A good portion of Dutch tulip bulbs are grown in US & shipped to Holland for
retail sale.
Ron
--On Thursday, October 02, 2008 2:18 PM -0400 "Stephen A. Lawrence" <[EMAIL
PROTECTED]> wrote:
OrionWorks wrote:
It's good to know that Mr. Cornwall has informed of the fact that he
has important things do. I was beginning to get worried.
Jones, it truly astonishes me to realize that such a small country is
capable of producing that much output. Puts us (The so-called Bread
Basket?) to shame.
Ahem...
It is, in fact, not all that clear that the Dutch rank second in food
exports.
Thus spake Wiki:
The Dutch rank third worldwide in value of agricultural exports,
behind the United States and France, with exports earning $55 billion
annually. A significant portion of Dutch agricultural exports are
derived from fresh-cut plants, flowers, and bulbs, with the
Netherlands exporting two-thirds of the world's total. The
Netherlands also exports a quarter of all world tomatoes, and
one-third of the world's exports of peppers and cucumbers.[21]
Note, first, they rank third, not second, just behind France.
And, second, note that this rank is based on total *value* of all
*agricultural* products, which includes very high margin cut flowers and
bulbs, which are shipped worldwide from Holland. These are luxury
goods, not commodity foods, and are priced accordingly.
In comparison, countries such as U.S., Canada, Argentina, and much of
Europe export huge amounts of low-margin commodity grain.
I very much doubt that Holland's net *biomass* exports would put them
anywhere near third place in the world.
If anyone has a source indicating where Holland falls with regard to
actual commodity FOOD exports, rather than total "agricultural" exports,
it would be interesting to see the numbers.
