Past, Present and Future 163sufficient dairy farmers want to change over and supply the new plant? If not,
there will be underproduction and losses.
If the new project to establish processing and marketing units is successful, will
the big brothers (the established dairy companies) subsequently decide to invest in
this new area and attempt to outcompete the FEZ? Will consumers accept the
scale increase of production, processing and marketing? And is it possible to realize
a reduction in the consumer price through this scale increase (and the subsequent
cut in, for example, logistical costs), without having to lower the farm gate price?
Alongside consumers, who buy organic products for reasons of principle, will new
groups decide to purchase because of the lower price (although still higher than the
price of non-organic products)? To what extent will supermarket chains cooperate?
Will financiers (banks) want to cooperate in the realization of the intended project?
And to what extent can new government projects, such as green funding, be used
in order to win the financiers over and/or to present better conditions?
It is clear that – even though we have only discussed some of the actors
involved – their projects, and the many questions and uncertainties surrounding
those projects, cover an almost infinite sea of possibilities. If each actor has at their
disposal X alternatives of future action and there are N actors in question, X is
raised to the nth power. In the case of eight actors (organic dairy farmers, farmers
considering a changeover, the initiators of the FEZ, the conventional dairy com-
panies, consumers, banks, supermarket chains, government) who each have, say,
five alternatives for action at their disposal, there are almost 400,000 (390,625 to
be exact) possible final constellations, the majority of which will be characterized
by a sometimes high degree of incongruity.
Only in a limited number of cases will there be congruence, a ‘working whole’
(Roep, 2000) functioning properly and, indeed, generating the expected results
and distributing them in such a way that there will be continuity.
To be able to operate in this sea of uncertainty (that is, to be able to actually
realize innovations), it is essential for all relevant actors to choose or develop their
alternatives for action in such a way (to have their projects evolve in such a way) that
real interweaving and mutual reinforcement emerges. Projects should be integrated
into the working whole; a working whole that does not yet exist, but which (still)
needs to be realized. In other words, it concerns an (increasingly concrete) expecta-
tion that will structure the doings of the actors involved (as expressed by the slightly
abject, but still frequently used phrase that ‘they have to be of one mind’).
In the creation of this expectation (this interpretation of a new working whole),
an essential role is played by agenda-setting, integration, boundary definition (who
will be involved?, in which ways?, how to keep negative and disintegrating forces
at a distance?) and scale (what level of cooperation and how many participants are
needed to define the ‘working whole’?). The more convincing answers, solutions
and prospects are generated with respect to integration, definition, and scale the
more convincing the presented course through the sea of uncertainty will become
(precisely because the uncertainties and their associated risks become eliminated
step by step).