What about perennial grains?

Summary

The world’s population is growing, and sustainable sufficient food production is therefore needed. The agricultural sector is facing a dilemma, both to ensure that ecosystem services are kept intact but also to keep up the global food supply for the growing population. The food and agriculture industry has a strongly institutionalized structure, which means that fundamental changes take a particularly long time. Many sustainability issues concerning the current agricultural industry are urgent, this means that we must find effective ways that work, to change the current unsustainable production methods. Perennial grains are one example of an initiative to reduce the environmental impact from the agricultural sector. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how grain producers are affected by structures within their work towards sustainability. The data collection has been done through semi-structured interviews with six grain producers in Skaraborg, Västra Götaland. The theoretical framework in the thesis are sustainability transition and structuration theory. The results showed that the respondents experience a need for sustainability transition in the agricultural sector and that an implementation of perennial grains would be positive from an environmental perspective if it met the grain producers’ requirements and fit in a Swedish context. From a multiple level perspective in the agricultural industry, changes in structures need to take place at all levels for a transition to happen, such as niche level, patchwork of regimes level and at landscape level.