Eastern Europe is actually the opposite, lower tourism than the west and higher industry: less offshoring + western countries relocated some industries to the east to benefits from lower wages

https://preview.redd.it/fmpg5f0i9bc31.png?auto=webp&s=96ce53...

that's my point, they have much higher farming and industry than service, so it's not surprising that OP has tons of farms around

Netherlands. Very dense cities surrounded by farm land.

One of my friends is an engineer for food manufacturing equipment. Another for payment processing, and another as a bike mechanic, and another builds gaming rigs (think sim rigs).

I don’t think I know anyone who works in tourism.

are there really hours worth of travel in the netherlands? or perhaps you meant travel by bike

> are there really hours worth of travel in the netherlands?

By car, yeah. By bike? You're crazy -- but totally doable.

If you wanted to hit all the major population centers (Maastricht, Nijmegen, Enschede, Groningen, Amsterdam, Den Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven), you'd be driving for about 10-12 hours ... with lots of boring farmland in between.

I underestimated its size... thought it was much smaller

Maastricht to Groningen is only about 3h20 by car. That's the longest distance I could find between two cities.

There's a good portion on the Autobahn in Germany on that route, so yeah, it would be a pretty short drive.

???

There is so much agriculture in western europe, look at net food exports by country. Germany, france, netherlands, uk...