, Volume 27, Issue 3, pp 307-319
First online:
01 August 2009
Open Access
Abstract
Environmental pollution,
animal diseases, and food scandals have marked the agricultural sector
in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the 1990s. The sector was high on
the political and societal agenda and plans were developed to redesign
the sector into a more sustainable direction. Generally, monitoring of
the agricultural sector is done by means of quantitative indicators to
measure social, ecological, and economic performance. To give more
attention to the normative character of sustainable development, the
Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality requested for a
participatory approach to evaluate Dutch agriculture, which was
characterized by stakeholder workshops, dialogue, and learning. This
article describes and reflects on this approach, using the Fourth
Generation Evaluation framework developed by Guba and Lincoln (Fourth
generation evaluation, 1989).
Although there are several improvements to be made, the evaluation
approach was successful in the way that it gave insight into
perceptions, visions, and ambitions of agricultural stakeholders with
regard to sustainability. It also encouraged learning about ways to make
the agricultural sector more sustainable. And it contributed to the
development of a monitoring approach that is complementary to the
quantitative, indicator-based, evaluation approach that is generally
used and that can be used every few years to see how perceptions and
ambitions of stakeholders have developed.
