Sustainability transformations in the balance: exploring Swedish initiatives challenging the corporate food regime

Abstract

This paper explores to what extent organic initiatives that go beyond mainstream organic (socalled Organic 3.0) can challenge the corporate food regime and how they can push the food system towards sustainability transformations. We depart from the assumption that individual initiatives may differ in their potential to influence the corporate food regime and that this potential can be assessed by examining traits linked to reformist, progressive or radical food regime/food movement trends that they may possess. Rather than establishing a dichotomy between niche and food regime or categorising Organic 3.0 initiatives within one of these trends, we explore the nuances in niche-regime relationships within the food system from a multi-level perspective, using the cases of two Organic 3.0 initiatives in Sweden. The results show that relations between these initiatives and the food regime share key characteristics, but also differ in important respects. While a reformist strategy facilitates niche growth, progressive and radical approaches are more likely to challenge the regime. The choice of approach in both cases involves trade-offs between growth and organic values. We conclude that one of the primary roles of Organic 3.0 initiatives may be to illustrate the viability of alternative models.

The Diversity of Organic Box Schemes in Europe—An Exploratory Study in Four Countries

“…Some box schemes are large and some, especially CSAs, tend to be smaller [26]. Food system transformation can only be brought about if sustainable local organic organisations are able to develop and spread (i.e., scale up and scale out), without compromising the guiding principles of sustainability [1,2]. Aggestam, Fleiss, and Posch [43] argue that box schemes are an example of scaling up without "reducing the level of intangible values" [43] (p. 71).…”

“…There have been different developments in different countries, different definitions and rationales for box schemes, and they can scale (or not) in different ways. At the same time, they do try to communicate with their consumers, and they do aim to find ways to contribute to the sustainability transformation of the food system [1]. Since larger overviews are lacking and we mainly depend on case studies for the knowledge we have, this article contributes by exploring "box scheme" as an analytical category and by investigating the diversity of box schemes based on a larger sample of box schemes in different countries.…”

“…They are also a type of short food chain that honours values such as quality production, local production, and sustainability, even if different schemes may operationalise this in diverse ways. By by-passing mainstream market channels such as conventional retailers, organic box schemes can be argued to aim for an alternative system with new relations between consumers and producers [1,22,23]. Since organic box schemes are so diverse, they have more than one feature to define them.…”

“…Local organic food systems have grown in popularity and profusion over the last few years, their rationale often being the need to transform our food system from a non-sustainable one into a sustainable one [1]. While local organic food systems challenge the mainstream conventional food system, they are themselves challenged "to survive and scale up, without compromising the foundational motivating principles of sustainable local food" [2] (p. 526).…”