Narcissus and Daffodil

56 G.R. Hanks
such as drying stores with potato, onion or cereal growing (e.g., see Williams, 1996).
Until recent years, flowers cropped from the field were considered of secondary
importance to the bulbs. This area has traditionally supplied the relatively close
markets of London and the industrial Midlands, and is now a major distribution
centre for fresh produce for the UK, the EU and world-wide. Cornwall has been
traditionally important for the production of early fresh produce, including
flowers and potatoes, from its mild, relatively frost-free climate. With improved
road links eastwards, and EU support, the area has become increasingly important
for narcissus bulb production. Bulb growing has a very high labor requirement
for flower picking and bulb handling, and so is important in the local economy.
Bulb quality is enhanced by soils free of potato cyst nematode, a requirement for
bulbs exported to the USA, Canada and Norway. Unlike eastern England, fields
are sometimes relatively small, of irregular topography and have stony soils. The
extreme of this type of agriculture is found in the Isles of Scilly, where Tazetta
narcissus are cropped over a long season in the frost-free climate: fields are small
and often surrounded by hedges or artificial shelter for protection from the
strong, salt-laden winds. The high transport costs here limit growing to high-value
produce, and there is an interdependence between agriculture and tourism.
Other areas of narcissus growing include Scotland and Jersey, the latter mainly for
flower production. Growing narcissus over the broad geographic range of the
British Isles ensures flower production over a long season and confers a variety of
other climatic advantages, such as frost-freedom in the extreme south-west, and
relative freedom from insect pests in the colder north.
In the Netherlands, bulbs have been traditionally grown around Hillegom, in the
Bloembollenstreek. The advantages to bulb production here are considerable: ideal
sandy soils with a controlled water table, abundant traditional expertise, a strong
R&D base, the availability of family labour for labour-intensive bulb handling, and
a superb infrastructure for marketing, selling and logistics. With the pressure on
agricultural land in this region in recent years, however, much narcissus production
has moved to the heavier soils of the polders of North Holland, more akin to
the situation in eastern England. About 55% of the production area is in Noord-
Holland and 33% in the Bloembollenstreek (de Vroomen and de Groot, 1991).
In USA, the most commercial bulb production takes place in the ideal climatic
conditions of the coastal area of the Pacific North-West, with almost all narcissus
production in Washington State. Most growers now produce field-grown flowers
as well as bulbs, although formerly the production of bulbs for glasshouse forcing
in the east and mid-west was important. The tourism associated with bulbs has a
major impact in the communities where bulbs are grown, with a number of bulb
festivals: it is estimated that the economic input of bulb growing on tourism is fivetimes
the value of the crop itself (G.A. Chastagner, personal communication).
Exports and imports
Dutch exports and imports of narcissus bulbs are shown in Table 4.3 (although the
words ‘exports’ and ‘imports’ are used here in a general sense, since the advent in
the EU of the Single Market, the terms strictly apply only to trade with non-EU
(‘third’) countries). The predominant Dutch export destinations are Germany,
North America, the UK and France. Dutch imports of narcissus bulbs are dominated