English | BoerenNatuur
We connect and inspire farmer collectives and represent their interests
BoerenNatuur is the Dutch national organization that represents all farmer collectives in the Netherlands. Our members execute the agri-environmental scheme (AES) at a landscape scale. Aim is to conserve farmland nature and maintain the farmland landscape. Within these 40 collectives over 11.000 farmers are actively involved and in total they manage approximately about a 100.000 hectares of farmland. Yearly over 85 million euro is invested agrimanagement. Our members range in size and management unit. How our dutch collective approach to agriculture nature & landscape management is set up, you can see here.
Before 2016 there was an individual system where individual farmer had contracts with the government. In 2016 we went from an individual approach to a collective approach. This meant a stronger role for our members, the agricultural collectives. And more responsibility. Collectives serve as final beneficiaries for the subsidy: on the one hand they have a collective contract with the government and on the other hand an individual contract with the farmer.
Read more about it in our brochure.
In 2021 the collective approach is evaluated, you can read the Interim evaluation of the agri-environment scheme in the Netherlands here.
What do agricultural collectives do?
- Administration of farmer participants
- Digital registration the type of management on the land parcels of the participants (practically speaking: draw management unit on map and link to management activities/package)
- Reporting of completed management activities from participants during the year
- Inspection of realization of management activities
- Preparation of collective claim
- Preparation of payment justification
- Payments of farmer participants
Do you want to know more about the cooperative approach in the Netherlands? Read ‘The cooperative approach under the new Dutch agri-environmentclimate scheme’.
Our chairman Alex Datema gives a presentation of the dutch agriculture schemes in this video.