Just Transitions in Agri-Food Systems: Acceptance and Resistance to Actions for Sustainable Transformations in Rural Areas

This project will investigate the role(s) of agri-food systems in sustainable and just transformations for climate action in industrialized societies.

Many rural regions face substantial changes related to climate change - both challenges and opportunities - but the conditions for participating in climate transformation differ between individuals and groups.

The overarching question is: what are important social conditions and processes that can either inhibit or contribute to stakeholder actions toward sustainable transformations in agri-food production systems?

Our theoretical starting point suggests that there are key system dynamics related to inequality, power, and capabilities that influence the possibility for sustainable transformations.

Underlying the proposal is therefore a hypothesis that ´just transition´ can function as a fruitful analytical approach to identify meaningful obstacles to implementing sustainable transformations of agri-food systems, and, importantly, political-economic mechanisms and conditions that can encourage them.

Focusing on production and producers, we will develop a historically grounded, comparative analysis of two cases in industrialized societies: Sweden (Skåne) and the United States (Eastern Colorado).

These case studies will provide opportunities for understanding and explaining stakeholder acceptance of, and capacity to parttake in, efforts towards developing sustainable transformations in agri-food systems.