Towards Sustainable Dairy Farming: The impact of societal pressure on sustainable transitions: the case of the Dutch dairy farming sector
Summary
The Dutch dairy farming sector is subject to several sustainability problems. This study investigates how these societal concerns, in the form of normative pressure, influence the transition of the dairy farming regime towards sustainability. Insights from the multi level perspective are used to describe the transition of the Dutch dairy farming regime. To study normative pressure, social movement theory is incorporated. The main research question is: How does normative pressure influence the transition towards sustainability of the Dutch dairy farming regime from 1990 until now?
It can be concluded that normative pressure on dairy farming to produce more sustainable increased over the past decades. The topic of concern, however, changed over time. In some cases societal organizations directly influence sustainable dairy farming. However, more often societal organizations influence market parties, via normative pressure, who in turn influence sustainable dairy farming. Sometimes, societal organizations also try to have an impact via the political/regulatory stream. Nonetheless, in the dairy sector, international policy makes it very hard to take actual measures, as the Netherlands have to commit to EU regulation. Therefore, Dutch policy makers have mainly an impact by stimulating market parties. All in all it seems in dairy farming normative pressure plays an important role to stimulate sustainable innovation.