Agricultural companies are key players in sustainability

Increased understanding leads to sustainable solutions

By fostering an enhanced understanding of both farmers’ value intentions, in other words, the values and principles guiding their work, and the coordinators’ role, Anna Hansson’s aim with her research is to initiate innovation processes that lead to the development of more sustainable business models.

The research provides valuable insights into how agriculture can become more sustainable through sustainable corporate commitments. Anna Hansson explains that before work on these commitments begins, farmers undergo a preparatory phase, a pre-initiation phase, where their value intentions are crucial to initiating innovation processes. These processes involve changes in business models towards sustainability. The value intention becomes evident through how farmers perceive themselves as value creators, their challenges in finding new sustainability values, and their focus on profitability and actions that facilitate production.

“My research enhances the understanding of how the initiation of innovation processes for sustainability can be stimulated so that more comprehensive and long-term sustainability commitments are included in business models. This is done by including value intention in the pre-initiation phase,” Anna Hansson explains and continues emphasizing the importance of coordinators.

“The research also shows that publicly funded coordinators can facilitate the initiation of the innovation process of business models for sustainability by promoting the implementation of water-related environmental measures and creating synergies between sustainability and business aspects. Furthermore, they adapt their approach to the needs of farmers, in other words, value intentions. This promotes independence and trusting relationships. Through structured networks, coordinators also facilitate knowledge exchange between stakeholders at various levels of society.”

New forms of compensation

One conclusion drawn from Anna Hansson’s research is that farmers who take the initiative to implement water-related environmental measures, regardless of the extent, are more likely to implement more such measures in the future.

“There are individual differences among farmers regarding interest in environmental measures, but they share a production focus. This underscores the importance of receiving support to include environmental and sustainability benefits as part of production and business models to take the first step and get started,” Anna Hansson says.

With her research, Anna Hansson sees new opportunities to design business models that benefit agricultural enterprises economically and generate significant societal value. A key aspect is that today’s compensation systems often compensate agriculture economically for implementing sustainable water management measures. Still, there is a lack of systematic monitoring of the actual environmental benefits of such measures. Anna Hansson proposes a change in how compensation is distributed.

“We could have a system where the society instead compensates agricultural businesses for the quantified environmental benefits their measures actually produce. This would mean that each unit of environmental benefit receives specific compensation, which would appeal to production-oriented agriculture. Through this system, farmers would have incentives to optimize their environmental measures to maximize the production of environmental benefits,” Anna Hansson suggests.

“In this way, agriculture would not only produce food and energy crops but also be an active provider of environmental and sustainability benefits, benefiting both enterprises and society at large.”

Continuing sustainability efforts in new constellations

Anna Hansson defended her doctoral thesis in mid-January and is already engaged in new projects and challenges.

“Next, a new project awaits, where my research group, through the Swedish Energy Agency’s initiative ‘MESAM – Human, Energy System, and Society,’ will research promoting circular flows in industrial symbioses. The focus is on the production, use and residual flows of biogas. Here, too, farmers are included in the research as they can produce biogas, provide substrates for biogas production, and use the residues as fertilizer on their fields,” Anna Hansson explains.

The research group will examine the participation of agricultural enterprises together with other industries and companies. Anna Hansson sees this as an opportunity to deepen her knowledge from her previous research on how to facilitate and promote sustainability transition and business model development.

Text: Anna-Frida Agardson

Picture: iStock

Portrait picture: Magnus Karlsson