Sweet sin: strawberries from hageland

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hageland was known for its strawberries. Often this was a side income. On Sundays, tourists could visit the region and buy strawberries and peaches from the numerous roadside shopping stalls. Today you can still see them here and there. Strawberries were grown in open ground, but if you want to get there early and facilitate the laborious labor, you grow strawberries on hydroponics, like this horticulturist here. You do need a lot of water in times of drought, as was shown in 2005 when several hundred Hageland families ran out of water.

The strawberry markets and auctions in the heart of Hageland have since disappeared. Strawberry cultivation has been reduced to a few traditional family businesses. Transport companies that exported the strawberries to Germany in particular stopped or switched to other fruits. According to the growers, when VAT was introduced in the 1970s, the tax authorities destroyed the cultivation. The tax authorities controlled the grower in a secondary occupation so strictly that it was still unprofitable.

Jan Rymenams