Getting off or going faster? Reconsidering the technological treadmill theory and farmers’ responses in the Netherlands

This paper explains changes in external factors around the Dutch agricultural sectors, suggests desirable types of farming by exploring various responses from Dutch Farmers and links their features with farm resilience. The Dutch agricultural sector has undergone the transition from the protective massive production to the neoliberal environmental preservation oriented regime and it increased burdens on the upstream side and decreased returns on the downstream side of Dutch farms which led a high level of farm debt. Dutch farmers showed various responses based on their tendency towards agricultural technologies and market which are reorganised by the author into four groups: Early Adopters, Average Farmers, Laggard Farmers 1 and Laggard Farmers 2. The paper found that Cochrane’s theory of Technological Treadmill is manifested in a different way under the current context of the agricultural sector in the Netherlands with changes of external factors and suggested Laggard Farmers 1 as a desirable type of farming in the current context with its self-sufficient and flexible structures and a low level of debt as a result. This finding reveals multidimensional effects of indebtedness in the agrarian society with its reinforcing relation with technology and farm expansion, in turn, place debt in the centre of change in the face of the long dominating neoliberal discourse in the global food system.