In April and May of every year, Holland briefly dons its multicoloured livery. Since the first flowering in 1594, with bulbs brought back from the Ottoman Empire by the Austrian ambassador, four centuries of selection have led to the development of more than 800 varieties of tulip. In the region of Lisse, they are cultivated for selling onions. The Netherlands have more than 50,000 acres (20,000 ha), half devoted to tulips and one-quarter to lilies, and provide 65 percent of the world production of flowering bulbs (or some 10 billion bulbs) and 59 percent of the exports of cut flowers. Dutch agriculture, which employs 5 percent of the active population, is one of the worlds most intensive and places the country third among world exporters of agricultural produce (after the United States and France). But this stellar performance comes at the price of degraded water quality, which is inducing Holland to begin using natural predators to protect its crops from illness and harmful insects,

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