Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

This thesis explores what agro-political discourses define the Swedish National Food Policy from 2017. By analysing how the problems of environmental sustainability and productivity are addressed, the study aims to excavate unearthed ways of thinking. The findings show that environmental sustainability is assumed to be attained through increased and intensified production, hoping to
substitute ‘unsustainable’ international produce with Swedish ‘sustainable’ produce on the world market. Environmental sustainability is also addressed through
intensification, as it is understood as a matter of resource efficiency. By examining how productivity is problematized, the study finds the presence of two understandings of the concept: as ‘resource productivity’ and as ‘value
productivity’. The latter is shown to be very similar to profitability and competitiveness. Through the conceptualization of productivity as ‘profitability’,
policy responses to achieve productivity are promoted in part through a 'simplification rationale' that is used to scrutinize different environmental policies specific to Swedish agriculture. ‘Simplification’ is also employed to open for an overhaul of the law on land acquirement, as the national strategy hopes for a structural rationalization spearheaded by transnational capital. Marginal smallholders
are being advised to diversify and find income support through extensification measures in the Rural Development program. The study argues that the aspiration for this divergent development, the ‘dichotomization of landscapes’,
must be seen as a break from earlier ‘productivist’ policies emphasizing the family farm as primary unit of agricultural production. The results of this study repeatedly point to the conclusion that the National Food Strategy is subscribing to a ‘neo-liberal’ discourse. The results also reveal how ‘multifunctional’ elements interact with and reinforce the neo-liberal discourse.