Dutch Wheat Import: Latvia Succeeds

In 2021, the total Dutch Wheat area will amount to 118,158 hectares. The average hectare yield is 8.2 tons. This results in a total yield of 970,000 tons. An estimated 70 percent (678,000 tons) of this can be qualified as baking Wheat. However, not all baking Wheat is used for this purpose. The amount of Dutch Wheat that eventually ends up in bread is approximately 150,000 to 300,000 tons. Total Dutch bread consumption is 817,000 tons. This requires 554,000 tons of Wheat.

Even though the Netherlands produces Wheat, it cannot provide its domestic Wheat usage. Only less than 50% of the country’s Wheat crop is suitable for milling. Average per capita flour consumption is 62.5 kilograms, while bread consumption is 57 kilograms per person. The country usually produces 1.2 million tons of Wheat per year. That may sound like a lot, but it is less than one percent of the total grain production in Europe. This is partly due to the soil here. It is not suitable for growing grain, explains Caroline Emmen, Director of the Committee of Grain Traders.

“You also need a special quality of Wheat for bread: baking Wheat. “We don’t have that on a large scale here yet, so our grain is mainly used as animal feed. They depend on warm countries with many hours of sunshine for baking Wheat. Because the more sun, the more proteins get into the Wheat”, he added.

The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country (17.7 million) with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass. The utilized agricultural area in the Netherlands is approximately 2 million hectares (ha); this represents over half of the total territory. According to Eurostat, cereals represent around 12% of total UAA, and common Wheat represents 7%. Due to its high yield capacity, Wheat is the most cultivated grain, followed by maize and barley.

As an EU member country, the Netherlands is still developing organic farming. Farm income includes the income share of the different crops in rotation. Individually, Wheat does not contribute a high margin to farm income; other crops, like potatoes, contribute a higher margin to farm income. Therefore, farmers tend to reduce Wheat production year by year.

Dutch Wheat Trade

In 2020, the country exported Wheat worth $100 million, making it the world’s 31st most significant Wheat exporter. In the same year, Wheat was the 527th most shipped product in the Netherlands. The leading destination of Wheat exports from the Netherlands is Belgium ($32.3 million), Germany ($21.3 million), Israel ($20.9 million), Mozambique ($6.66 million), and Morocco ($5.29 million).

At the same time, they imported Wheat worth $887 million, becoming the 16th largest importer of Wheat in the world. According to an analysis published by the Royal Dutch Grain and Feed Trade Association (Het Comité), the Netherlands imports 83% of the Wheat it uses.

Wheat was the 132nd most imported product in the Netherlands. The country imports most of its Wheat needs from neighboring countries. It imports Wheat primarily from: France ($371 million), Germany ($296 million), Belgium ($94.9 million), Lithuania ($21.3 million), and Sweden ($17.9 million).

According to the AgFlow data, Latvia led their import market with 133 thousand tons in 2021-2022, followed by Bulgaria (124 thousand tons), Australia (106 thousand tons), Ukraine (70.1 thousand tons), and Estonia (31.6 thousand tons). Other minor exporters included France, Canada, Lithuania, Russia, and Hungary.