Helena Hansson

Food systems are increasingly challenged by climate change, geopolitical instability, market volatility, and biodiversity loss, highlighting the need to strengthen both resilience and sustainability. This editorial introduces the Special Issue on Nordic–Baltic food systems resilience, drawing on contributions presented at the first Nordic–Baltic Food Systems Conference and Policy Forum (NFN2025). It develops an outcome-oriented account of sustainable food systems, using robustness, recovery, and reorientation as an interpretive lens for strengthening resilience across the Nordic and Baltic countries. Insights from the Special Issue are synthesized across three themes: frameworks for understanding, assessing, and governing resilience; the sustainability and resilience of livestock- and dairy-based systems; and locally rooted capacities for resilience. In conclusion, we identify priorities for future Nordic–Baltic research and action, including cross-scale analysis, comparative approaches, and the stronger integration of long-term reorientation with short-term preparedness.

Disruptions in global fertilizer markets and climate targets have increased interest in fossil‐free mineral nitrogen fertilizers. This study examines farmers' preferences for conventional (fossil‐based) and fossil‐free fertilizers using a labeled discrete choice experiment with 211 Swedish farmers. Results show that farmers have strong price sensitivity and, on average, are willing to pay a premium for Swedish and European‐produced fertilizers, while the climate attribute plays a smaller role in choices than price and production origin. We identify two segments: a larger group that places strong emphasis on price and Swedish production, and a smaller group characterized by greater price sensitivity. Social and economic identities are associated with preference heterogeneity. Findings suggest that policies promoting fossil‐free fertilizers may receive greater farmer acceptance when aligned with domestic production strategies and targeted price incentives.

We investigate demand-side effects from a hypothetical policy change in a domestic regulation that currently goes beyond EU requirements. Through two choice experiments on milk and cheese (n = 839; n = 832), we examine Swedish consumers’ preferences regarding regulation of dairy cows’ access to grazing as a product attribute. Results highlight that consumers request compensation for a reduction or removal of the regulation. Preferences varied by sociodemographic factors, especially by age, farm animal experience, and gender. Results have implications for agricultural and food policy, highlighting the importance of demand-side effects when changing regulation of agricultural production.

Purpose: Monitoring sustainability in the food system is vital, yet the firms operating between production and consumption in the value chain are often overlooked; they constitute a “missing middle”. We investigate sustainability indicator quantity, scope and target connection among food sector firms and assess how these are influenced by firm characteristics, including size, sector and multinational affiliation. Design/methodology/approach: We construct and use a panel data set of quantity, scope and target connection of reported sustainability indicators from 92 firms active in the Swedish food and beverage industry, wholesale and retail sector, from 2017 to 2021. We categorize sustainability indicators into topics and dimensions and employ random-effects Tobit estimation and censored quantile regression to explore heterogeneity among firms. Findings: The findings reveal firm heterogeneity in sustainability indicator reporting. While almost 90% report emissions, “maintaining natural capital” and “economic enablers” are underreported sustainability dimensions. Net turnover and multinational affiliation are positively related to sustainability indicator reporting, while belonging to the wholesale sector is negatively related to reporting sustainability indicators for high and low quantiles. The share of target-connected sustainability indicators increases from 30% to 50% over the period. Research limitations/implications: Using sustainability reports as a source of data for sustainability efforts implies some limitations since all monitored indicators may not be disclosed in sustainability reports nor does monitoring indicators mean that sustainability objectives are met. We consider the act of monitoring, targeting and reporting on indicators as a key step for achieving such objectives, and the quantity, scope and alignment of indicators with specific targets are highlighted to ensure that the report is informative and effective and the data are trustworthy. Practical implications: Our study can be useful for firms themselves, wishing to benchmark against similar firms and plan future monitoring and reporting efforts. For researchers and policymakers, our study can work as a transparent source of information on the contents sustainability reporting, a solid base for future research and policy impact evaluations. Social implications: Food system sustainability is a topic of broad social relevance, affecting all levels of society from producers to consumers. This research provide insights into the sustainability efforts of an under-researched segment of the food system, and on how monitoring tools such as indicators can and should be used to speed up the progress toward sustainability. Further, we provide a basis for effective impact evaluation of legislation, which is important to tailor effective policy for a future sustainable food system. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to collect a unique and detailed catalogue covering actual sustainability indicators used by the “missing middle” firms and illustrate their capacity to capture relevant dimensions, topics and targets. We highlight the heterogeneity in sustainability indicator reporting among firms and thereby provide a pre-Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive benchmark which is useful for efficient policy evaluation on the path towards sustainable food systems.

CONTEXT: Crop diversification is a central pillar of European agricultural sustainability strategies, yet its implementation remains limited due to technological and institutional lock-in around cereal-dominated production systems. Integrating grain legumes into cereal rotations has been identified as a promising diversification option, but uptake by farmers in Europe and Nordic countries remains low.,OBJECTIVE: This study conceptualizes grain legume integration as alternative diversification strategy within existing cereal-based rotations and examines farmers’ preferences for such strategies. Specifically, we consider two hypothetical scenarios for integrating faba beans into cereal-based rotations dominated by winter wheat, oats, and spring barley: (i) a substitution-based rotational pattern change scenario, in which one season of winter wheat is replaced by faba beans within existing rotations; ii) an extensification-based land use change scenario, in which faba beans are cultivated on additional fallow land. We investigate how farm and farmer characteristics and behavioral factors shape scenario-specific preferences.,METHODS: We employed a survey-based discrete choice experiment among 514 Swedish cereal farmers in 2025. Farmers evaluated hypothetical faba bean integration scenarios characterised by economic profits, environmental benefits, contractual settings, and payments. Preference data were analysed using mixed logit and latent class models to capture both average scenario-specific preferences and preference heterogeneity across farmer segments.,RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS:,The results show a strong average preference for maintaining the status quo, indicating a generally low willingness among Swedish cereal farmers to integrate faba beans into cereal-based rotations even when alternative integration strategies are suggested. However, latent class analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity in how farmers evaluate alternative strategies to legume integration. Three distinct farmer segments are identified, differing substantially in their acceptance of substitution versus extensification strategies and in their values to economic profits, environmental benefits, contractual settings, and payments attributes. While economic profits emerge as the primary determinant of scenario-specific choice across all segments, environmental benefits and contractual settings influence preferences mainly among specific groups.,SIGNIFICANCE:,This study provides new insights into the strategies of integration of grain legumes in existing cereal-based systems by highlighting farmers’ differentiated responses to alternative, system-compatible integration scenarios. The findings demonstrate that reluctance toward legume integration at the aggregate level masks substantial heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences and decision-making. This underscores the need for practical, scenario-specific and targeted policy instruments that align with diverse farmer preferences, thereby supporting more effective strategies for legume expansion and sustainable crop diversification in European cereal-based systems.

Cropping practices influence both biodiversity and the delivery of multiple ecosystem functions underpinning crop production and farm economy. However, the individual and combined relationships between farming practices, ecosystem functions, and economic performance remain poorly understood. We investigated how agroecological practices, i.e., a non-cereal preceding crop, inclusion of perennial ley in the rotation, organic fertiliser use, and reduced tillage intensity, were related to proxies of biodiversity-driven ecosystem functions and to economic input use in 50 winter wheat fields on 24 grain farms in southern Sweden. We sampled above- and below-ground arthropod communities, weed seed abundance and diversity, soil properties, grain yield and quality, and economic input use. Agroecological practices showed relationships with ecosystem functions and economic indicators. A non-cereal preceding crop was associated with higher grain yield and greater abundance of staphylinid beetles, whereas inclusion of a perennial ley resulted in higher spider abundance but lower mite abundance. Use of organic fertiliser was linked to lower aphid pest abundance and increased grain protein content, but also to higher labour and energy inputs. Decreasing tillage intensity was associated with lower staphylinid abundance but higher spider abundance, soil organic matter, and wet aggregate stability, alongside increased labour and energy use. Predicted outcomes of the combined practices were positive for soil properties, varied among beneficial arthropod groups, and largely neutral for pest and weed pressure, grain yield, and economic input use. Overall, our results indicate both complementarity and trade-offs among cropping practices, highlighting how cropping system multifunctionality relies on combined rather than single cropping practices.

Research based on farmer surveys is a cornerstone of agricultural economics. Farmer surveys provide unique insights into behavioural variables—such as values, motivations, attitudes, behaviours, and preferences—that are unavailable in secondary datasets. However, the decline in farm numbers across most European countries, combined with a growing number of surveys, is posing a threat to farmer survey research. This paper synthesises current practices in farmer surveys in the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Sweden. Our approach is meta‐scientific, drawing on a survey aimed at researchers responsible for 34 farmer surveys conducted between January 2019 and August 2024. This analysis is complemented by a document analysis and critical reflection workshops. We identify three key challenges: (i) limited consistency and standardisation of socio‐economic survey questions, (ii) long surveys, which are associated with high attrition and low response rates, and (iii) low adoption of open science practices. To address these challenges, we propose a set of best practices to enhance the transparency, comparability, standardisation, and reusability of farmer survey data. These best practices aim to strengthen the quality of survey‐based research in agricultural economics and ensure that farmer surveys continue to support evidence‐based policymaking.

We investigate the long-term economic effects of adopting intercropping using a farm-level dataset from Sweden spanning the period 2001 to 2018. Guided by a causal model framework, specifically a causal path diagram, we apply a debiased fixed-effects method that dynamically incorporates information about past farm performance into the model estimation. We also triangulate the findings from the debiased fixed-effects method with results from both semi-parametric and instrumental variable approaches. Our baseline results indicate that adopting intercropping is associated with a 5–13 per cent increase in farm net income over the long term, with significant variations observed across different farm types. In addition, the findings show that intercropping adoption predicts an increase in the gross value of total production, labor demand and intermediate costs in the long term. Finally, the results reveal that intercropping adoption mitigates the negative effects of extreme climatic conditions on farm net income.