New Policy Brief: Drought-Adaptation Packages

od | jún 4, 2026 | Dutch CS, Stručné informácie o politike

Farmer-Centred Drought Policy in Noord-Holland

Despite increasing water scarcity, farmer investment in drought adaptation in the Netherlands has remained limited, reflecting not just financial barriers but also behavioural biases, coordination challenges, and continued reliance on public water authorities. This RETOUCH NEXUS policy brief, based on a choice experiment among farmers in the HHNK water authority region of Noord-Holland, reveals what farmers actually need from drought policy: not only cost support, but credible bridging mechanisms, cooperative arrangements, and instruments that address risk and trust. The results offer a replicable methodology for evidence-based drought policy design across the Netherlands and comparable EU regions.

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Kľúčové posolstvá

1

Preferences drive uptake, policy must reflect what farmers value: A choice experiment quantifying willingness to pay for drought-adaptation attributes reveals that farmers are not simply cost-averse. They invest when policies reflect feasibility, risk reduction, and cooperation, not just when subsidies are available. Policy design must start from farmer preferences, not administrator assumptions.

2

Lumpy investment risk, not cost alone, blocks storage uptake: Many farmers remain hesitant to invest in on-farm water storage even when willingness to pay for risk-reducing measures is clearly positive. The barrier is perceived uncertainty and irreversibility of large capital outlays. Cost-sharing schemes that reduce investment risk are more effective than subsidies that lower upfront cost alone.

3

Abstraction bans are only acceptable when paired with bridging support: Farmers accept restrictions on water abstraction during drought periods only when credible on-farm or collective storage provides a bridge. Bans without bridging are perceived as unacceptable constraints on farm autonomy. Clear operating rules and communication are essential complements to regulatory instruments.

4

Cooperative solutions outperform isolated instruments: Cooperation, whether with the water authority or with neighbouring farmers, significantly improves adaptation uptake by reducing transaction costs while preserving farm autonomy. Integrated packages combining storage support, cooperation schemes, and conditional abstraction rules consistently outperform single-instrument approaches.

5

The choice experiment methodology is directly replicable: The core design, a fixed choice experiment with a local calibration step, can be replicated across Dutch water board regions and comparable EU agricultural areas (Belgian polders, northern German lowlands, East Anglian fens). Scaling up to a national stated-preference study would feed directly into the Dutch Delta Programme’s drought adaptation strategy.