More effective agricultural environmental schemes by professionalisation of farmer collectives?

Agricultural environmental schemes (AES) have been implemented in many countries since several decades. There is however still mixed evidence about their effectiveness in terms of enhancing biodiversity. Since the start different directions of enhancing biodiversity have been researched.　 One of these directions is the collaboration between farmers, government and other organisations. One of the aims of the new system of AES in the Netherlands is to enhance biodiversity by working with 40 new ‘professional’ farmer collectives. The main research objective is: How will the (farmer-) collectives develop as professional organizations in this AES? So first we answer the question what is professionalisation, what are the key elements of professionalisation? The result will be a framework of key elements for the process of professionalisation by farmer collectives. With this framework I will conduct further research to gain scientific insight first on the professionalisation process of the farmer collectives as an example for public-collective-partnerships and second on the dilemma’s where the FC are confronted with in their professionalisation process? At last I want to compare this with other examples of public-collective-partnerships like in healthcare, energy, housing.