Imprisoned by the regime? : farmer agency and farm resilience in the making of a sustainable food system

This work explores the role of farmers in the transformation towards a more sustainable agrifood system in Finland. Farmers play a critical role in this process, as the majority of environmental impacts in food systems take place at the farm level, as a result of farmers’ choices. At the same time, farmers are acting as price-takers in the value chains of food, which can compromise their ability to act as transition agents. To make sense of farmers’ transformative capacities, this thesis builds on the analytical dualism between agency and structure. The structural dimension was analysed through the concept of regime as a temporally stable organisation mode of the agrifood system. In turn, the transformative capacities of farmers were captured via the concept of resilience. When both structure and agency are seen as exerting causal powers on each other, it is possible to explore the extent to which farmers are able to ‘act otherwise’ in the contemporary food system. The methodology consisted of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, drawing upon two sets of nationally and regionally representative farmer surveys, conducted in 2010 and 2018, and a literature review that explored the history of the Finnish agrifood system. The results suggest that while transformative farmers were motivated by social and sustainability goals, the most important factor driving their choices was economic profitability. From a farmer’s point of view, economic viability and environmental sustainability were not mutually exclusive. Quite the contrary, those committed to farming as a livelihood were most likely to engage in a search for more sustainable pathways. However, due to a tightening cost-price squeeze and an increasing push towards economies of scale, the spectrum of economic viability was becoming more restricted. The same forces that constrain farmer agency and the economic viability of agriculture also contribute to sustainability problems in the food system. These forces originate from the characteristics of the contemporary food regime, especially fossil metabolism and desire for continuous growth. While farmers have the potential to be a transformative force for food system change, they currently lack both the resources needed for transformation and visions of its future direction.