Farming for food security : a critical study on the transition to post-fossil agriculture in Sweden

Sammanfattning: This thesis addresses the preconditions to achieve a transition to fossil free agriculture in Sweden, to increase farm-level resilience and food security. Swedish agriculture is today highly dependent on imported fossil-based inputs, such as diesel, agrochemicals and protein feed. This makes the food supply vulnerable in case a crisis would block the access to these. If agriculture would transform into a fossil free state, based on recycling systems of local and bio based resources, energy and nutrients, the production would be maintained even during crisis. Therefore, the agency of agroecological- and sustainable intensification farming systems is investigated, which suit into this fossil free vision. The issue of food security has reappeared in the political context, after being absent in almost twenty years. It is much due to the Defence Act published in 2015, which included planning for food security (Swedish Government, 2015). Considering this, research is necessary for increasing knowledge about how food contingency can be adapted to these uncertain days. It is a critical study which includes a qualitative interview study, a document study and a literature review. The material is collected by deep-interviews with six farmers and entrepreneurs, who work with agricultural systems highly divested from fossil-based resources. The document study consists of a textual analysis of four key national policy documents influencing the agricultural- and environmental development. The inquiry is conducted through Fairclough’s relational-dialectical approach to critical discourse analysis (Wodak; Meyer, 2016). The analysis showed that there were rather good preconditions achieving a transition to sustainable intensification of agriculture due to the expanded agency of these kinds of farms. This depended on the farmers’ belonging to the dominating discourse of eco-technological fix for agriculture, which made them supported by the political, economic and cultural structures. The eco-technological discourse encourages technological solutions to solve environmental problems in a profitable way. However, sustainable intensification had less possibility to divest all fossil-based inputs, because the economic capital is higher valued than the ecological capital. Still, the radical sustainable intensification practice and the agroecological farming practices that together could have the potential to divest all fossil-based resources, were marginalized by the structures of society and did thus had less agency and worse preconditions. It depended likely on the high environmental ambitions of these farming systems, which challenged the modern agricultural sector too much. Moreover, it was also due to the agroecological farming’s connection with the alternative discourse of eco-centric fix, emphasizing profound ecological concern and social justice. Though, the agroecological approach creates strong sustainability, by considering social, ecological and economic capital and long-term improvement of life-opportunities. The agroecological approach contributes to regenerate agricultural land, strengthen the biological processes and the eco system services that makes food production possible without external inputs. To increase farm level resilience and food security, both agroecological farming and radical sustainable intensification practices will be needed to complement each other and provide solutions to a diversity of farm contexts. A transition to a post fossil agricultural paradigm requires improved preconditions for these farming systems, especially in the political field. It could be obtained when the political context, the economic system and the cultural values applies a strong sustainability view and include the discourse of eco-centric fix.