Endogenous Development versus Dependency
Another prominent tension revolves around the contrasting focuses on poverty alleviation through endogenous development in developing countries, on the one hand, and the concern over dependency and structural imbalances between rich and poor nations, on the other.
The emphasis on poverty, manifested in rural development policies and a needs-based approach, led to the prevalent 'poverty criterion' for selecting aid recipients. This criterion, prioritizing aid for the poorest and most vulnerable individuals or groups, has endured despite its questionable nature. Critics argue that it incentivizes remaining impoverished rather than selecting those capable of fostering economic development and lifting more people out of poverty, particularly evident in the persistent targeting of smallholders after the 1979 Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in Rome.
Conversely, the focus on dependency, situated at the opposite end of the continuum, gained widespread acceptance in development cooperation debates. Advocates of this perspective argued that unfair trade practices, Western dominance in international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, and large-scale tax evasion rendered development impossible without addressing these structural issues. They contended that free trade or fair trade, depending on one's stance, was the key to the development of poor countries, despite the reality of vast populations in remote communities untouched by trade or development due to inadequate infrastructure and institutions.
The positions along this continuum are intertwined with beliefs regarding the necessity or obligation to intervene versus allowing economic development to naturally unfold. This spectrum is often characterized as the state-market continuum or the tension triangle involving the state, civil society, and the market. Development cooperation, however, always implies intervention. Advocates of endogenous development see intervention as crucial, viewing external actions as determining the future progress of the target group. Meanwhile, proponents of dependency argue that intervention is essential to level the playing field, addressing unfair trade through price adjustments that incorporate external effects.
Economic Base versus Superstructure
Another pertinent dichotomy in Dutch development cooperation centers on the debate over the primacy of action—what should take precedence? Should we prioritize local economic development, or should we give precedence to addressing broader issues like environment, gender, climate, and conflict? This debate echoes the distinctions in Marxist theory, which delineate the relationship between a society's economic base (encompassing means of production, relations of production, and the economic system) and its superstructure (comprising institutions, culture, politics, and ideologies). Within brackets, please note that the contradiction between socialist and capitalist development has also fueled heated debates, significantly influencing policies, particularly evident in the support provided to countries like Angola, Mozambique, and Nicaragua until the 1990s.
In the first vision about precedence, the belief is that economic development will uplift people out of poverty, determining progress in other areas such as improving gender relations and providing the means to address environmental and climate issues. Conversely, the latter vision argues that development cannot occur while conflicts persist or as long as gender relations remain archaic in developing countries. Recently, climate issues have been deemed so pressing that some argue no development can transpire without a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions. There are even opponents of economic growth in developing countries, fearing it will exacerbate climate change.
Money versus Expertise
Similarly, another debate revolves around the roles of money and people—essentially, the two elements that the Netherlands can contribute. While sending Dutch experts to developing countries was once common practice, the focus shifted in the early 21st century policies towards trade relations, leading to prioritization of structural adjustments and capital transfers. SNV, on the one hand, played a crucial role in first deploying hands-on workers in health, agriculture), and small scale manufacturing and later in joint project implementation and capacity development of local organizations. Co-financing institutes, on the other hand, transferred money to non-state actors, enabling many activities and advocacy work but also creating a landscape of dependent NGOs in developing countries. This balance between sending money or expertise sparked debates about the balance of decision-making power between the Netherlands and developing countries (typically represented by their governments). Sending experts in this context became synonymous with exerting Western influence. In contrast, capital transfers for governmental budget support were sometimes viewed as the ultimate expression of self-determination by developing countries, not minding how undemocratic their governments might be. However, the farmer-to-farmer development cooperation held an opposing perspective, viewing sending agripool experts as invaluable support to cooperatives in search for advice, training, and international exposure. The support was directed to those cooperatives that had moved beyond the tipping point, and did no longer wait for external parties to provide development[1]. They had taken development in their hands by hard work and investments with their own capital, proving their self-determination and independency of governments, NGOs, banks or foreign aid.
Jack of All Trades versus Specialization
A final tension worth noting pertains to the implementation framework of development cooperation. Typically, programs or projects are structured with implementers expected to be a "Jack of all Trades." The complexity of the situations being addressed is mirrored in projects, aiming to encompass all facets of reality. The Food Systems Approach serves as an example; while primarily an analytical framework, there is often a push to implement it comprehensively within a single program.
Specialization, the other extreme of this continuum, was seldom chosen as a guiding principle in Dutch development cooperation. While many Dutch NGOs specialize, there are few efforts to build a pool of Dutch organizations and their counterpart organizations in developing countries specializing in different aspects of the food system. Although the Dutch government, with its prominent funding role, could pursue coordination of the specializations of organizations that collectively would fit the prevalent analytical framework, it has shown reluctance to assume this role. The alternative principle for selecting organizations for development cooperation could have been that they align with food systems analyses, recognizing that their combined action could yield better results, without constraining them at forehand to a specific project.
Co-financing agencies, Integrated Rural Development programs, and Food Systems Approaches exemplify the predominant tendency in Dutch development cooperation—to seek implementation by mimicking complexity rather than embracing specialization. Organizations or projects are often expected to be jacks of all trades. Programmatic approaches and, more recently, AgriGrade represent efforts to leverage the coordinated efforts of specialized stakeholders in specific settings. Programmatic Approach to Developing Economic Opportunities (PADEO), a governmental initiative, seeks to establish coherence among Dutch specialized stakeholders working in agriculture-related but separate projects within a single country.
The Resulting Policies
The culmination of interests advocating various perspectives determined policies during specific periods or defined the missions of organizations. However, these outcomes were never absolute, as the resolution of heated debates often led to a compromise, reflecting the Maoist saying "let a hundred flowers bloom." Policies aimed to incorporate multiple positions, favoring different interest groups at different times. Each new minister for development cooperation sought to leave his or her mark, aligning with a particular stance in these debates. The overarching tendency was to ease tensions, resulting in unique Dutch approaches like Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), the Golden Triangle Approach, and the Dutch Diamond Approach.
The mentioned tensions were often clustered in different ways, shaped by prolonged debates. Ideological positions within various political parties influenced the preferred channels for implementation. Social democrats often favored collaboration through governments, while an other current within the left advocated for a prominent role of non-state actors, notably NGOs and other civil society organizations in the Netherlands and abroad. Some Dutch liberals (part of them conservatives) were critical of development cooperation, preferring to emphasize role of private enterprises and aiming for benefits for Dutch companies. Christian democrats, identified by a more clergymen position, emphasized the role of civil society, often aligning with the left's focus on non-state actors, fostering a flourishing NGO community in the early 21st century.
Ministers from different political backgrounds prioritized policies aligned with their favored channels, although never exclusively. For instance, Jan Pronk (a socialist from the Labor Party) favored the governmental channel and a mix of channels ranging from SNV and CSOs to labor unions and municipalities, Eveline Herfkens (also a socialist from the Labor Party) prioritized the intergovernmental channel and advocated for budget support to national governments, while Agnes van Ardenne (Christian Democrat) involved employers' organizations and farmers organizations more intensively in development cooperation. Liesje Schreinemacher (liberal conservative) shifted focus to issues related to security, diplomacy, migration, climate change and terrorism. Nevertheless, her last decision was a €120 million contribution to the replenishment of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, supporting initiatives to double the productivity of smallholders.
Tensions in the Agricultural Timeline
The agricultural sector had its unique tensions layered on top of the aforementioned, often intermingled. Initially focused on hunger and food aid, policies later shifted to include social distribution of land, emphasizing land reform and farm size. This focus on farm size led to policies addressing smallholders, intertwining attention to poverty, with that for non-state actors, and endogenous development. The need for technological development, agricultural extension, research, and education also emerged. The domestic debate on agricultural development i triggered heated discussions on production modes : mainstream ’ agriculture based on ‘improved commercial seeds, artificial fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides, on high value animal feed etc. versus adapted, low-cost low external input agriculture and adoption of agroecological production.
The movement away from just addressing food production is consistent with the tendency along the timeline to link agricultural development with other perspectives. Rural development attempted to combine agricultural development with political issues such as land distribution, access to water, technology, and credit. Collectivization of agricultural production or forming farmer groups was seen as a means to achieve technological progress, increased production, and a more equal distribution of land and power. Over time, perspectives expanded to food security, including consumer and nutrition or health perspectives. The current Food Systems Approach extends the perspective even more, reflecting the structural transformation of the economy in the progress of perspectives on the subject of our timeline.
Attention to mere agriculture and food production, as the extreme position in our timeline, resurfaces prominently on the development cooperation agenda during periods of food scarcity and systemic tensions. In 2007-2008 when food price spikes led to riots in different parts of the world, the World Bank turned its view to agriculture that had at that point long vanished from the development cooperation agenda. The war in Ukraine led to price increases on the world grain market and awakened attention for food supplies to Africa. The recent upsurge of conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is partially related to food insecurity, a lack of access to land, poverty and inequality. What does this mean for the future of development cooperation?
The End of Development Cooperation?
Most debates surrounding Dutch development cooperation often held more relevance for the Netherlands than for developing countries. Dutch development cooperation sometimes aimed to undo negatively perceived Dutch involvement in foreign economies due to misconceptions of Western dominance, an excess of clergyman attitudes, or concerns about creating technological dependencies. The debates did not always recognize Dutch involvement in development cooperation as a genuine commitment to helping poorer countries build solid economies and societies, offering genuine guidance on their development path.
The reduction of Dutch development workers with extensive hands-on experience in developing countries has rendered recent debates in the Netherlands on development cooperation rather sterile, relying on superficial experiences of an increasing number of tourists visiting countries in the Global South. Other prominent themes for the Dutch public have overshadowed the once-vibrant debate on achieving development in poor countries. Discussions now focus for instance on issues in the Netherlands or affecting it, like an ageing population, a shortage of housing, traffic congestion, agricultural pesticides and herbicides leading to health problems, crime and terrorism, climate change effects, loss of biodiversity, the relatively large number of foreign students, labor migrants and refugees in an already densely populated country, etc.
Globally, economic development has progressed substantially. In the 1950s, around 60% of the world's workforce was engaged in agricultural activities, reflecting economies that were primarily agrarian. Over subsequent decades, the global workforce structure transformed, with a decline in the proportion of people employed in agriculture. By the early 21st century, the percentage of the global workforce employed in agriculture decreased to 26.5%. In the Netherlands, where only 2% of the workforce is active in the primary sector, the agricultural sector's diminishing relevance in the overall economy has triggered debates over its negative aspects, particularly ‘space-consuming’ (in the Netherlands and elsewhere) and ‘air polluting’ animal husbandry.
The declining importance of farmers means that their perspectives and voices are no longer adequately considered in national economic dynamics, trade relations, or trade agreements. The structural transformation of the Dutch economy has led to shifts in political preferences, and the negative opinion on development cooperation among the Dutch public and policymakers has grown. The Dutch rural population, once more supportive of assistance to their peers in developing countries, now reflects the broader negative sentiment.
As the Dutch agricultural sector becomes less relevant in the overall Dutch economy, defining its role in the world food system becomes important before it loses its critical mass and disappears from the Netherlands. This requires rethinking the influence of Dutch agriculture on agricultural technology, on ensuring food security in the world, and on maintaining strategic food autonomy in Europe. Resolving rural-urban struggles and controversies about the sustainability of the Netherlands and its development cooperation necessitates to think of a mature form of international cooperation on a more equal footing, more participatory and more reciprocal, beyond good intentions, ideological pursuits, and charitable endeavors. It calls for a collaborative international effort, moving beyond traditional paradigms, to build sustainable agricultural and agro-industrial companies in the Netherlands and elsewhere, based on local efforts and self-determined actions that can contribute to the global sustainable development goals, while addressing the challenges of population growth, economic development, social progress, biodiversity loss and climate change.
[1] https://impakter.com/farmers-the-tipping-point/