What the fuck... That's some messed up shit man, like saying the US gave us Mohammed Ali and Trump. Van Gogh's killer is still in jail, serving a life sentence without parole. It's totally normal to be weird in this forum but at least get your facts straight.
And you forgot to mention the vitally important ~$2million loan to John Adams funding the independence of the US. And capitalism. And 70% of the vegetable varieties in the US, 40% of all plant varieties cultivated by mankind... Thanks to breeder's right by many different people, from small breeders to large corporations.
Yeah the Dutch collected all kinds of plants. They were explorers, and managed to get just about everywhere. Unfortunately people of the day did explore a little violently....but those guys also loved plants. They did help us with our Brexit which was very kind as well, good of you to point that out on the 4th!
I always am impressed when I see their current farming set ups. Their greenhouse technology is pretty fantastic. I've seen greenhouse setups with thousands of gavitas. They made themselves the experts in Europe for cut flower production. Not an easy feat when you don't have crazy cheep labor and your sun is less than ideal. But it's a great way to make a good return off an acre. And being a small country they don't have many acres.
That's our advantage in our industry as well. Growing up doing field tomato, and occasional bean and corn, you need tons of space to make enough money to pay the bills. If you are growing cut flowers or our fav dried flowers, you need 1/100th the footprint. I could harvest 50 acres a day of tomato, I'm lucky if I can do 100 sq ft of herbs.
There is a lot of anger at the big guy, but we are blessed to have an industry available now that doesn't require vast sums of money to get going. Prices will go down, we've been a little too blessed maybe, but any guy or girl who can work hard enough to build a greenhouse will be able to micro farm themselves a future. Herb will always be different from tomato and corn.
Everyone is looking at Monsanto but it's John Deere who will change our game the most someday. When they make a fully mechanical harvester where you can just drive over fields and have nuggets shoot into a bin while leaves and stalks are dropped to the soil, that will make some pretty damn cheap shwag available. People who make oil will love the cheap and dirty. That or for pre rolls.
I don't want to compete with that industrial scale, or grow that way. I want to grow the best quality, in a greenhouse. There will always be people who buy micro brew, and those that buy bud light. You just won't be able to sell your stuff at micro brew prices, if your still growing bud light. A game time.