A Comparative Study On International Agricultural Trade Of The Netherlands And Japan

With limited arable land per capita, the Netherlands and Japan are two densely-populated countries in the world. At the same time, compared to other countries, the Netherlands is also a small country in terms of land area and population. However, under such unfavorable conditions, the Netherlands has become the second largest net exporter of agricultural products in the world in 1989, only next to USA. It is a miracle. On the other side, Japan has become the largest net importer of agricultural products in mid 1980s. So it's very clear that there is an unbelievable difference between two countries in agriculture and agricultural trade.As a member of WTO, China will open the agricultural market further, and the pace of liberalization of agricultural trade will be accelerated, similar to what has happened in the Netherlands and Japan. In addition, in terms of per capita resource endowment, China resembles the Netherlands and Japan to some extent, especially in land resources. So China can draw some lessons from the experiences of the Netherlands and Japan in agricultural trade.The analysis revealed that the structure of agricultural trade of the Netherlands is conform to its resource endowment and comparative advantage, with labor and capital intensive agricultural products as the largest export products and land intensive products mainly dependent on imports. On the contrary, Japan's agricultural trade structure is not conforming to its resource endowment and comparative advantage.Although the supply of cereals in two countries is highly dependent on the imports, the self-sufficiency ratio of rice in Japan has been kept at the level of 100% through protection, while for the Netherlands the highest was 50% for wheat. The high protection level of rice in Japan affected the growth of its agricultural productivity in general. However, low self-sufficiency ratio of cereals in the Netherlands didn't affect its agricultural development and agricultural, indeed, it may be beneficial to Dutch agriculture and agricultural trade.The main feature of Dutch agricultural trade can be summarized as "more imports, even more exports", and that is a proper agricultural trade pattern for the Netherlands. A large part of imports are used as raw materials for further utilization and processing, which means more value added.The competitive advantage index shows that Dutch agricultural products have competitive edge and comparative advantage, and Japan's agricultural products almost completely loss competitive edge and comparative advantage.Further analysis showed that conformability to comparative advantage is the core of Dutch large agricultural exports, while other factors such as skilled agricultural labor, favorable transportation condition, regional economic integration, rational agricultural system and policy, advanced agricultural processing industry, and specialization of agriculture also contributed to the success of agriculture trade.As for Japan, on the one hand, the increase of food consumption was important to the growth of food imports, on the other, high agricultural protection level and small scale were main factors of the decline of agriculture and agricultural trade.On the basis of above analysis, the thesis come up with that China should change the policy of grain supply, promote agricultural research and development, and accelerate the pace of specialization so as to increase the international competitive advantage of agriculture and agricultural exports.