

Mites can also become an issue since a grower digs their bulbs up in June or July and stores them into August. Conventional farmers use a nasty fumigant in the storage rooms. Organic farmers do a fancy ultra-low oxygen treatment that is very effective but a bit more expensive. The good news is that as more farmers switch to the low-oxygen treatment, the less expensive it will become.
 
Tulips are like people, they require adequate air, water, and food to live; and they need a balanced diet to be healthy. This includes not only basic nutrients (NPK), but also a wide variety of organic compounds and micronutrients. The goal of organic tulip growers is to use healthy soil which has a balanced natural nutrition value. Bulbs grown with organic methods are the healthiest and strongest bulbs you can get.

Making a market

This year our bulbs were for the first time available in a major chain store—Whole Foods Market. We are glad that the demand of organic non-food products is increasing.

We are still a small company which makes it difficult to compete with the enormous bulb companies who import more than 100 million bulbs a year.  My dream is that my family will eventually switch to certified organic production. I took my dad and brothers out to Wilbrord’s farm and they were blown away. Before they saw the farm with their own eyes, I don’t think they really believed you could produce a quality bulb without chemicals. My dad and the growers his age are the first generation raised within the chemical scheme. They haven’t seen it done any other way. To be honest, just three years ago, I had the exact same mind-set.

But, again, the market needs to be there. I’m currently buying just 200,000 bulbs and my family farm grows 20 million bulbs. Farmers see transitioning to organic as a substantial risk to their business. Most farmers really do have a love of nature, but the risk to their livelihoods is too high. I think more farmers would be willing to take that risk if they knew there was a market to support them.

Already we’re seeing small changes. Wilbrord is in his late 70s and has been growing on a particular organic vegetable farm from the beginning. A new organic tulip grower started using the same vegetable farm two years ago. And we’ve doubled sales at EcoTulips every year so far. Demand is the power of change.

See Jeroen and Keriann planting 25,000 tulips at the Rodale Institute and check out an example of the traditional Dutch method for tucking in your bulbs in the article Tulip time.

We’re looking forward to being able to sell organic EcoTulips bulbs to our visitors and
planning our very own Tulip Festival sometime in April. The date is dependent
on the weather and when the bulbs decide it is time to bloom!

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