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The Netherlands is one of the world's three largest exporters of agricultural produce. With dairy farming and market gardening its main activities, agriculture employs around 5% of the Dutch workforce and accounts for 3% of the country's GDP. Its productivity has grown enormously in the past few decades, thanks largely to high-quality training, first-class research, and the provision of practical advice to farmers. But growth is no longer a priority. The priorities now are the environment, animal welfare, and the quality of produce. 80% of Dutch agricultural exports go to the EU, Germany being the largest market. The Netherlands also imports agricultural produce, mainly for feeding livestock or further processing into food products (coffee, tea, and cocoa being notable examples).
Arable farming
Changes in EU agriculture policy are gradually doing away with guaranteed prices for grain, sugar, and potato starch. Arable farmers are therefore having to adapt to a more competitive market, mainly by diversifying their activities. Some are breeding more livestock, and others are moving into market gardening. Some are developing what used to be sidelines, such as recreation and selling produce direct to the consumer, and others are switching to organic farming.
Market gardening
In recent decades, market gardening has expanded both in output and acreage. Its main products are flowers, vegetables, fruit, mushrooms, trees, and flower bulbs. Glasshouse growers are currently spending large amounts to meet environmental targets agreed with the government. The objective is to reduce the use of fertiliser and pesticides and hence the production of waste. Glasshouse growers are also implementing an energy covenant agreed with the government to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and use energy more efficiently. Many market gardeners are now using natural enemies instead of pesticides to protect their produce against harmful insects and diseases.
Organic agriculture
Organic farmers make almost no use of chemical pesticides or fertiliser. Their output is relatively small but increasing. Organic farmers are now aiming to improve their management and sales structure and make the prices of their produce more competitive. Large food retailers are becoming more interested in organic produce. Albert Heijn, the Netherlands' largest supermarket chain, plans to stop selling food sprayed with pesticides within the next ten years. 30% of Dutch consumers now regularly buy organic produce.
Livestock breeding
The main livestock-breeding activity is dairy farming. In 1984, the EU introduced limits to dairy production in the form of milk quotas, which encouraged the farmers to become more efficient, producing the same amount of milk with fewer cows. As well as breeding dairy cattle, which graze outdoors, many farmers breed other livestock - especially pigs and poultry - intensively in indoor pens. Most of the pork, poultry meat, and eggs thus produced are exported.
The outbreak of avian flu in the poultry sector in 2003, following earlier outbreaks of foot and mouth disease and swine fever, reopened the debate on intensive farming. Discussions were wide-ranging, extending beyond animal diseases and their control to issues such as public health, animal welfare, the environment, land use and trade relations. They also focused on the position of the farmers themselves, and future prospects for them and their families.
Fisheries
The two main branches of the Dutch fishing industry are deep-sea and coastal fishing, but fish and shellfish farming and freshwater fishing are also important. Sea and coastal fishing are carried out by a modern fleet of cutters and freezer trawlers. Cutters fish for sole, plaice, cod, whiting, herring, and shrimp. The largest markets are for flatfish such as sole and plaice. Trawlers fish for herring, mackerel, and horse mackerel. Shellfish farming is carried out mainly in the waters of Zeeland (in the southwest of the Netherlands) and in the Waddenzee (between the mainland and the West Frisian Islands).
Under EU fishing policy, the quota of fish that the industry may catch in each member state is decided annually by the European Commission, acting on the advice of biologists. The objective is to keep the stocks of each species above the safe biological minimum. The past few years have seen an increasing effort to keep fishing sustainable. Excessive catches ("by-catch") can be limited by altering the nets or by driving fish into them with the help of electrical stimuli (thereby causing less disturbance to the sea floor).
Agri-business
Agri-business, the whole range of agricultural and related activities, is a very important industrial sector in the Netherlands. It includes the production of food, luxury goods, and many non-food agricultural products, along with all the trade and services related to farming. More than half the produce of Dutch agriculture and market gardening is processed by the food, drink and tobacco industries. The agri-business activities with the highest turnovers are abattoirs and meat-processing, dairy farming, animal feed production, the tobacco industry, and the drinks industry.
For more information on the topics discussed in this chapter, contact the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality - www.minlnv.nl
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