Alfons Beldman and Jan Willem van der Schans are researchers at Wageningen Economic Research. They work closely on programmes to help dairy farmers make considered choices when they are about to take over a business, for example, or want to move in a new direction.
Beldman, commenting on the success of the Netherlands as the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world, points out the flipside:
“I think the Netherlands should be focused on exports with added value rather than just maximising exports. But what can an individual dairy farmer do? That's a difficult one. One option as a business owner is to withdraw from the mainstream supply chain. You can then decide on and handle your own sales and switch to a smaller supply chain or even handle your own processing. There are examples of individual business that do that, such as Remeker cheese. That’s a business that has been processing its own milk for a long time, makes cheese and has found a high-value market niche. This is an organic dairy entrepreneur who has come up with and developed a strategy by himself, long before anyone was talking about it, and who hasn’t just followed the rest of the herd.”