About SIA Holland Agro

A farming company in Latvia with Latvian roots and Dutch DNA. Owned by two families, the Ploegmakers and the Van Ansems, growing high-quality vegetables on Latvian soil. This is who we are and how we got here.

Dutch roots, Latvian fields

Bob van Ansem has lived in Latvia for eight years, running the family business there. Shortly before the pandemic he called Frans Ploegmakers about a tractor, and the conversation soon turned to arable farming. Bob liked the idea, but he had no intention of growing only grain like the average Latvian farmer. He wanted vegetables, the Dutch kind, and he knew the expertise for potatoes and onions was missing. Someone had to bring it. Frans, Bob and agronomist Willem spent 2021 and 2022 testing whether the two families were a good fit. They were. The papers were signed before a notary on a Saturday afternoon, and farming began in 2023.

Why Latvia

Across the Netherlands and northwest Europe, the pressure on farming keeps rising. Land is expensive, labour is expensive, machinery is expensive. Together, that pushes a potato to around sixteen cents in the Netherlands, while parts of France manage twelve. A processor buys where it is cheaper, and within a single Europe there is little to stop it. Latvia gives us room. Fields average eighteen hectares, so the work moves faster. Food production is valued here rather than resisted, and there is support for getting started. The climate is shifting in our favour too, with long summer days and more sunlight than people expect. We did not leave to escape. We are farmers, and we intend to stay farmers.

What we grow

Potatoes come first. We grow around 150 hectares (2026) of them, in varieties suited to chips, starch, fresh fries and straight to the table. In 2026 we added onions and carrots, the start of a serious move into local vegetables for the Baltic market. Grain and raps cover the largest area and give the farm its footing: winter wheat for bread, raps for oil, with field beans and barley completing the rotation. Grain and raps are worthwhile, but everyone grows them. Our advantage lies in the vegetables, where few others bother, and that is where we intend to specialise.

From nothing to fourteen hundred hectares in five years, with our own people. That still amazes me.

Bob van Ansem

Part of the region

We did not come to farm in isolation. Where we can, we buy, sell and work with local partners: a nearby brewer, a regional trader, the poultry farm whose digestate we spread. We want the region to gain from what we do here. As a company with Dutch roots in Latvia, we would rather be a good neighbour than just a large one.