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The distribution of agricultural land use today is less dependent on soil properties than in the past, as a result of technological advances. This fact has long been suspected by scientists from different disciplines, but the changing relationships between specific soil types and specific forms of land use have so far not been tested quantitatively. In this paper, we have quantified the association between soil type and land use for the Netherlands, for the years 1900, 1960, 1980 and 1990. For our analyses, we distinguished 21 soil groups and four land use classes. Cramer's V was used as a statistical measure to quantify the association. As a general trend, we find that associations are indeed weakening: intrinsically poor sandy soils became increasingly cultivated, while intrinsically rich soils are no longer reserved exclusively for crop cultivation. This general trend does not apply to all soil types, however: drift sands and other coarse sandy soils where large-scale mechanization was impeded by an undulating topography remained uncultivated. Moreover, even though the trend of a decrease in association is very clear we have several reasons to think that it may not decrease further in future. One reason is that inputs such as fertilizers which influenced the trend over the period 1900–1990, are nowadays less used than two decades ago as a result of environmental policies. Other reasons are the growing support for geoheritage and biodiversity.

Innovation and new technology adoption represent two central elements for the business and industry development process in agriculture. One of the most relevant innovations in dairy farms is the robotisation of the milking process through the adoption of Automatic Milking Systems (AMS). The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of selected Common Agricultural Policy measures on the adoption of AMS in dairy farms. The model developed is a dynamic farm-household model that is able to simulate the adoption of AMS taking into account the allocation of productive factors between on-farm and off-farm activities. The model simulates the decision to replace a traditional milking system with AMS using a Real Options approach that allows farmers to choose the optimal timing of investments. Results show that the adoption of AMS, and the timing of such a decision, is strongly affected by policy uncertainty and market conditions. The effect of this uncertainty is to postpone the decision to adopt the new technology until farmers have gathered enough information to reduce the negative effects of the technological lock-in. AMS adoption results in an increase in farm size and herd size due to the reduction in the labour required for milking operations.

This paper investigates the impact of tenure security and other factors on investment in soil and water conservation (SWC) in Kenya. Factor analysis, step-wise regression and reduced form model approaches are used to explain the willingness, likelihood and intensity of adoption of SWC investments. The results confirm the importance of tenure security and development domain dimensions in determining the likelihood and intensity of adoption and suggest that to ensure land tenure policy is pro-SWC/environment, it is important to consider whether household plots are owned, rented out or rented in. The impact of household assets implies a poverty environment link. Similar factors affect the decision whether or not to invest in SWC and also the level of investment. The results suggest the need for region specific SWC practices and for broad policies that provide incentives for environmental conservation and poverty reduction.

Economics is about problems of choice. In erosion control, both public authorities and private land users are faced with such problems. What is the impact of erosion, both on-site and off-site, and to what extent can this impact be quantified? If we conceptualize this impact in terms of sustainability, how can we compare one type of effect against another? The former question can be answered only by natural scientists, the latter by economists and other social scientists. Weighing different aspects of sustainability requires value judgments, and economists are sometimes accused of having a jaundiced view of reality, wrongly supposing that decisions are based on rationality and denying the importance of emotion. However, let us assume that there is some mileage to be gained out of attempting to estimate the cost of erosion in an economic sense—which consists of converting the various effects into a common denominator: euros. If we can predict the impact of erosion control measures on erosion rates, we can know the benefit of these measures. The cost also needs to be calculated, not in terms of money but in terms of resources expended (which could have been used for other purposes) and in terms of possible negative impacts of erosion control (for instance, increased use of herbicides in reduced-tillage systems). There are important other considerations which economists may study. Firstly, there is the comparison of present versus future costs and benefits: how much can we sacrifice today for higher sustainability tomorrow? Secondly, there is the issue of private versus public costs and benefits: how do the goals of private land users differ from (those of?) the public good, how can this help us to predict land users’ behaviour, and what incentives would be appropriate to make them behave in such a way as to maximize the public good? Thirdly, how do we deal with uncertainty and risk? These problems loomed large in a study to support an extended impact assessment for the EU Soil Thematic Strategy, in 2005. Whereas much research has been done on erosion and its impact, much of this is on a small scale. The extent of the problem on a national, let alone a continental or a global scale, is still poorly known. The paper discusses how these problems were faced, which is not the same as saying they were resolved.

A study was done that aimed at designing biodiverse crop production systems for the Netherlands taking into account the views held by stakeholders in society. Biodiverse crop production systems contain different species and/or different genotypes within a species, leave room for other plants (both spontaneous and sown plant species) and enhance the associated biodiversity of microfauna, mesofauna and microflora. The study was carried out jointly by closely co-operating scientists in the fields of agronomy, environmental sciences and social sciences. To integrate the knowledge of specialists and stakeholders a stakeholder consultation was done consisting of a literature review analysing the Dutch policy on biodiversity, a workshop consulting intermediary institutes about their views on arable biodiversity, and an expert panel that not only monitored the design process but also regularly discussed the developments during a three-year field test of a highly diverse production system that meanwhile was designed. The results of the study were used to compare the design with other production systems. In addition, a list of indicators was compiled to test this design for system performance in terms of societal (people), ecological (planet) and economic (profit) aspects. Finally, through this study, choices in the design process were made explicit and research topics were identified to test performance of the resulting system.

This article analyses the sequence of changes in land used for milk production on dairy farms before, during and towards the abolition of milk quotas. Using a unique dataset comprising farm level data of the Netherlands between 1971 and 2011 we estimate two duration models, analysing the time period between increases and decreases in dairy land use. The impact of milk quota, socio-economic, farm income and economic-political variables on the likelihood of a farm changing its land use are assessed. Results show that changes are highly farm specific, but that quota abolition will lead to a more dynamic dairy sector.

This paper develops a static computational game theoretic model. Illustrative results for the liberalising European electricity market are given to demonstrate the type of economic and environmental results that can be generated with the model. The model is empirically calibrated to eight Northwestern European countries, namely Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Different market structures are compared, depending on the ability of firms to exercise market power, ranging from perfect competition without market power to strategic competition where large firms exercise market power. In addition, a market power reduction policy is studied where the near-monopolies in France and Belgium are demerged into smaller firms. To analyse environmental impacts, a fixed greenhouse gas emission reduction target is introduced under different market structures. The results indicate that the effects of liberalisation depend on the resulting market structure, but that a reduction in market power of large producers may be beneficial for both the consumer (i.e. lower prices) and the environment (i.e. lower greenhouse gas permit price and lower acidifying and smog emissions). © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The agricultural sector in the Netherlands has lost much of its importance over the last 50 years in terms of the number of people involved and its relative contribution to the economy - even though production is still increasing. Yet, the area under agricultural use has changed relatively little: farmland still dominates the country. The question for the future is how expected further changes in agriculture will affect agricultural land use: how much land will be taken out of production and to what use it will be put. This is especially relevant now that the Dutch Government has decided to loosen its grip on spatial planning. Two opposing socio-economic scenarios are therefore drafted that offer a coherent view on agricultural change, external pressures and government intervention. Implementing these in a land use simulation model provides an initial answer to the possible future of agricultural land in the country. © 2005 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

In this article, we develop and implement a methodology for analyzing the sources of variation in environmental efficiency across producers. We formulate a two-stage model. In the first stage, we use stochastic frontier analysis to estimate both technical and environmental efficiency. In the second stage, we again use stochastic frontier analysis to regress estimated environmental efficiency scores against a variety of technology, physical environment, and management variables. In this stage we estimate the impact of each explanatory variable on environmental efficiency, and we derive conditional estimates of environmental efficiency from the one-sided error component. We illustrate our methodology with an empirical application to a panel of Dutch dairy farms. We find evidence of relatively low levels of environmental efficiency, and we find that environmental efficiency can be improved through a number of policy options, including the provision of farmers with more insight into the nutrient balance of their farms. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

This paper analyses the sequence of changes in land used for milk production on dairy farms in the period before, during, and towards the abolishment of milk quotas. Using a unique dataset comprising farm level data of the Netherlands between 1971 and 2011 we estimate two duration models, analysing the time period between changes in case of increases and decreases in dairy land use. The impact of milk quota, socio-economic and production variables on the likelihood of a farm changing his land use are assessed. Results show that quota abolishment will lead to a more dynamic dairy sector.

Door het project herinrichting Renkums Beekdal zijn de bedrijven van het bedrijventerrein Beukenlaan verplaatst naar andere bedrijfslocaties. Het vertrek van Vredestein was cruciaal voor het opheffen van het hele terrein. Op de Beukenlaan kon zo ruimte worden gemaakt voor natuurherstel en de realisatie van de Ecologische Hoofdstructuur. De uitvoering van dit project heeft een groot aantal effecten voor Renkum en omgeving. In dit rapport wordt een overzicht gegeven van de effecten.

This report presents an analysis of the impact of environmental cooperative decision-making for the European Commission’s legislative proposals for the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2014-2020. The analysis is based on scenarios with a spatially explicit rural agent-based model (SERA) that explicitly models farmers, their socio-economic decision-making, their land use, and the landscape of which they are part. The first part of the analysis focuses on the effects of environmental cooperative collective decision-making for implementation of the ‘greening measure’ Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs). The second part of the analysis focuses on the interest of collective agri-environment measures. Results show that ways through which EFAs are allocated are crucial for effectiveness of cooperative approaches. Relying on simple market oriented governance structures will not by definition result in a better allocation of EFAs in a region. Results show that when the environmental cooperative is a key player in the designation and allocation of Pillar II agri-environment schemes, farmland biodiversity potentially increases because local expert knowledge on favorable ecological sites can be used for optimal allocation of the schemes

This report presents an analysis of the impact of environmental cooperative decision-making for the European Commission’s legislative proposals for the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2014-2020. The analysis is based on scenarios with a spatially explicit rural agent-based model (SERA) that explicitly models farmers, their socio-economic decision-making, their land use, and the landscape of which they are part. The first part of the analysis focuses on the effects of environmental cooperative collective decision-making for implementation of the ‘greening measure’ Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs). The second part of the analysis focuses on the interest of collective agri-environment measures. Results show that ways through which EFAs are allocated are crucial for effectiveness of cooperative approaches. Relying on simple market oriented governance structures will not by definition result in a better allocation of EFAs in a region. Results show that when the environmental cooperative is a key player in the designation and allocation of Pillar II agri-environment schemes, farmland biodiversity potentially increases because local expert knowledge on favorable ecological sites can be used for optimal allocation of the schemes

Innovation and new technology adoption represent two central elements for the business and industry development process in agriculture. One of the most relevant innovations in dairy farms is the robotisation of the milking process through the adoption of Automatic Milking Systems (AMS). The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of selected Common Agricultural Policy measures on the adoption of AMS in dairy farms. The model developed is a dynamic farm-household model that is able to simulate the adoption of AMS taking into account the allocation of productive factors between on-farm and off-farm activities. The model simulates the decision to replace a traditional milking system with AMS using a Real Options approach that allows farmers to choose the optimal timing of investments. Results show that the adoption of AMS, and the timing of such a decision, is strongly affected by policy uncertainty and market conditions. The effect of this uncertainty is to postpone the decision to adopt the new technology until farmers have gathered enough information to reduce the negative effects of the technological lock-in. AMS adoption results in an increase in farm size and herd size due to the reduction in the labour required for milking operations., Bio-based and Applied Economics, Vol 2 No 1 (2013): Agricultural policy and the wider policy context: evaluation issues, practices and tools

Second-generation biofuels that produce biomass for combustion or ethanol production do not yet appear to be a viable alternative to agriculture as they are low-value products. This may change, however, when energy prices increase and their production is combined with the provision of other services. The current analysis explores the potential for the production of an often overlooked biomass feedstock that can be combined with water and nature management objectives: reed. This crop has the additional advantage that it can be grown under conditions that are unfavourable to most other crops. An economics-based land-use modelling approach is applied to simulate the local competition between reed and grassland used for dairy farming under four different future scenarios in the Netherlands. Based on a location-specific assessment of potential costs and benefits of these crops under scenario-based conditions this analysis shows that the cultivation of reed for bioenergy, in combination with providing additional land-use functions, while not viable option under current economic and political conditions, may become competitive within the next twenty years if any of the following developments occur: energy prices increase substantially; water tables rise in the low-lying western parts of the country due to climate change; a policy is implemented that increases bioenergy prices; or a policy is implemented that stimulates water buffering and the preservation of peat soils. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Door het project herinrichting Renkums Beekdal zijn de bedrijven van het bedrijventerrein Beukenlaan verplaatst naar andere bedrijfslocaties. Het vertrek van Vredestein was cruciaal voor het opheffen van het hele terrein. Op de Beukenlaan kon zo ruimte worden gemaakt voor natuurherstel en de realisatie van de Ecologische Hoofdstructuur. De uitvoering van dit project heeft een groot aantal effecten voor Renkum en omgeving. In dit rapport wordt een overzicht gegeven van de effecten.

Networks of nature reserves are being proposed as a solution when the degree of fragmentation is considered to endanger the long-term persistence of species diversity. Agri-environmental schemes are supposed to make a positive contribution to these networks. The spatially explicit agent-based model presented in this chapter combines spatial dynamics in land ownership, land use and the importance of agri-environmental schemes in conserving biodiversity by capturing the heterogeneity of individual farms as well as their dynamics over time, in a spatially explicit landscape. The chapter evaluates the effects of two different agri-environmental policies at landscape level, and shows that agri-environmental schemes with flexible payments based on a spatial landscape configuration can be valuable for agri-environmental policy development.

Firms are able to survive only if they adapt appropriately in response to disturbances. The ability of a farm to continue after a disturbance is defined as resilience. To analyse the resilience of EU farms we explain exit and the number of adaptation strategies that farmers follow under two scenarios. The current CAP will be continued in the base scenario, while it will be abolished in scenario 2. The outcomes show that under both scenarios large more specialised farms with young farm heads are most resilient, and small more diversified farms headed by old farmers are least resilient.

Belangrijkste uitkomsten van dit onderzoek zijn: schaalvergroting in de biologische landbouw kan bijdragen aan verduurzaming; grotere biologische bedrijven kennen wel een aantal aandachtspunten; dure grond remt de groei van biologische bedrijven.

This paper presents a spatially explicit rural agent-based model which has been developed to assess how agricultural policy interventions, market dynamics and environmental change affect heterogeneous farm agents, their land use and the landscape of which they are part. This model moves beyond current literature by modelling market transactions among agents that are heterogeneous with respect to their economic and environmental characteristics within their spatially explicit landscape. The spatially explicit landscape is described by plot size, natural environmental and agricultural quality, shape, type of land use, intensity of use and distance to the homestead. The model is presented using the Overview, Design concepts, and Details (ODD) protocol. Modelling features are demonstrated by evaluating two different land market implementations which are based on auction mechanisms. We also explore how economic indicators change as the relative market power of buyers and sellers change, by moving from a buyers to a sellers’ market and vice versa.

Over the past years several studies have explored future land use trends for Europe. This paper presents a comparison of six land use studies for Europe that explore land use changes until 2020/2030. We compared these studies with respect to qualitative as well as quantitative aspects. The qualitative analysis shows that many studies focus on agricultural land uses and therefore draw on detailed agricultural models, while only few include urban developments. The purpose of about half of the studies is to provide land use outlooks, while the other half used scenarios to test the behaviour of scientific models or show their potential applicability. For the quantitative comparison we considered the results of their reference and alternative scenarios. This comparison shows that there is a large difference between the projected results provided by the different outlooks. We even found that alternative scenario outcomes within a single outlook study are more similar than the results of reference scenarios between outlook studies. To a large extent this can be traced back to the differences in initial data sources, data pre-processing and model assumptions. To exclude the impact of differences in initial data, also relative changes were computed. Results from this analysis show a large range of values, which indicates a large uncertainty in the results of land use outlooks. We suggest using all results as the plausibility space for future land use changes. Many studies have kept the values of drivers within a rather limited range, while in reality larger shocks may well be possible.

Volatile output prices lead to a fluctuating shadow price (profitability) of agricultural land, and therefore may impact land use decisions in case of risk-averse behaviour. In this paper we assess the effect of volatile agricultural output prices on agricultural land-use change over the past decade in the Netherlands. Using regional data from 2000 through 2009, the number of hectares of land for 10 land uses was calculated. To determine the joint distribution of agricultural activities, hectares of land for each land use were converted to land share equations. Land share equations were estimated to determine the contribution of increased price volatility to land use change. Results show that larger volatility affects land shares negatively. Producer’s output responses, therefore, were consistently affected by risk-averse behaviour.

Volatile output prices lead to a fluctuating shadow price (profitability) of agricultural land, and therefore may impact land use decisions in case of risk-averse behaviour. In this paper we assess the effect of volatile agricultural output prices on agricultural land-use change over the past decade in the Netherlands. Using regional data from 2000 through 2009, the number of hectares of land for 10 land uses was calculated. To determine the joint distribution of agricultural activities, hectares of land for each land use were converted to land share equations. Land share equations were estimated to determine the contribution of increased price volatility to land use change. Results show that larger volatility affects land shares negatively. Producer’s output responses, therefore, were consistently affected by risk-averse behaviour.