Recently, tulip bulb production has greatly decreased in Japan because of massive imports of cheap bulbs from the Netherlands. The production volume of Japanese tulip bulbs is one-third of that in the last peak, 1993, and the market share of Dutch bulbs in Japan has reached 80%.The aim of this paper is to compare farm management conditions in Japan and the Netherlands to find some comparative features of production costs of tulip bulbs. In November 2009, I conducted interviews with Japanese and Dutch bulb farmers and surveyed production costs.The main results are as follows: (1) the average price of tulip bulbs produced in the Netherlands is less than half of those produced in Japan. (2) The production per hectare (ha) in the Netherlands is more than twice of that of Japan. (3) The scale of farms in the Netherlands is more than four times that of Japan. (4) The production system of the Netherlands is more mechanized with bigger tractors and machinery. As a result, for example, Dutch farmers plant by 3 ha per day, whereas Japanese farmers plant only 0.3 or 0.4 ha per day. (5) The wage share in production costs of the Netherlands is less than that of Japan. (6) The capital depreciation share in production cost of the Netherlands is more than that of Japan. (7) The farm income share in terms of the production price in the Netherlands is less than that of Japan.
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