Nature-Inclusive Agriculture and the Effort to Solve the Netherlands’ Food Production Dilemma

Article by Solving-FCB Work/Learn Student Duncan Murray with assistance from Solving-FCB PhD Student Alfred Paarlberg.

Despite being a small, densely-populated country resting largely beneath the ever-encroaching North Sea, the Netherlands has become a world leader in food production. Despite geographical limitations, the Dutch export agricultural produce at a value surpassed by only four countries, according to the World Bank. Food production in such a low-lying region of the historically conflict-riddled European continent, however, has seldom come without its challenges.

Indeed, there could have been little greater impetus for agricultural self-sufficiency than the horrid winter of 1944-45. Dutch citizens were then living under German occupation toward the back end of the Second World War, when Nazi war leaders ordered a blockade on all food supplied to the Netherlands. Within the span of a few months, famine killed somewhere between 18 000 and 22 000 Dutch citizens. The Hongerwinter, as it has come to be known, galvanized the Netherlands to prioritize food security. Subsequent policy changes sought to improve crop yield and farming efficiency, with larger, more productive farms absorbing their smaller and less productive counterparts. Improvements abound, yet the rising tide of Dutch agriculture would face further hurdles still.

Flooding has long threatened the productive capacity of Dutch farms. In 1953, a generational flood wrought havoc upon coastal regions throughout the North Sea. The Netherlands – a third of the country being beneath sea level – felt the pain of this event most acutely, as the storm surge killed over 1800 people, swept away nearly 200 000 animals, destroyed 43 000 homes, and ruined 150 000 hectares of farmland. However infrequent such events may have been, the flood stimulated a series of construction projects known as the Delta Works, which catalyzed a tradition of technical solutions that would come to characterize Dutch agriculture into the present. Dams, dykes, and levees enabled generations of farmers to make their lands some of the most fertile and productive anywhere in the world. But they did not stop only at reshaping their geographical environment.

For decades, the Netherlands has been committed to the goal of using technical solutions to make their agricultural sector more productive and more sustainable. Cognizant of their food production system having become the envy of the world, Dutch citizens of all political stripes coalesced around the slogan: “Twice as much food using half as many resources.”

Perhaps only with a shared commitment can such ends be achieved so effectively. Since 2000, some Dutch potato farmers have reduced the amount of water they use to grow crops by up to 90%, all while yielding over twice the global average in tons per acre. Despite being significantly closer to the North Pole than the equator, state-of-the-art greenhouses allow the Netherlands to grow sun-loving fruits like tomatoes, year-round. Not only has production in the Netherlands increased in the years since the Hongerwinter – the food produced has also grown safer for human consumption. Dutch horticulturalists use virtually no chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses and livestock farmers use about 60% less antibiotics than they did in 2009.

Many of the scientists who have led the charge in making the Netherlands a food production powerhouse operate out of Wageningen University. Wageningen University is the hub of what has been dubbed “Food Valley,” in an allusion to northern California’s tech-savvy entrepreneurial centre, Silicon Valley. The reputation is well-earned: Wageningen University is widely regarded as the world’s leading agricultural research institute, and as the birthplace of countless agri-tech start-ups and experimental farms.

But when left untouched, old innovations can become the source of new problems. Solving FCB scientists working on the Netherlands case study are studying how agricultural processes can be newly adapted to meet the sustainability challenges of the 21^st century.

Sustainable Farming: Challenges and Ambiguities

Alfred Paarlberg, a PhD student at Wageningen, is part of the team tasked with determining how agricultural workers can best implement what has been termed “nature-inclusive agriculture.” Historically, Paarlberg said, “nature and agriculture have always been seen as separate, with separate policies that did not account for one’s effects on the other. Well, we now know, of course, through science, that biodiversity can strengthen production and production affects biodiversity in many ways. But our policy system has been put together in such a way that they’re treated as separate instead of as interacting.” Years of technical improvements, however, are taking a toll.

A particularly problematic group of harvest-improving products are fertilizers. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers have caused exponential increases in crop output, but overuse is abetting a myriad of adverse effects. In the hundred years between the turn of the 20^th century to the year 2000, the world’s population increased from 1.6 to 6 billion, while in the same period, agricultural land use expanded by only 30%. Such a gap can be explained by the remarkable improvements in crop yield following the creation of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, which have helped make hunger a rarity across most of the world’s wealthiest countries. However effective these fertilizers are in growing crops and alleviating hunger, there can be too much of a good thing.

The use of these synthetic fertilizers has grown significantly in the past few decades, leading to deleterious environmental effects and more frequent eutrophication events. “We call it the ‘Nitrogen Crisis,’” Paarlberg explained, “in which too much nitrogen from agricultural areas is deposited in a natural area, which causes issues with water, for instance, causing eutrophication that affects biodiversity.”

Nitrogen itself is an extremely stable element, but when processed into a form used in fertilizers, it becomes part of one of several extremely reactive compounds. Reactive nitrogen compounds can be swept away from agricultural land and into rivers and lakes, where excessive amounts cause algal blooms, blocking sunlight from reaching the underwater environment and disrupting the entire ecosystem. This can lead to massive fish death and devastate biodiversity. The Nitrogen Crisis also bears consequences for human respiratory health, as nitrogen-containing compounds nitrogen oxide and ammonia account for 15-30% of particulate air pollution.

“In order to target this nitrogen issue, the government introduced what we call Nature-Inclusive Agriculture,” Paarlberg said. But there are issues with the concept, as it is currently construed. “What it means is not really defined in policy. The problem with that is that it is very ambiguous. There are only three guidelines that nature inclusivity follows, and that is that you have to make use of ecosystem services or optimize ecosystem services, which are the benefits of nature to society – you have to try to close production circles to reduce the waste that your company produces.” Clarifying the meaning of Nature-Inclusive Agriculture as a concept could help resolve what is now a major political dilemma in the Netherlands.

At the centre of this political roadblock is the Dutch agricultural sector. In 2019, legislative efforts to curtail nitrogen emissions by halving the number of livestock in the country were met with mass protestation. Since then, the Netherlands has experienced changes in government and shifts in policy, but has fallen short of defining the fine details of its agriculture policy.

Defining & Enacting Nature-Inclusive Agriculture

It is partly this ambiguity surrounding Nature-Inclusive Agriculture that Paarlberg and others working on the Netherlands case study are aiming to clarify. A key problem is that the various food systems that fall within the agricultural sector are treated in policy as separate and non-interacting.

“Arable farming, livestock farming, aquaculture, fisheries, all the different types of food systems that we have in this country have had their own policy.” Paarlberg said. At some level, this is appropriate. “Rightfully so – they have their own sustainability issues. Arable farming is affected by, let’s say, droughts more than fisheries, while fisheries are affected more by ocean acidification than livestock farming. But this also means that the policy for these different food systems has been siloed into their own box. And what we aim to do is to conceptualize nature inclusivity in a way that it provides guidelines for all these different food systems.”

But as climate change and biodiversity loss hamper existing food systems, they may demand that the agricultural sector adapt to take advantage of new opportunities. “It’s not that it will be better or worse. It will be different, and it will only become better or worse if you do or do not adapt accordingly,” Paarlberg said.

As a secondary aim of the case study, Paarlberg explained how his research examines how “to make use of the opportunities that arise in a changing environment.” As an example of how this might work, Paarlberg presented a hypothetical: “If climate change develops in the next twenty years and temperatures in the summer increase, but for instance, also the amount of sun hours at the beginning of spring increase, then that would perhaps mean that a farmer could produce a more profitable crop that requires more sun hours at the beginning of spring instead of what is produced now.” Climate change is and will continue to affect food systems. It demands agricultural methods adapt – and such adaptations need not all be for the worst.

“It’s not that it will be better or worse. It will be different, and it will only be better or worse if you do or do not adapt accordingly.”

Another way that Nature-Inclusive Agriculture can be put into action is by altering agricultural land to offset excess nitrogen production and benefit native wildlife. “If you include, say, forage crops or clover or something like that, this provides more biodiversity but also puts more nitrogen into the ground because it fixates nitrogen, so your next crops can grow better,” Paarlberg explained. With nitrogen fixated into the ground, farmers can use less fertilizer, decreasing the amount of nitrogen that escapes into the larger environment. This method could improve faunal as well as floral biodiversity. “But for instance, the birds also get an extra supply of insects which they can use as a food source.”

Defining how exactly Nature-Inclusive Agriculture can be put into practice is the task guiding the Netherlands case study. “We are trying to create what we call adaptation pathways, so sequences of policy actions that can be taken to better operationalize nature inclusivity,” Paarlberg said.

These efforts could hardly be better timed. Last month, in January 2025, a federal court ordered the Netherlands’ government to address critically high levels of nitrogen oxide pollution, produced in large part by the agricultural sector. Greenpeace Netherlands brought the case to court, arguing that Dutch politicians were doing too little to bring down nitrogen emissions, thereby threatening a range of flora and fauna.

Insights from this Solving FCB case study can help the Netherlands continue to lead the world in food production, all while protecting biodiversity and halting environmental degradation.

See also: