Tiny Netherlands is The Second Largest Agro-Exporter in The World

In 2014, the Netherlands again came second, behind the United States, on the world table of agricultural exporters. It was followed by Germany, Brazil and France. This was revealed by recent figures from the UN-ComTrade database. Exports of agricultural products continued to grow in 2014 by more than 1%, despite the crisis, and reached a value of €108 billion.

Half of Dutch exports goes to Germany, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom. LEI Wageningen UR recently provided new figures for 2013, which show that the main export products to the countries of the EU are meat, floriculture products and dairy produce.

To countries outside the European Union, the chief products exported are processed goods such as diary produce, grain preparations and beverages, as well as floriculture products. Imports consist primarily of products such as tropical fruit, margarine, oils and fats, animal feed ingredients, coffee and cocoa.

More than €19 billion of total Dutch exports of agricultural food products worth more than €80 billion in 2013 were re-exports via the port of Rotterdam and Schiphol, over 58 billion concerned domestic produce and only 2.7 billion was transit cargo.

Re-export means that the product is first imported and becomes the property of a Dutch company, undergoes minor processing and, possibly after being repackaged and regrouped, is exported to another country. This happens, for example, with tropical fruit in the port of Rotterdam, with imported grains and with oil-bearing seeds.

How The Netherlands Became The World’s Second Largest Agricultural Exporter

With transit cargo, products are not cleared when entering the Netherlands, but go straight on in the same container to a client in another country.

The Netherlands is also the world’s number one producer of tomatoes amongst other produce.