Agriculture and foods: Overproduction and overconsumption

In the period 1970-2010, environment, landscape and healthy nutrition were core issues in the supply chain of agriculture and foods. Concern for the environment put pressure on agriculture. Since the 1950s, agriculture had oriented itself to ever higher levels of production. This had seduced farmers into extreme specialisations with consequences for the environment, both domestically and elsewhere. In order to reveal these dynamics, this chapter follows developments in cattle husbandry. In the early 1980s, European measures to restrain overproduction and increasing concern about acidification and over-fertilisation destabilised the established agricultural world. In the wake of changing ecological insights, new issues emerged in regard to the landscape. Nature management and agricultural interests had to be harmonised. Though the Netherlands laid the basis for the European Natura 2000 directive, it encountered great difficulties in implementing them domestically. Food consumption also presented new challenges; for example the problem of overweight. The chapter analyses how government, private firms and consumers responded to this issue. Consumers appear to have great difficulty grasping the complex issues of sustainable and healthy nutritional patterns.