Agricultural wintering in Europe

At the end of October, Amsterdam entered winter prematurely under the howling westerly wind. In such a cold day, Jos van Mir, who is engaged in tomato cultivation, has to go through the same "cold" sales market with other fruit and vegetable producers.

"generally speaking, this year is not a good year. On the one hand, the demand is shrinking, on the other hand, the supply of tomatoes is on the rise, and many small farmers are in trouble." Joss said not without worry. For other producers of consumer goods, life is just as difficult.

European dairy farmers' anger at falling prices has translated into 230 million euros in subsidies from the European Union, but Mr Joss does not expect to be treated the same way as dairy farmers.

Subsidized agriculture has been one of the labels of EU agriculture for more than 40 years. However, the EU common agricultural policy not only protects EU agricultural development, but also exposes some drawbacks. The biggest problem is that agricultural subsidy policy causes farmers to blindly expand production, serious overcapacity and distorts the price transmission mechanism.

At the time of this crisis, European agriculture, which already has a high deficit, can no longer provide 230 million euros in subsidies for each agricultural industry. at this time, market-oriented agriculture, which was originally dissociated from subsidized agriculture, is more likely to get out of the crisis ahead of time.

Flexible market agriculture

Joss's vegetable and fruit farming industry is market agriculture, and many agricultural categories in the Netherlands are also representatives of European market agriculture.

"there are no subsidies because we are sufficiently competitive in the market. Agricultural production efficiency in the Netherlands has always been higher than the average level of the European Union, and our market strategy for technological strength should help us tide over the difficulties." Joss told the CBN.

But as for how to spend the winter, the producers in market-oriented agriculture are of course "eight Immortals crossing the sea, each showing their magical powers."

Joss picked up a small bag of beautifully packaged small fruit tomatoes and told reporters that this is the main variety they have chosen this year, and its sales have been fully spread out in supermarkets all over the Netherlands.

"the employment downturn caused by the economic crisis has given people more time to work at home, they have more time to eat snacks, but they also need to control spending, and small fruit tomatoes meet this need." Joss told the reporter his business story.

The shrewd Joss also strictly controls the volume of the local market. Once he felt that supply exceeded demand, he quickly put the surplus tomatoes into the market outside the Netherlands to avoid a drop in prices.

Similar to the vegetable and fruit growing industry, the Dutch flower industry, which also belongs to market agriculture, also needs to survive in difficulties. According to the statistics of the Dutch Flower Association in 2007, the largest export destination of cut flowers in the Netherlands is Germany, followed by the United Kingdom and France respectively. As the top three export destination countries are the hardest hit by the financial crisis, Dutch cut flower exports to the above three countries were all negative in 2008.

On October 13, the annual Dutch International Horticultural Exhibition was held in Amsterdam. Wim van der Loo, chairman of the exhibition, told reporters that a total of about 740 manufacturers came to the exhibition this year, only slightly more than last year, but not comparable to previous years.

In the face of the harsh environment, professional flower planting companies are already implementing countermeasures. Anzu Company of the Netherlands is a seedling cultivation company specializing in Anthurium andraeanum and Phalaenopsis, whose Anthurium cut flower varieties account for about 80% of the world market. The company's staff told CBN that in addition to relying on larger marketing activities, they are already cultivating varieties of Anthurium andraeanum with smaller plants, which can increase the number of plants per unit area for florists and help them cope with falling prices by increasing yields.

Yearning for the Chinese market

In addition to saving themselves by agricultural producers, agricultural associations in Europe will also actively carry out marketing activities. "as a result of lowering future sales expectations, growers have reduced their production of flowers, so you will see that the growth rate of flower production has slowed down this year."

The head of the Dutch Flower Association told the CBN, "the current flower producers have become more and more professional, so they need more and more market strategies." What we are going to do next year is to do a lot of marketing activities in the 14 countries of the European Union. "

Since the middle of the year, a growing number of economic indicators show that the global economy has passed the worst, with overseas agricultural sales rebounding first. A Dutch tulip bulb exporter told CBN that although the current price is very low, exports of bulbs outside the European Union are in short supply. Demand for commercial flowers in Asian markets such as China and Japan is growing rapidly, and cheap bulb prices have stimulated overseas florists to purchase.

The EU's internal market also seems to be showing some signs of improvement. Greenco, Joss's planting company, sold 60 tons of tomatoes in the first week of October and will reach 140 tons in the second week, the best in the same period on record.

However, there are not many growers who can ride out the storm like Joss. There are a large number of family farms or orchards in Dutch market agricultural production, and the continuation of several generations of management inertia makes it difficult for them to quickly change their product structure and sales strategy, so market production also means facing market elimination.

Of course, from the perspective of long-term development, like the shift of manufacturing from developed to developing countries, European market-oriented agriculture also includes the transfer of factors to fight the crisis.

"at present, some technical planting companies have transplanted their production bases abroad. For example, Anzu Company has also set up a horticultural limited company in Kunming, China." Roland, chief representative of the Kunming representative office of the Council for the Promotion of Trade in the Netherlands, told CBN, "but some family farms are difficult to move to places with lower costs because of the inertia of operation."

Not only in the Netherlands, but also in France, foie gras production is gradually transferred to third-party countries, which shows the trend of global allocation of elements after European agriculture has achieved its core competitiveness.

But when it comes to technology transfer, Wim said he is most worried about the effective protection of intellectual property rights, which is also a concern raised by many modern European agricultural producers to reporters at the exhibition.

There are also a large number of newly developed engineering, mechanical, biological and electronic technologies around planting, and technology transfer has also become a way for manufacturers to transfer production. Frances Oden, chairman of Lemnis Lighting Company, told reporters that they hope to introduce the LED lighting technology that has been used in greenhouses into China and look for Chinese partners to develop the market for public utility lamps.

"the Chinese government plans to urbanize in the next 50 years to expand the existing market, so every advantageous company will find its own market," Oden said confidently. "