The purpose of this publication is to describe the cases around the Baltic Sea that are involved or linked to the BERAS project. In them, active people, projects and organizations have taken initiatives towards local and organic food chains and cooperation

Seppänen, Laura

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Organic Eprints

E K O L O G I S K T   L A N T B R U K   N R   4 0   •   J U L Y   2 0 0 4LOCAL AND ORGANICFOOD AND FARMINGAROUNDTHE BALTIC SEALaura Seppänen (ed.)Centrum för uthålligt lantbrukBaltic Ecological Recycling Agriculture and Society (BERAS)ISSN 1102-6758ISRN SLU-EKBL-EL--29--SEISBN: 91-576-6636-9Antal sidor: 97Ämnesord/Key words: Organic farming, Organic food, Local food,Sustainability, Resource management, Food systems, Rural developmentEkologiskt lantbruk – 40Local and organic food and farming around the Baltic SeaCentrum för uthålligt lantbrukSLUBox 7047750 07 UppsalaEcological Agriculture – 40Local and organic food and farming around the Baltic SeaCentre for Sustainable AgricultureSwedish University of Agricultural SciencesS-750 07 UppsalaAuthors are responsible for the factual contents of the report.5P A R T  IINTRODUCTIONLaura Seppänen The interest in local and organic food chains and systems has manyreasons. One of them is environmental. The situation in the Baltic Seawith increased levels of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution has raisedthe need for recycling and the restructuring of agriculture.Among researchers in organic farming and sustainable agriculturethere is an increasing awareness that the restructuring of agriculturecannot be made by focusing only on farming and primary productionwithin the limits of the farm gate. The restructuring of agriculture isnecessarily linked to structural changes in the rest of the society. Creatingnew local food chains and systems has potential to go forward with therestructuring task. Local integration of food production and consump-tion requires that farming is considered in a wider system of production,processing, and demand instead of a production system only. (Lockie& Kitto 2000) And for this purpose, cooperation among farmers,processors, consumers, shopkeepers and many others is needed.Another reason for the interest in local and organic food is ruraldevelopment. Value adding and processing brings employment andeconomic welfare to small rural communities. Local and organic foodsystems and chains can potentially strengthen local identities and buildcreative environments for innovation and quality of life. Local recyclingand close relations between producers and consumers are of importancealso from the point of the organic agriculture movement.These perspectives are considered in the project Baltic EcologicalRecycling Agriculture and Society (BERAS, see page 3). It studies localand organic food chains and systems around the Baltic Sea with theaim of analyzing, on the one hand, their environmental, economic andsocial impact, and on the other hand, of developing knowledge of howlocal and organic food chains and systems can be developed further.This publication is produced by one of the five work packages of theproject that aims at documenting and promoting cooperation, interactionand learning within the food systems for more sustainable ruraldevelopment.The purpose of this publication is to describe the cases aroundthe Baltic Sea that are involved in or linked to the BERAS project. Inthem, active people, projects and organizations have taken initiativestowards local and organic food chains and cooperation. The casesdocumented are seen in the map on page 2. Part of the cases deal withfood systems that are located in one municipality or village, such asJärna in Sweden, Juva in Finland, Kluczbork and Zbizno in Poland,and Raseiniai in Lithuania. Other cases, such as Nørregaard and Bak-kedalen in Denmark, Zempow farm in Germany, Pahkla Camphill Vil-lage in Estonia and Solmarka in Sweden are farms which have developedlocal or regional food chains with their customers, or enhanced proces-sing activities. Some of the cases follow the biodynamic and anthropo-6     E K O L O G I S K T   L A N T B R U K   N R   40  •   J U L Y   2 0 0 4P A R T  Isophical ideas, while others emphasize organic or local nature of foodand agriculture. The cases from Poland, Lithuania and Estonia areespecially interesting because the new members of the European Unionare actually facing rapid changes. Common to all cases is the linkagebetween agriculture and society that concretely takes place incooperation between farmers, local processors, shopkeepers, munici-pal kitchens, administrators, consumers, project people, and research-ers. Besides food, these chains or systems often have cultural, rural orenvironmental activities. The authors describe/present the cases in theirvaried geographical, historical and cultural contexts that exist aroundthe Baltic Sea.The authors of the case descriptions include researchers as well asconsultants, and people in ecological and environmental movements(see our biographies in chapter three). The descriptions often rely onauthors’ own experiences with the cases and initiatives, and thereforewe hope that this publication will be of interest for anyone interested inlocal and organic food, rural development or sustainability issues. Thenarrative form of expression hopefully mediates to the readers thesuccesses, obstacles and future possibilities of the cases in a ‘naturalized’(Stake, 2000; 19) and accessible way. The environmental, economic andsocial impacts of these types of chains and systems remains to be studiedfurther, in the BERAS project and elsewhere.The concept ”organic” here means farming and products whichare certified according to the national and international guidelines oforganic agriculture. In this publication the word ecological differs from”organic” because ”ecological” emphasizes especially recycling and theecological features of production and consumption, and this does notalways coincide with the certified organic. The concept ‘food chain’refers to a value adding and consumption continuum from primaryproduction through processing and distribution to consumption. A foodsystem always includes a food chain, but it is more than that: it includesas well other actors than those dealing materially with food and itsproduction, such as project people, social movements concerned withfood, educative and administrative agencies etc. A food system alsoincludes the natural environment which is used or affected in foodchains. The concept ”local” is open: what it means needs to be judgedseparately in each case, according to the existing and potentialconditions.What is needed for local food systems to emerge? And in whatways can the important local cooperation be developed further? Basedon the cases these questions will be discussed at the end of thepublication (chapter 12). With these case descriptions the readers areinvited to make their own judgments and initiatives concerning localand ecological food.7P A R T  IReferencesLockie, S. & Kitto, S. 2000. Beyond the farm gate: Production-consumption networks and agri-food research. Sociologia Ruralis40(1): 3-19.Stake, R. 2000. The case study method in social inquiry. In: Robert Gomm,Martyn Hammersley and Peter Foster (Eds.). 2000. Case studymethod. Sage publications.AcknowledgementsWe warmly thank all the people around the Baltic Sea who in differentways have contributed to this publication, Daphne Thuvesson and Ka-rin Ullvén in Sweden for their editing and layout work and MagdalenaLindberg in Finland for her work with the maps.        Authors8     E K O L O G I S K T   L A N T B R U K   N R   40  •   J U L Y   2 0 0 4P A R T  IBIOGRAPHIESÅse Ditlefsen has worked both at Økologisk Landsforening and as aDemeter inspector for many years and through this work she came intocontact with these farms. She also worked with Nørregaard in the pro-cess to make a Farm Development Plan. This is a tool to move the focusfrom inspection (made by Danish state inspectors) to the farmer’s owninterest in improving the farm and its methods. By going beyond thelegislation it gives the initiative back to the farmers to improve organicfarming.Anna Ellström works at the Kalmar County Administrative Board asadvisor in ecological agriculture.Ann-Christine Eriksson works at the Kalmar County AdministrativeBoard as advisor in ecological agriculture. Since 1985 she has managedher own ecological farm.Holger Fischer started organic vegetable farming in 1999 after finishinghis Diploma in Landscape Development and Landscape Planning atKiel University. Since then he havehad many opportunities to makecontacts in and collect knowledge about local organic food chains inhis daily organic producer life. At the end of 2002 he started work atthe Centre for Agricultural Landscape and Landuse Research(www.zalf.de). His main research subjects are organic crop productionand sustainability aspects of organic farming.Artur Granstedt, Department of Ecology and Crop Production Sciences,Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Associate professor in cropscience at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and atHelsinki University in Ecological Agriculture, Head of the BiodynamicResearch Institute in Järna. Agronomist and doctor in Plant NutrientSciences.Andrew Haden M.Sc. is a doctoral candidate at the Department of RuralDevelopment and Agroecology at the Swedish University of Agricul-tural Sciences in Uppsala-Ultuna and is a research assistant at the Bio-dynamic Research Institute (SBFI) in Järna. His work is financed by theBERAS project. Andrew comes from the USA where he studied ecologi-cal agriculture at the Evergreen State College, and worked with inno-vation in local food networks as a form of sustainable rural development,before he came to Sweden.Ewa Hajduk has since 1998 been engaged in the Polish Ecological Club,City of Gliwice Chapter initially as a volunteer and since 2000 as anemployee. She works mainly on projects that promote organic agri-9P A R T  Iculture products as well as sustainable consumption patterns.Hillevi Helmfrid has a background as a free-lance consultant in changeprocesses linked to sustainability. She has for many years reflected upon,and experimented with, how change is brought about in social settings,and how it is not. Before becoming a consultant she worked with thedesign of an interdisciplinary and action oriented research project onlocal sustainable development at the Swedish University of Agriculture.She has a MSc in Agriculture.Salla Kakriainen, M.Sc. is a human geographer with an interest in ruralquestions and is, at the moment, involved in research of local and organicagro-food networks. She is currently working as a researcher at theHelsinki University, Institute for Rural Research and Training.Anzelika Raskauskiene is lector at the Department of Ecology, Environ-mental Institute at the Lithuanian University of Agriculture and editorof the newsletter ”Organic farm: science, production, market”.Vida-Marija Rutkoviene is director of the Environmental Institute atthe Lithuanian University of Agriculture and is one of the pioneers oforganic agriculture in Lithuania.Laura Seppänen has worked with extension and research in organicfarming since 1989. Through researchers and farmers she has had contactwith the Juva case (chapter 4 of the book) for many years. She hascurrently finished her activity-theoretical doctoral thesis about learningchallenges in organic vegetable farming. Employed at the Institute forRural Research and Training of the University of Helsinki she is involvedin research of local and organic agro-food networks.Maria Staniszewska has a MSc in chemical engineering from theTechnical University Gliwice, Department of Chemical Engineering(1978) where she has also done her post graduate studies (1986).Since 1993 she has been the President of the Polish Ecological Club,City of Gliwice Chapter. In 1998 she was one of the founders of thePolish Coalition to Support Organic Agriculture and has been its Presi-dent since 1999. Since 1997 she has coordinated the program “Polishmodel of sustainable agriculture”. In 2003 –2004 she has been the maincoordinator in Poland of the BERAS project.

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