Speaker
Description
Sweden depends on international markets to meet its current food demands. The development towards the present degree of import dependence began in the mid-1900s, with a political shift towards structural transformation and industrialization of the agri-food sectors. Alongside shifting domestic consumption habits towards resource-intensive foods, this has caused Swedish food consumption to exert considerable environmental footprints in supplying regions. Simultaneously, the entanglement of Sweden’s agri-food sector in global resource circuits exposes it to geopolitical and market volatilities. Diversifying beyond global supply channels towards local food systems is emphasized as a way to increase food supply resilience and counteract asymmetric food geographies produced by today’s global agri-food exchange. Local governance actors are highlighted as having the potential to provide spaces where such progressive food politics can be forged.
Swedish municipalities have several key food-related governance responsibilities. Within Sweden’s extensive public meal sector, they are required to provide meal services to educational and social care institutions, both in peacetime and crisis. Moreover, the Swedish municipal planning monopoly grants municipalities autonomy in directing land development, including exploitation of agricultural land for buildings or infrastructure. Further, in light of recent geopolitical developments, national-level political attention to domestic food security is reinvigorating. Currently, a national food preparedness agenda is forming, aiming to ensure the Swedish population’s access to essential foods in the event of crisis or war. Municipalities are expected to be appointed main implementing actors of this agenda, which would widen their responsibility for crisis preparedness beyond public meals to encompass all municipal inhabitants. Importantly, the above functions should be ensured in accordance with national sustainability agenda, which municipalities ought to operationalize locally. Thus, from where municipalities source food for public meals, how they treat agricultural land within their spatial planning, and how they ensure food preparedness – under the umbrella of sustainability – considerably impacts the Swedish food system. Importantly, holistic and synergistic approaches to these issues have the potential to strengthen the resilience of local food systems. However, previous research indicates that agri-food concerns tend to be governed in a disintegrated and ‘siloed’ manner by Swedish municipalities. Indeed, the failure of sectoral policymaking to accommodate food system complexity is widely observed. Consequently, policy integration (PI) is discussed as a productive way forward for food policymaking (Candel & Pereira, 2017; Edwards et al, 2024). PI entails a process characterized by coordination and combination of instruments from relevant policy domains and joint implementation and evaluation towards several objectives simultaneously (Cejudo & Trein, 2023).
The presentation will discuss the findings from an ongoing study exploring if, where and how local food, food preparedness, and agricultural land are addressed in municipal policy and planning. It does so through a qualitative content analysis of policies and plans across the domains of spatial planning, public meals, crisis preparedness, and sustainability for the 88 municipalities in Eastern Mid-Sweden. Drawing on PI, it investigates the level of integration of policy and planning on the three issues by identifying and examining ‘integrated narratives’ (problem formulations connecting the three issues) and ‘integrated strategies’ (documents addressing all three issues), as well as assessing the compatibility of goals and instruments through which the issues are addressed across documents. Preliminary results point to agricultural land being the most frequently discussed issue, followed by local food and food preparedness. While local food is addressed across all domains, agricultural land is addressed exclusively within spatial planning and sustainability. Food preparedness appears in all domains except public meals. While few integrated narratives and strategies are identified, the issues are frequently addressed pairwise. The presentation will discuss the implications of the final results for food system localization and resilience.
References
Candel, J.J.L. and Pereira, L. (2017). Towards integrated food policy: Main challenges and steps ahead. Environmental Science & Policy, 73, pp. 89-92.
Cejudo, G.M. and Trein, P. (2023). Pathways to policy integration: A subsystem approach. Policy Sciences, 56(1), pp. 9-27.
Edwards, F., Sonnino, R. and Cifuentes, M. L. (2024). Connecting the dots: Integrating food policies towards food system transformation. Environmental Science & Policy, 156, pp. 2-11.
| Keywords | local food; food preparedness; agricultural land; policy integration; planning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
