Public defence with Erika Öhlund

Erika Öhlund defends her thesis More than food production - multifunctional agriculture in policy and practice

Erika Öhlund
Doctoral thesis: More than food production – multifunctional agriculture in policy and practice
Subject: Environmental Science
Research are: Environmental Studies
Graduate school: School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, and
the Baltic & East European Graduate School (BEEGS)
External reviewer: Anders Wästfelt, Professor of Human geography, Stockholm University,
Stockholm, Sweden
Language: English

Abstract
Over the course of the past century, European agriculture has transitioned from smallscale,
manual farming to more mechanised, industrial practices. This development
has resulted in increased productivity but also in environmental problems, such
as greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and social challenges. The policy
response to the changed role of farming in the EU has been to apply a multifunctional
approach to agriculture. Multifunctional agriculture (MFA) can be defined as an
agriculture that is not solely focused on food production, but contributes to several
different functions in the societies and ecosystems of which it is a part.
Although conflicting values and goals are central challenges in agricultural policy,
practice, and research in Europe, and the multifunctional approach to agriculture
is dominant in EU policy, conflicts have not been studied to any large extent within
the MFA research field. This doctoral thesis analyses conflicting values in relation
to multifunctional agriculture. Through semi-structured interviews and focus group
discussions with Swedish farmers and an analysis of policy documents at the
national, sub-national and EU level, this thesis paints a broad picture of different
aspects of multifunctional agriculture.
The thesis contributes a visual conceptualisation of multifunctional agricultural
activities to the multifunctional agriculture research field. The findings of this thesis
contribute to the body of research that concludes that EU agricultural policy does not
contribute enough to multifunctional agriculture. Furthermore, this thesis confirms
the existing research finding that Swedish agricultural land is exploited to a larger
extent than policymakers intend. There are goal conflicts between different aspects
of multifunctional agriculture and it is not possible to solve them all. Practitioners
and decision-makers need to decide on the goals they wish to prioritise, even if
that decision comes at the expense of other ambitions. One part of the problem is
that values are often not commensurable and therefore cannot easily be compared
and ranked. Agricultural policy should enable farmers to choose different strategies
and encourage diversity, since farmers have different interests and constraints and
variable access to agricultural strategies. Such diversity would make EU agriculture
better prepared for future environmental and other crises.

Keywords
multifunctional agriculture, agricultural policy, Sweden, Poland, the Baltic Sea Region, EU CAP,
multifunktionellt jordbruk, jordbrukspolitik, Sverige, Polen, Östersjöregionen, EU:s gemensamma
jordbrukspolitik