The Swedish hub, led by researchers Rebecka Milestad and Courtney Adamson, have published two new articles based on the Co-creating Sustainable Food Supply Chains work they have done in Sweden.
The first article is entitled “The nitty gritty of integrated food policy: implementation of a municipal food supply strategy in Sweden,” and is published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.
In it, the authors describe their findings: “Interviews with municipal officers involved in developing and implementing the Södertälje Food Supply Strategy highlight key factors for implementation success: integration of the strategy into existing frameworks, strong leadership, including the existence of food champions, and partnerships beyond municipal organizations.”
The second article is “Building up the middle of municipal food systems: understanding challenges for public food procurement from local and regional farmers in practice,” in Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems.
The authors argue that “farmers experience risks and uncertainties associated with production for largely industrialized and vertically integrated municipal supply systems, while municipal practitioners experience risks and uncertainties associated with securing supply from farmers given requirements on municipalities and conditions in municipal kitchens. Further, local logistics and wholesale practitioners describe the absence of bridging actors to help navigate these diverse risks and uncertainties. In light of the results, this article discusses key governance conditions for building up the “missing middle” of municipal supply systems to enable public food procurement from local and regional farmers in practice.”