Changing rural areas: exploring future agriculture in the Netherlands and EU

Abstract

This booklet provides a brief overview of the results of 9 studies exploring the challenges, barriers and dilemmas of agriculture and rural areas in the next three decades. The purpose of these studies was to assist policy makers in (re)shaping policies for agriculture, environment and spatial planning. Each chapter quickly summarizes the major findings of a study and the lessons to be learned from that study. All studies have been carried out by researchers from Wageningen-UR and approaches, views and conclusions expressed may be biased to some extend by experiences from The Netherlands, where the 'transition towards sustainable agriculture' receives considerable attention from policy makers. Most studies presented here used the triple P concept (People, Planet, Profit) and a 'Roadmap' with five basic questions (Why? What? How? Where? How much?) as common framework for the analyse