Justice and Sustainability Tensions in Agriculture: Wicked Problems in the Case of Dutch Manure Policy

In recent years, there has been tension between farmers and the Dutch government regarding sustainability policy (in the efforts to reduce the harm caused by manure surplus) and how implementing this policy affects farmers (in the form of justice concerns). We interviewed Dutch farmers to uncover how they view manure policy. We identified four types of injustices: procedural, contributive, distributive, and intergenerational. We propose that a multi-tiered approach is required to overcome these kinds of ‘wicked problems’, avoid paralysis from lack of action, and overcome the flaws by overestimating the effectiveness of top-down policy.