What does it take to make farming sustainable? : lessons from southern Finnish organic farmers

The adverse impacts to environmental and human well-being derived from the past achievements in agricultural productivity and modernised food systems now call for building up sustainable farming systems. Increasingly specialised, standardised and concentrated agrifood systems have evoked both academic and practical interest in enhancing more place-based and integrated farming styles with shared believes in alternative ways of doing farming. Organic agriculture is one largely recognised attempt to transform food systems towards the better but it has also been questioned for producing lower yields than conventional agriculture, and being subjected to growing market interests. While much research has focused on the potential environmental benefits of organic farming, there is a need to better understand organic farmers themselves, their experiences and meanings of farming. Since farming is a profoundly human-driven activity and thus farmers have a central role in influencing the development of the food systems, my attempt is to shed light on how to enhance sustainability in farming. With Finnish farming as my case study, I investigate organic farmers’ perceptions on the aspects that are important for good farming and the challenges concerning organic farming, and discuss potential ways for improvement. I employed qualitative methods and collected data through six semi-structured interviews with southern Finnish organic farmers. I analyse the data and discuss it against a theoretical framework comprised of three perspectives on sustainable farming: food sufficiency, ecological stewardship and community. The results suggest a heterogeneous reality in which organic farmers’ aspects related to food sufficiency, ecological stewardship and community are diverse and varying. The existing economic, institutional, physical and social barriers give rise to concerns about the logic of the market overriding the alternative meanings of farming, thus further threatening the fate of sustainability in farming: not only in terms of ensuring agricultural productivity and ecosystem well-being in the long run, but also in terms of having socially meaningful farming systems. A suggested way forward is to promote the sort of agrifood governance that takes an integrated and a long-term perspective to sustainability, ensures deliberative and collaborative decision-making processes and facilitates the creation of social networks with a shared endeavour to meet sustainability principles, rather than reduces the versatility of socio-ecological systems. Organic farming can fuel the much-needed change and create opportunities for farmers’ empowerment within food systems.