花研コーヒーブレイク

2025年の横浜税関資料によると、日本の冷凍ブロッコリー輸入量は 約95,000トンで、うち、中国が55.9%、エクアドルが第2位で約4万トン､42.0%。そのほかグアテマラも0.6%あり、その出荷国を見ただけで花の生産地かと思うほど。花きやコーヒー豆の生産と同様に、ブロッコリー生産においてもエクアドルの標高の高さと赤道直下のメリットを生かして、盛んに行われ輸出されているようです。

ちなみに、エクアドルから日本に届く花きで最も多いのは、スプレー/スタンダードカーネーションで、次いでバラ、ヒペリカムと続きます。そのほかカスミソウやベロニカ、エリンジウムなども輸入されています。

もしかしたら、エクアドルには花きとブロッコリー両方を生産、輸出する企業があるかなと思って見てみましたが、花とブロッコリーの二刀流企業はすぐには見つかりませんでした（存在するかもしれませんが、すぐにはヒットしませんでした）。

ちなみに、本日10月1日（木）には横浜国際総合競技場にてサッカー日本代表とエクアドル代表の国際親善試合が開催される予定です。

Hello! Welcome to Hanaken Coffee Break!

I’ll spare you the details, but I recently discovered that I haven’t been eating enough vegetables in my daily diet.

I honestly thought I was getting plenty. Really, I did. But this was pointed out during a health check-up, and when I stopped to think about it, I realised they were right.

So I started wondering how I could get enough vegetables into my diet, and eventually arrived at one possible solution: frozen food.

Believe it or not, I had (almost) never bought frozen food in my entire life. Ice cream is another matter, of course, but I had never bought the sort of frozen food you might serve at the dinner table or put in a packed lunch.

I had always bought fresh vegetables. It wasn’t that I had anything against frozen food. It had simply never occurred to me as an option. I had never really appreciated just how convenient, or useful, it could be.
And so, one day in September, the very day I was told at my health check-up that I wasn’t eating enough vegetables became the day of my very own “Vegetable Revolution”.

I decided to make a conscious effort to eat more vegetables.

So off I went to the frozen food section of my usual supermarket, an aisle I had never once visited before, and wandered around inspecting everything on offer. I tossed a few things that looked easy to use and reasonably priced into my basket.

After all, having never bought frozen food before, I had no idea what it tasted like or how best to use it. This was still very much the research stage before finding my favourites.

You could call it a kind of feasibility study: just how easy would frozen vegetables be to use, and could they really bring about my Vegetable Revolution?
Naturally, I checked where everything had been produced.

And what did I discover?

The very first bag of frozen broccoli I picked up said: Product of Ecuador.

Oh, really? Ecuador!

Broccoli has attracted attention as a healthy food, helped along in part by the fitness and muscle-building boom, and in Japan it has now been added to the list of government-designated vegetables. What I hadn’t realised was just how much frozen broccoli Japan imports, including substantial quantities from Ecuador.

According to 2025 data from Yokohama Customs, Japan imported 95,278 tonnes of frozen broccoli. China accounted for 55.9% of the total, while Ecuador ranked second with around 40,000 tonnes, or 42.0%. Guatemala accounted for another 0.6%. Looking at that list of supplying countries, you could almost imagine you were looking at flower-producing countries.

China and Ecuador alone account for more than 97% of Japan’s frozen broccoli imports.

In that sense, perhaps frozen broccoli is the Dendrobium Phalaenopsis of the flower industry.

For comparison, imported products accounted for 96.2% of Dendrobium Phalaenopsis handled by the Ota Floriculture Auction in FY2025, while the import share for orchids such as Mokara was 98.1%.
Looking at Japan’s overall broccoli supply, I am told that domestically grown and imported products account for roughly half each.

Imports consist mainly of frozen products, with China and Ecuador serving as the major suppliers.

If the domestic-import ratio is around 50:50, perhaps broccoli is comparable to flowers such as anthuriums (46% domestic, 54% imported), amaryllis (48% imported), or disbud chrysanthemums (45.6% imported), based on FY2025 figures from the Ota Floriculture Auction.
Just as with flowers and coffee, Ecuador appears to make excellent use of its high-altitude growing areas and location directly on the equator to produce broccoli on a substantial scale for export.

Incidentally, among the cut flowers shipped from Ecuador to Japan, spray and standard carnations account for the largest volume, followed by roses and Hypericum.

Although the quantities are smaller, Japan also imports flowers such as Gypsophila, Veronica and Eryngium from Ecuador.
This made me wonder whether there might be companies in Ecuador producing and exporting both flowers and broccoli.

I did a little searching but couldn’t immediately find a company operating in both fields. Perhaps there is one out there somewhere, but none turned up straight away.

And it happens, today, Thursday, 1 October, an international friendly between Japan and Ecuador is scheduled to take place at International Stadium Yokohama.
So, thanks to my Vegetable Revolution, my first real encounter with frozen food unexpectedly led me straight back to the world of flower production.

It was one of those days in September that made me stop and think about the connections between Japan and Ecuador, and the friendly relationship between our two countries.

Perhaps it’s time I learnt a little more about Ecuador!

Until next time, take care, everyone.
Want to know which flowers come to Japan from which countries?

Take a look at Data 16 in Flower Business Note 2027 and you can see it all at a glance.

You’ll also notice that many flower-producing regions are concentrated within the Coffee Belt.

So here’s a question for you:

According to the latest data available at the time of publication in Flower Business Note 2027, where does Ecuador rank among the countries supplying imported flowers to Japan?

Curious?

Why not take a look for yourself?