Towards sustainable preparedness in Swedish agriculture

Our premise is that strategies to achieve food preparedness cannot be handled separately from strategies to achieve food system sustainability.

We introduce the concept of sustainable preparedness in which food preparedness has to be considered with both a short- and long-term perspective, by focusing on solutions that are also sustainable. We focus on the agricultural component of the food system throughout the project.

The aims are (1) to conceptualize sustainable preparedness in agriculture, (2) to develop indicators that can be used to evaluate the current status and to monitor progress towards sustainable preparedness in agriculture, and (3) to investigate how public and private policies can support transition towards sustainable preparedness in agriculture.

Different approaches and data are combined: food systems research, agricultural and food economics, behavioural insights and psychometrics, with agricultural economics methods, participatory approaches, in-depth interviews, surveys and economic and agronomic data.

This project will contribute knowledge that is highly relevant to inform current stakeholder discussions on how to achieve food preparedness.

Although focused on Sweden, findings are also relevant for understanding sustainable food preparedness at a global scale and how Sweden can contribute to global food supply and food system sustainability.