The country organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) believes that Dutch agricultural policy should take more account of nature and the environment and accelerate the transition to a sustainable sector.
A report presented last week on future Dutch agricultural and food policy acknowledges that this transition will be difficult and controversial.
The country report by the economists and specialists of the OECD was presented to the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality in The Hague last week. It says that the Netherlands has built an agricultural sector that is a world leader in terms of productivity and competitiveness. But environmental challenges are becoming increasingly urgent and the industry will need to adapt, it added.
Harnessing the strong innovation capacity of the Dutch sector will be key to finding long-term solutions that work for farmers, citizens and the environment. The OECD believes that the Netherlands should now use this innovative power to make the sector more sustainable.
The report builds on an earlier Netherlands report from 2015, which found that acceptance of innovation has supported high productivity growth in agriculture. But the OECD at the time doubted that marginal improvements in technology would be enough to reduce the sector's environmental impact.
In the past year and a half, the OECD has, in addition to desk research, spoken a lot about Dutch agriculture with LNV employees and scientists. In June last year, an OECD delegation paid a three-day working visit to the Netherlands. Visits were then made to LNV, WUR, the Floriade and the Farm of the Future.