Developing sustainable food systems An Interview Study of Public Sector Organisations

Abstract

Public sector organisations can play a critical role in driving the transformation toward sustainable food systems. This thesis explores how municipalities in Sweden and Italy develop transformative capacities, defined as the interaction between roles, resources and abilities, to support food system transformation. Drawing on the transformative capacity framework developed by Borrás et al. [7], this study conducted an interview study of nine municipalities. The thesis identifies two distinct archetypes, Grassroots Innovator and Market Integrator, illustrating different transformative capacity-building approaches. The archetypes help explain how municipalities can combine and balance roles, resources, and abilities to develop sustainable food systems in response to their context. The study contributes to existing theory by nuancing the transformative capacities framework to the food systems context, introducing two municipal archetypes and highlighting how external events impact municipal transformation. Practically, it offers municipalities guidance on context-specific knowledge on how to support sustainable food systems.