Identifying and characterising social sustainability in the Dutch agricultural sector

In the field of sustainable agriculture, social sustainability has been underrepresented compared to its environmental and economic counterpart. This is particularly salient in the Netherlands, a country with a historic focus on high input intensive agriculture and a focus on land sparing policy. However, a gap in knowledge exists pertaining the social sustainability in the agricultural sector. This paper attempts to bridge this gap through a concurrent mixed methods study. First, a scoping literature review was performed to identify preliminary components for social sustainability in agriculture. Second, a survey was performed to characterise and rank these components. Third, interviews with a visual mapping component were performed with those that hold a stake in the Dutch agricultural sector, to elucidate the contributions farms make to social sustainability and to further understand how these contributions shape the role of agriculture in Dutch society. We identified seven key themes for social sustainability, Aesthetic value, Cultural identity, Labour, Local food production, Perception of farmers, Social cohesion and Wellbeing . Finally, the results highlight the tension between a desire for a post-productivist use of rural space that is situated within social systems and the perceived necessity of a neo-productivist agricultural sector to be food secure.