Time to Transition: Barriers and Opportunities to Farmer Adoption of Soil GHG Mitigation Practices in Dutch Agriculture

Abstract

As the second largest exporter of agricultural products worldwide, the Netherlands is a production hub, a leading example of high yields per hectare. However, this productivity includes intensive farming practices, placing a risk on the climate through the emission of greenhouse gases N2O and CO2 from soil. To meet global efforts, the Netherlands must reduce its climatic impact, including soil emissions, but the transition to alternative farming practices can be challenging. This research identifies the barriers and opportunities for arable farmers to adopt practices which mitigate emissions from agricultural soils, and consists of a literature review, informant interviews, and semi-structured interviews with farmers, policy-makers, and boundary organizations. Main findings are (1) a lack of awareness by farmers of their soil greenhouse gas production, and (2) six barriers and five opportunities for farmer adoption with placement of these findings into different steps of adoption. Critical barriers include economic challenges, personal mindset, on-farm complications, and the need to reconcile different stakeholders' rates of adoption. Opportunities lie with farmers becoming interested and able to quantify soil health, positive framing in the media, and policies or economic mechanisms to assist farmers. If the Netherlands can transition its farming system, the opportunities for the global food system could be significant.

Climate change opportunities reduce farmers' risk perception: Extension of the value-belief-norm theory in the context of Finnish agriculture

“…Even if high-latitude agriculture may benefit from climate change, it still needs to contribute to reduction of GHG emissions as defined in national and international climate policies and agreements. Naturally, farmers are the central group for implementing these climate actions at the farm level (Gomes and Reidsma, 2021 ).…”

Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions on Dutch dairy farms - integrated evidence from behavioural and efficiency models

“…Exploring behavioural factors driving farmers' adoption of best mitigation practices is highly relevant and important in this light. There is a growing body of literature using behavioural approaches to investigate the drivers and barriers of farmers' adoption behaviour of climate mitigation measures (Doran et al, 2020;Gomes & Reidsma, 2021;Kreft et al, 2021;Leonhardt et al, 2022;Moerkerken et al, 2020;Niles et al, 2016). Pro-environmental behaviour has been predominantly studied using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Sok et al, 2021).…”

“…Yet, the TPB model has been criticized for ignoring the time dimension of behavioural change and neglecting emotional or value-related determinants of behaviour (Bamberg, 2013a). Specifically, in the Dutch dairy context, the existing literature (Gomes & Reidsma, 2021;Moerkerken et al, 2020) has not investigated the effects of farmers' socio-psychological and socio-demographical factors on their adoption behaviour of climate mitigation measures by considering the time dimension. 1 6 Besides the adoption of mitigation measures, efficient production and resource optimization are essential components of the transition towards circular dairy farming (de Boer & van Ittersum, 2018).…”

“…Moerkerken et al (2020) have concluded that farmers' openness to change is the strongest predictor of Dutch farmers' willingness and actual adoption of climate mitigation measures. Gomes and Reidsma (2021) have identified drivers and barriers for the adoption of soil GHG mitigation practices by Dutch farmers. Critical barriers include economic hardship, personal resistance to change, on-farm complications and the necessity to resolve different stakeholders' rates of adoption;…”

“…opportunities consist of farmers becoming able to quantify soil health, positive framing in the media, and policy tools & economic mechanisms to assist farmers (Gomes & Reidsma, 2021).…”