Farmers on the move towards sustainable agriculture

    Research output: Contribution to conferenceConference paperAcademic

    Abstract

    The transition towards sustainability is an important issue in Dutch agriculture of today. Farmers play an important role in this transition. They must be able and willing to convert to more sustainable agricultural methods. But they are also confronted with an existing institutional environment, consisting of rules, norms and various stakeholders with their own perceptions, ideas and interests. This makes the process of converting so complicated that it goes far beyond the room for manoeuvre of individual actors. This paper investigates agricultural transition processes by disclosing patterns in four historical and four actual agricultural transition cases. The main question to be answered is when and how farmers and the actors in their environment will start moving towards more sustainable agriculture. All cases contained more or less the same `ingredients¿ for change: a sense of urgency, motivation to change, be in line with and have support of other actors involved, a favourable climate, competent front-runner farmers, network creation and knowledge circulation and the right interventions at the right time. Recognizing these ingredients for transition processes is an important precondition for policy makers and other stakeholders to facilitate the transition to sustainable agriculture. Or will transition management remain a `contradictio in terminis¿?
    Original languageEnglish
    Publication statusPublished - 2008
    EventInternational conference Transitions towards sustainable agriculture, food chains and peri-urban areas -
    Duration: 26 Oct 200829 Oct 2008

    Conference/symposium

    Conference/symposiumInternational conference Transitions towards sustainable agriculture, food chains and peri-urban areas
    Period26/10/0829/10/08

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