Scenarios of technical and institutional change in Dutch dairy farming

Abstract

Scenario analysis is used in this paper to assess consistent sets of future circumstances in Dutch dairy farming. The fields of interest are technical and institutional change. Technical change includes improvement in fodder and milk production. Institutional change includes changes of environmental policy and of market and price policy. All key factors are historically analyzed and forecasts are made for 2005 and are bundled into four scenarios. The scenarios are governed by environmental policy and common agricultural policy. For environmental policy a moderate and a severe variant are distinguished, and for common agricultural policy a price support and a two-price variant.