Sustainable farm – a farm for the future
A Sustainable Farm is sustainable from all three sustainability pillars: economically, socially and environmentally. But how can farmers achieve these often-conflicting goals on farms with completely different circumstances and production systems? At RISE, we work towards sustainability practice in Swedish agriculture, both in specific areas of agricultural production and with a holistic farm approach. In this way, the vision of the Sustainable Farm will be achieved.
Sustainable Farm at RISE
Within RISE, we work to develop the Sustainable Farm at many different levels, but the work has been fragmented across RI.SE, or in some cases not posted at all. Therefore, this page has been created to collect projects, activities, initiatives and news that come to RISE within Sustainable Farm.
The Sustainable Farm
All industries want to achieve sustainability, including agriculture. Compared to many other industries agriculture has a great advantage in sustainability work in that it can go beyond reducing its negative impact towards producing positive impact for society and the planet. For example, farming can aim not to just achieve climate neutrality but net positive climate impact, and it can aim to not only avoid environmental damage but to create valuable natural areas both for human well-being and to benefit biodiversity. The contribution of agriculture to economic sustainability is also not limited to how revenue that agriculture generates, but instead agriculture’s production constitutes a cornerstone in society's supply capacity and resilience. Agriculture produces many of the products that are vital in times of crisis and war, from food to energy, materials, ingredients and ecosystem services.
So what is the Sustainable Farm?
A sustainable farm needs to be able to produce food, energy, materials and/or other ecosystem services (e.g., carbon storage, biodiversity) in such a way that production can continue for the foreseeable future. The production of a sustainable farm must also be sustainable from the perspective of all three sustainability pillars; economically, socially and environmentally. This means that a sustainable farm must be able to offer an attractive, safe and socially stimulating working environment and reasonable pensions for farmers and workers, while production conditions are maintained (e.g., maintaining soil health) and emissions to surrounding countries and to the atmosphere is kept at an acceptable level, eliminated or even net positive. The production on the farm should be robust and resource efficient enough that the input on the farm is in good relation to its output.
The challenges
Achieving sustainability in all three sustainability pillars (economic, social and environmental sustainability) is no easy task. Many farmers struggle economically, which in turn affect farms’ social and environmental sustainability. Loneliness is also a big problem in agriculture, and it is difficult to attract younger people to the industry. All these problems have led to an ever-increasing consolidation into fewer and larger agricultural companies. It also means that there are little to no margin to increase environmental sustainability unless there is also a clear economic benefit. These trade-offs are difficult to handle and there are few tools for farmers to work with their farms’ sustainability from a holistic perspective.
A large issue for the Sustainable Farm is where the responsibility of the farm ends and where society’s responsibility begins. Many social and economic needs cannot be met by the farmer without the help of society. Several services provided by sustainable farms have little direct effect on the farm but are extremely important from a societal or even global perspective (e.g., net-positive carbon storage). Farmers can be expected to use sustainable methods for their production, but society should provide support to make sustainable methods available and attractive to farmers and to provide support for balancing trade-offs between different sustainability aspects. Farmers should be willing to produce things that society want to increase its social sustainability, for example products to make it easier to reduce meat consumption and open landscapes for recreation. However, farmers cannot be expected to sacrifice their economic and social sustainability in order to increase the sustainability of society; they must be adequately compensated for their work. Society must ensure and coordinate national self-sufficiency - farms do not have to be self-sufficient to be sustainable.
