Bittersweet market position improvement in the Netherlands

Hungary’s total agri-food export only grew 1.1 percent in the first three quarters of 2015 but we realised almost 12 times bigger sales growth in the Dutch market. There are 17 million people living in the Netherlands (90 percent of them are city dwellers) and it is the 6th strongest economy in the European Union. Agricultural production uses 55.1 percent of the country’s land but despite this high proportion only 1.8 percent of the population works in agriculture, due to the high level of automation. While in Hungary only 1.3-1.7 percent of agricultural land is irrigated, in the Netherlands this proportion is 20 percent. Agricultural produce are mostly processed and sold by cooperatives, which have great traditions and are very efficient.

It tells a lot about the Dutch agri-food sector’s efficiency that in gross value its annual output equals that of the Hungarian economy. In the Netherlands farmers breed 4 times more livestock per area unit than in Hungary. For instance 12 million pigs (Hungary: 3 million) and 4 million cattle (Hungary: 770,000) are bred by Dutch farmers and they also have a highly developed poultry farming sector. The Netherlands is very famous for its horticulture sector (greenhouse farming), specialising in vegetables and flowers.

Dutch agriculture is more competitive than Hungary in dairy products, beef, pork and poultry meat, vegetable, flowers and plants. Most of our import from the Netherlands is realised in these categories, plus we also import several hundred thousand pigs every year. This country is Hungary’s 5th-6th most important agri-food trading partner in terms of both export and import. Although we export 10.7 percent more agri-food products to the Netherlands than we buy from them, the trade surplus is mainly the result of us selling unprocessed or semi-processed products. On the contrary, our Dutch import is dominated by processed products, including groceries with a high added value.

Between 2000 and 2011 our trade balance was in the negative, but since 2012 the balance has been positive for us. We mostly sell cereal grains and cereal products, oilseeds, fats of animal and vegetable origin and meat. About 45 percent of the products we export to the Netherlands is processed agri-food products. It must be mentioned that with the exception of cereal grains, oilseeds and sugar there is no product category in the bilateral trading between the two countries where we are net exporters.