According to Statista this is just a statistical anomaly as a result of the Netherlands having such large port facilities - the agricultural products are imported to the country and then exported elsewhere in Europe, which artificially bumps up the export statistics without any correlation to the actual production amount.
Which makes a lot more sense, because even an efficiently-run farming sector surely couldn't be so efficient that it can produce almost as much as the US despite being 1/50 the size. If you look at actual agricultural production the Netherlands isn't at the top of anything - the best they're doing is world #5 in cheese production.
Things like vertical food farms, huge greenhouses, intensive farming help us become (one of) the biggest
- milk and milk powder producer
- apples (apples in South Africa are likely to come from the Netherlands)
- tomato’s in Spain come from the Netherlands
A quick Google search says Spanish yearly tomato production is 4x - 5x bigger than Netherlands'. I don't think your example, albeit possible, is correct.
Apples in South Africa are not likely to come from the Netherlands. SA exports about $736m in apples and pears, imports about $284k, not from the Netherlands.
It depends on what you count, as "agriculture exports" could (probably do) also include, apart from food items:
- Agricultural machines
- Seeds
- Agricultural patents on e.g. seeds
- Fertilizers
- non-food plants (flowers etc.)
- (Animal) vaccins
- other agricultural products processed ("produced") in the Netherlands
And if you count those by value, then it is certainly possible that NL gets a large share of world exports by value: other countries like Germany may produce more, but if they don't export the valuable products it won't show up on world export stats.
This makes sense and is probably true, but Netherland still hits well above its weight in agricultural production; production is extremely intensive, and very high for the land area. From what I understand, Wageningen University of Agriculture is world class and has for a long time been pushing the limits of agriculture.
Of course whether such intensive agriculture is actually a good idea is another matter; we've got quite some pollution issues here, and aren't exactly known for the tastiest produce.
I don't think this is a matter of merely re-shipping the same products. For example, if you look at poultry, the Netherlands imported 240 M€ worth of live poultry and exported 2300 M€.
The explanation I have always been given is that we're quite large in very high value agricultural products such as flowers and that is what bumps up the export figures (measured in monetary value of the exports)
Which makes a lot more sense, because even an efficiently-run farming sector surely couldn't be so efficient that it can produce almost as much as the US despite being 1/50 the size. If you look at actual agricultural production the Netherlands isn't at the top of anything - the best they're doing is world #5 in cheese production.