Of the total area of the Netherlands, 54 percent (2.2 million hectares) is used as agricultural land according to the databank CBS. Also, according to the CBS data- bank corn, potatoes, sugar beets, and onions are the products from which we earn the most. 54 percent is already a shocking amount of land, which is part of nature, that is used for humanly beneficial purposes. In the episode De Voedsel BV of the NPO series Tegenlicht, they mentioned that 80 percent of the onion harvest is exported.This also shows that we want to earn money from the process of growing an onion. The more crops, the more money can be made. We thrive economically from the land we are taking.
However, we do care about what we buy and how much, and we also start to care about climate change. Self-grown vegetables are occupying a completely different value than self-bought vegetables in our daily lives. The process of growing something, planting a seed, waiting for it to sprout, hoping for it to grow strong, and eventually harvesting a perfectly imperfect onion with dirt on it and maybe some uneven brown spots awakenings a certain feeling. The feeling of being proud to grow something yourself, satisfaction doing so, and curiosity about what you will harvest can become valuable to us. I think people will be more curious about growing their own vegetables because it’s cheap and sustainable and gives a different consuming experience. We can even start thinking of scalability in our own gardens and produce what we need instead of what we want to earn. The connection between human life and the life of the onion gets deeper.
ONION is an interactive experience whereby your senses will be stimulated via sound and film. This recreates the experience of seeding, growing and harvesting your own onion in contradiction towards buying an onion in the supermarket.
