Can India Learn From Netherland - A Land of Agrarian Output
On the last leg of his three-nation visit PM Narendra Modi has signed pact for irrigation and water conservation with Netherland that may help India to learn a lot from one of the best agrarian economies in the world.
Like India’s Western-Rajasthan or Tibetan-Plateau, much of the soil in east and south-east of Netherland is poor for fertility. In a remarkably similar situation like North-East of India, most of the large regions in Netherland are also moist due to their low altitude and sometimes only grass can be grown in such regions, but in a smarter move, the Dutch entrepreneurs had led this problem in a good dairy opportunity. The best Dutch lands are found in reclaimed polders like we have in Ganges or Krishna basin in India. Principal crops in Netherland are sugar beets, potatoes, wheat barley, rye and triticale (a wheat hybrid).
In a lesson giving step, the Dutch government had actively encouraged the consolidation of small landholdings into larger and more efficient units, a vice-versa pattern in India to allow loan waivers.
The Dutch government had identified this agrarian potential around a century ago, and the different regimes in Netherland had helped agrarian sector through various extension services. The promotion of scientific research along with the creation of specific types of education were few among them, the same way Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) is doing in India. But there are large similarities in the functioning of governments, in the 1930s and the extensive system for government’s control of agrarian production was introduced in Netherland. India that was lucky enough of not being the part of deadly Second World War (WW2) did not capitalise over existing infrastructure but Netherland acted in more passionate way post WW2. The then Dutch regime had introduced a planning which covered almost every aspect of agrarian policy which included rural life.
Netherland is known for its second position in the world as the largest agrarian contributor with 94 billion euro exports. This Dutch economy stands first in the European Union for the agrarian exports said minister for agriculture, Netherland Martijn van Dam during the opening of International Green Week in Berlin last year, the largest international agricultural trade exhibition in the world more than 27 per cent of the total land area in Netherland is under permanent or seasonal crops production. Around 54.2 per cent of grass, lands account for all agricultural lands in the nation. With the help of superior mechanical support, most of the farmers effectively manage their farm works. Unlike India, many successful co-operatives had helped in adding a better production to this Dutch agrarian economy.
It is also an important aspect that, in a different story with India or US, the Netherlands had witnessed a continuous downfall in production in several years. But the most interesting fact is that labour productivity in this small Dutch nation has risen sharply in horticulture and agriculture industry. The number of agrarian holdings declined by 17 per cent from mid-1970s to the mid- 1980s; around the start of the millennium in 2000 there were 51,727 arable holdings in the Dutch land and the agriculture labour force had been the total of around 2,54,000 in 1999.
This Dutch land is also famous for its floriculture produces. Netherland grows its bulbs for exports basically it is a tulip, hyacinth, daffodil, narcissus, and crocus the town of Aalsmeer near Dutch capital Amsterdam is world’s leading growing centre along with nurseries at Boskoop. Bulbing an important part of floriculture had been traditionally done at Lisse and Hillegom the Northern-Netherland. It was as huge as 55,700 hectares of land used from floriculture in Netherland till a decade ago.
