CONTROL OF PRODUCTION AND PRICE IN DUTCH FLOWER BULB GROWING

In the Netherlands the possibility of intervention for saleable bulbs has already been in existence for a long time for three bulbous plants.
It can be said that in view of the highly price-inelastic demand for bulbs in general an intervention scheme for all the producers together tends to increase turnover.
For in a market with overproduction, either through seasonal influence or through a structural surplus, the price level is still kept more or less normal.
At the same time a more stable price trend reduces the fluctuations in production, so that the continuity of market supplies is better guaranteed.

A number of consequences of the present system summons up opposition, notably the possible incentive for production and the distribution of the surplus money.
A further refinement of the intervention scheme meets these objections and at the same time makes a more flexible intervention policy possible.
This refinement entails that every producer acquires an intervention right at a fixed price level (coupled to production costs and sales situation). The quantity that may be surrendered per unit of intervention right, e.g. per cultivated are of tulip bulbs, is fixed by means of an estimate of production and sales in the crop year concerned.

V Symposium on Horticultural Economics

B.M.M. Kortekaas

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1978.77.26