Local food as food security sustainer - a case study in Uusimaa region, Finland

The global food system as a provider of food security faces several sustainability challenges currently. Industrial agriculture practices degrade the environment and are vulnerable to political instabilities due to fossil energy and agriculture input dependency. At the same time, climate change endangers the circumstances of agriculture. This study aimed to explore if local food systems could help sustain food security in Finland. The case local food system is the Uusimaa region. Specifically, it investigates if deploying agroecological principles could help achieve food security. Agroecology is a science and a social movement that utilizes ecosystem simulating farming practices and aims at the social equity of all food system actors. The case study consisted of semi-structured interviews of Uusimaa local food system actors and text analysis of local food-related policy documents. The focus of the interview questions was on the opportunities and challenges of local food to sustain and improve food security and the needed actions to improve food security in general. The text analysis coded the materials according to the agroecological principles. The main target of the result analysis was to identify the current and envisioned state of local food’s role in food security and if implementing agroecological principles might help achieve the expected state. The result showed that the agroecological principles broadly present in the interviewees’ vision were not broadly present in the analyzed policy documents. The results suggest that local food produced with methods closer to agroecological principles could be beneficial to the food security according to the interviewees. On this basis, the agroecological principles would help design the needed food system transformation and related policies