It is hard to imagine that the Netherlands, a country with an area of only 41526 square kilometers and about half the size of Chongqing in China, is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural products. Its export volume of flowers, vegetables and fruits ranks first in the world; Dairy exports are second only to Germany and New Zealand, ranking third in the world; The export ranking of animal and vegetable oil is second only to China and India, also ranking third in the world; Meat exports rank fourth in the world after the United States, Brazil, and Germany. Since 2020, the export value of agricultural products from the Netherlands has continuously exceeded the $100 billion mark, maintaining its global runner up position. Why can the Netherlands become a top exporter of agriculture?
Using Technology to Change Destiny
Let's take a look at what Dutch agriculture looks like first.
In agricultural production bases in the Netherlands, it is rare to see golden wheat waves that cannot be seen at all, nor are clear ridges and ridges visible. The most common occurrence is a glass greenhouse next to each other. Data shows that the glass greenhouse area in the Netherlands reaches 110 million square meters, accounting for about a quarter of the global total.
The interior of the greenhouse is not a piece of land, but a layer by layer of "shelves". Each layer of "shelves" is not covered with soil, but with a cultivation substrate called "rock wool". This material is breathable, moisturizing, and can effectively provide nutrients to crops.
This is the standard operation of Dutch agriculture: greenhouse workshop+soilless cultivation.
Due to its own limitations, Dutch agriculture has adopted such a "stingy" production method. The Netherlands is a country with more people and less land, known as the "lowland country". In order to increase Lebensraum, Dutch people have reclaimed land from the sea for generations. The scarcity of land has made the Dutch people "see the land as gold" since ancient times, making every effort to improve land use efficiency, engage in three-dimensional agriculture, facility agriculture, and demand efficiency from space.
However, simply converting a two-dimensional plane into a three-dimensional space is not enough. The lighting in the Netherlands is severely inadequate, with only over two months of clear weather a year. The Dutch are slowly finding their way, which is to seek help from the local developed optical industry and use black technology to solve problems. Optical research, optical instrument and related new material science in the Netherlands are extremely developed. When they were manufacturing lenses for high-end cameras, they found that there was still a lot of room for improvement in the light transmittance of ordinary glass. As long as a layer of anti reflective coating was applied to specialized glass for professional lenses, it can effectively reduce the reflectivity and improve the light transmittance. So they also "moved" this coating onto the greenhouse glass, effectively alleviating the problem of insufficient lighting.
To further improve lighting efficiency, they have also applied intelligent technology to pruning branches and leaves. A Dutch technology company has developed an AI robot that can automatically recognize the growth of seedlings' branches and leaves, perform intelligent pruning, and make all crops "rain and dew evenly", promoting fruit growth. Someone has calculated using two crops, cucumber and tomato, that this alone can increase the yield per square meter by 30%.
Overall, relying on technology to compensate for the shortcomings of natural endowments and transform resource disadvantages into industrial advantages, Dutch agriculture has indeed achieved the goal of "using technology to change destiny".
Dilute costs with high efficiency
How to solve the cost problem of treating agriculture as a technology industry?
The primary solution for the Netherlands is to introduce a fourth dimension - time.
Indeed, a major characteristic of Dutch agriculture is its high input. Whether it is glass greenhouses, rock wool cultivation, or the research and application of various black technologies, the amount of funds required is not small. Although high input can bring high output, in the short term, the cost-effectiveness of Dutch agriculture is indeed not satisfactory.
However, that's not how the accounts are calculated. Assuming that someone else's production per unit area is 1 and only has one floor on the ground; The production per unit area in the Netherlands far exceeds 1, and it can operate multiple layers simultaneously. The amazing scale effect greatly dilutes the Unit cost, and the advantages naturally emerge.
In addition to scale, the structure also has great potential to be tapped. By sorting out the advantageous agricultural product categories in the Netherlands, it can be found that products with high profit margins such as vegetables, fruits, and horticultural flowers are the focus of attention in the Netherlands. Statistics show that the per mu yield of cucumbers, chili peppers, and tomatoes in the Netherlands is the world's highest, and horticultural flowers contribute 40% of the output value of Dutch agriculture with 6% of the planting area.
Finally, there is regional advantage. The main export destination for Dutch agricultural products is Europe, where labor costs are extremely high. A French research institution has calculated that if the costs of planting, processing, and transportation throughout the entire industry chain are added up, labor costs can account for about half of the local retail prices of vegetables and fruits. This also means that as long as high-tech investment is not excessively expensive and the level of automation is high enough to cover the corresponding labor costs, overall it is cost-effective.
At present, facility agriculture in the Netherlands has fully implemented automated control, including lighting systems, heating systems, liquid fertilizer irrigation and fertilization systems, carbon dioxide replenishment systems, mechanized harvesting systems, and monitoring systems. Machines replace manual labor and undertake most of the most time-consuming, labor-intensive, and professional skills required work, which is also one of the important reasons why Dutch agricultural products have a cost advantage.
Occupy the high-end field of the agricultural industry chain
Throughout the world, developed agricultural countries have obvious advantages at both ends of the high added value curve of the industrial chain.
One end is the upstream seed industry.
Just take a look at the schools here to see how developed the seed industry in the Netherlands is. As one of the strongest universities in the field of agriculture and life science in the world, Wageningen University, located in Wageningen, a small city in the Netherlands, leads the world in agricultural science, life science, food science and other majors, and has pushed the world's famous universities to rank first in the world for many consecutive years.
The Netherlands is also one of the countries with a high degree of industrialization in the seed industry in the world. The Netherlands holds four out of the top ten seed companies globally. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Netherlands leads the world trend in seed industry development.
On the other end is the downstream market.
One of the most representative institutional innovations in Dutch agriculture is the auction system. This is one of the main modes of agricultural product distribution in the Netherlands.
The Dutch agricultural product auction system has a long history. At the end of the 19th century, Dutch commerce experienced significant development, and traditional methods were no longer suitable for the needs of large-scale transactions. In view of the difficulty in storage and transportation of fresh flowers, fruits and vegetables, Dutch businessmen invented a new auction mode, which is called "Dutch auction".
The auction system has many benefits. Firstly, force upstream to ensure product quality. All agricultural products involved in trading must be included in the scope of quality supervision, and major exchanges will naturally guard against unqualified products for their own reputation; Second, the auction mechanism is essentially a package of services provided around market transactions, so the exchange will consciously collect information on the whole industry chain to break the information silo phenomenon that commonly exists in traditional transactions; Thirdly, the auction system helps to form an authoritative price adjustment mechanism, which neither favors the upstream nor looks at the downstream differently, and can promote the healthy development of the industry; Fourthly, the auction system helps to form a specialized division of labor and to some extent quells market risks.
It has to be said that human wisdom is infinite, and a series of key factors related to the overall development of the agricultural product market, such as standardization, specialization, and informatization, have been connected with the hammer after hammer. In fact, the auction system not only deeply influenced Dutch agriculture, but also provided a new approach for the construction of the global agricultural product circulation system.
