Towards a sustainable food system : On entrepreneurship, resilience and social capital in Baltic Sea agriculture

Abstract: This thesis presents a comparison of conventional agriculture and Ecological Recycling Agriculture (ERA) in terms of their environmental and socio-economic effects. Environmental effects include greenhouse gas emissions and energy use but the focus is on leakage of nutrients. Socio-economic effects include production, costs and benefits at macro, firm and household levels. The comparison is made at regional (Baltic Sea), national (Swedish) and local (Järna community/Södertälje municipality) levels. At regional level the main challenge is to transform agricultural production in an environmentally friendly direction and reduce nutrient loads while sustaining food production. At national level the challenges are to shift the product mix towards more vegetables and less meat, and to address the geographical division of animal and crop production. At local level the challenge is to achieve sustainable rural development in environmental, economic and social terms.Results: at regional level the empirical findings were scaled up to calculate three scenarios. A scenario where the agriculture sectors of Poland and the Baltic States transform in such a way that their structure and use of resources resembles the Swedish average resulted in a 58% increase of nitrogen and an 18% increase in phosphorus surplus from agriculture and increased food production. Two other scenarios where agriculture in the entire Baltic Sea area converts to ERA resulted in reductions of 47-61% in nitrogen surplus from agriculture and eliminated the phosphorus surplus. In these scenarios food production decreased or remained stable depending on the strategy chosen.At national level, the environmental effects of different production methods, transport and different food baskets were compared. A household survey was performed to construct an alternative food profile. This food basket was high in vegetables, low in meat and high in locally produced organic food compared to the average Swedish food profile. It was also 24% more expensive. Food basket content was found to be as important as production methods in reducing the environmental effects. Localized production and processing was less important.At local level, a network of entrepreneurs engaged in the production, processing and distribution of organic food was studied. Semi-structured interviews were used to assess the network, which was found to be a resilient self-organized network characterized by economic stability and social capital. A high share of locally produced and consumed food was coupled with social and economic sustainability. This was facilitated by well-functioning cooperation within the network and between entrepreneurs, consumers and the municipality.EU expansion can be seen as a window of opportunity for governance of the Baltic Sea and the agriculture sector. A new agricultural regime with large-scale ERA production would result in several environmental gains. Sustainable governance of the Baltic Sea as agreed on in HELCOM cannot be achieved while simultaneously maximizing agricultural production in the surrounding countries. Agricultural production bears large external costs. There is substantial willingness to pay for an improved Baltic Sea environment among the public: this justifies environmentally sound farming practices. The contracting parties of HELCOM, including the Swedish government, have both environmental and economic incentives to use this window of opportunity before it closes.This thesis is the result of a collaboration between Mälardalen University and Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. Both universities contributed with supervision and financial support at different stages of the research process.