Financieringsregelingen voor omschakeling van agrarische bedrijven tegen het licht

Summary

The government has ambitious policy objectives for more sustainable rural areas. Expectedly, to achieve these many farmers have to radically and comprehensively convert their farming systems. Public funding schemes are one of the instruments helping to finance these conversions. But what can they contribute to the ambition of many more farms converting to more sustainable farming systems? To answer this question, we first explain to a non-financially trained audience how financing farm conversions works. Secondly, we illustrate the contribution of five public funding schemes to the conversion of farms.
We conclude that funding schemes are currently important for supporting the conversion of few innovators and early adopters. The resulting new farming systems serve as examples for the majority of farmers. We identify two main avenues to support the conversions of many more farms: sufficient profit margins to cover the costs of conversions and sufficient certainty about future policy and legislation.