Identity Conflict? Agri-Environmental Collectives as Self-Governing Groups of Farmers or as Boundary Organisations

Abstract

Organisations of land managers in landscape management face the challenge of combining the need to foster bonding social capital within their member groups with the need to develop bridging social capital with other stakeholders and linking social capital with public authorities. This paper compares the concepts of self-governing groups, boundary organisations and quangos, to analyse how agri-environmental collectives in the Netherlands navigate their identity in interactions with public authorities and manage potential trade-offs between different forms of social capital. It shows the paradoxical situation that these self-governing collectives have to adopt characteristics of public agencies, in order to meet the demands of the Dutch government and EU legislation, required to gain the trust of the authorities for more room for self-governance. The resulting 'professionalization' and enlargement of agrienvironmental collectives is likely to reduce bonding social capital, which in turn is an important asset for effective landscape management. In order to prevent this counterproductive incentive of expecting self-governing groups to behave like public agencies, we recommend to nourish and protect the in-between identity of agri-environmental collectives, to acknowledge their variety, and to allow them to be self-governing groups as well as boundary organisations.

Motivations of farmers to participate in collective agri-environmental schemes: the case of Dutch agricultural collectives

“…Initial uncertainties with the Dutch program were overcome by fostering interaction among actors; the program delegated responsibilities to farmers who were involved in selfmonitoring, for example (De Vries et al 2019). Westerink et al (2020) have stressed that the identity of a self-governing organization is the most important resource of the Dutch collectives, and should prevail over focusing on the relationship between farmers and government.…”

“…This is why its design is interesting for both governments, who wish to increase effectiveness of AES, and local collaborative initiatives, who seek ways to secure permanent funding. However, the effectiveness of the Dutch AES is still under evaluation (Westerink et al 2020). Moreover, the Dutch scheme historically evolved in a unique way.…”

Farmer collectives for more effective agri-environmental schemes? An assessment framework based on the concept of ‘professionalization’

“…But there are more aspects which could influence the effectiveness of an AES: for example, the budget available, farmers' willingness to participate, the size of the area, the type of landscape, occurrence of species etc. (Bareille et al, 2021;de Vries et al, 2019;Westerink et al, 2020) The three categories distinguished in the assessment framework are not mutually exclusive, they are related and influence each other. Choices made in one category can influence choices in other categories.…”

“…The farmer collectives are regularly audited to see whether they still comply with the quality system. The development of the certifying process and the quality manual has been the first step in the professionalization process of farmer collectives in the Netherlands (Westerink et al, 2020). This assessment framework can also be used by Dutch farmer collectives themselves to see where they meet expectations and where improvements are required.…”

“…Based on the resulting findings, in 2014 the new EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) made it possible for a group of farmers to be the applicant and final beneficiary of AESs subsidies for the period 2015-2020. The Dutch government even decided that only farmer collectives could be beneficiaries of AESs for the period 2016-2022 (Runhaar et al, 2017;Westerink, Termeer, & Manhoudt, 2020). This led to 40 Dutch farmer collectives being formally established in 2015 under the new AESs regime (see Appendix A).…”