Agriculture and the natural environment

The Dutch cooperate. It’s in their genetic makeup.   When a challenge presents itself, they naturally pull together to find a solution which can fit all.   Ask the locals and they tell you they are unified by their fight against the sea; 26% of the country sits below sea level and only half of the Netherlands is higher than 1 metre above it. So when asked to deliver improvements for the environment Dutch farmers did what comes naturally and set up collectives.   There are around 40 farmer run collectives in the Netherlands, each lobbying central government directly for funding to pay for environmental measures on farms.   The collectives are based on regional characteristics and historical groupings and tend to have targets for environmental delivery based around the provincial government’s nature management plan; something like the Local Nature Partnerships in the UK.   But will a farmer-led approach work?   In the Netherlands, like in all the EU, the Common agricultural pol