2009-082 Samen werken aan samenwerking - Lei

neurs will decide to take another direction, for example, to take a part-time job
outside the firm, or to lease out the firm and carry out minor activities outside it.
The impact on sub-sectors
Entrepreneurs within the various sub-sectors face great challenges. These challenges
arise from both external factors (e.g. stricter rules, increased costs, decreasing
protectionism) and internal factors (e.g. animal & plant diseases,
ageing of entrepreneurs, lack of successors). The continuing expansion and
specialisation of primary firms is remarkable. This phenomenon results from the
need to reduce cost prices and from the increasing specificity of knowledge and
market information.
Not all firms are growing. Some entrepreneurs are switching to organic agriculture,
while others are opting for multifunctionality and launching recreation
or tourism activities, developing social healthcare services, maintaining nature
or producing sustainable energy. Two groups of activities can be discerned,
namely diversification and multifunctionality (privately paid for), and the carrying
out of public services (publicly paid for). Table 2 lists the potential firm strategies,
divided into existing and new markets.
Table 2 Strategies that match the trends and developments expected
in the period until 2020; after Porter (1980)
Type of
Strategy or focus
market low costs/cost leadership added value/differentiation
Existing market
General Extension of European market; technology
(GPS, automatisation, robotisation,
et cetera); expansion; yield
increase; resistance (partly possible
through genetic modification)
Greenhouse Cultivation & breeding in third coun-
horticulture tries; producers' organisations
Fresh & health-improving products;
organic & regional products; taste;
convenience food
Improvement of product range
Field & garden
Continuous supply throughout the
horticulture
year, new (e.g. apple) varieties
Arable farming Vertical cooperation
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