Department of Thematic Studies Environmental Change

Starting from the ground: the transformative potential of grassroots movements towards

Imagining and practicing at Kosters Trädgårdar, Sweden

Sue Schmit

MSc Thesis (30 ECTS credits) Science for

Linköpings universitet, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden

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Table of Contents ABSTRACT ...... - 1 -

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... - 2 -

1. INTRODUCTION ...... - 3 -

1.1 AIM AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...... - 4 -

1.2 THESIS STRUCTURE...... - 5 -

2. METHODS AND MATERIALS...... - 6 -

2.1 PARTICIPATORY OBSERVATION ...... - 6 -

2.2 INTERVIEWS...... - 8 -

2.3 SECONDARY DATA...... - 9 -

2.4 QUALITATIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS ...... - 9 -

2.5 LIMITATIONS AND RESEARCH ETHICS ...... - 10 -

3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND...... - 13 -

3.1 “TRANSFORMING OUR WORLD” – THE UN AGENDA ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ...... - 13 -

3.2 CATEGORIZING SUSTAINABILITY TRANSFORMATIONS ...... - 15 - 3.2.1 -led, -led and -led transformations ...... - 15 - 3.2.2 Citizen-led transformations ...... - 16 -

4. PERMACULTURE AS A CASE OF GRASSROOTS TRANSFORMATIONS TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY ...... - 19 -

4.1 THE HISTORY OF PERMACULTURE ...... - 19 - 4.1.1 The permaculture design principles ...... - 21 -

4.2 KOSTERS TRÄDGÅRDAR...... - 23 -

4.3 PERMACULTURE DESIGN AT KOSTERS TRÄDGÅRDAR ...... - 25 - 4.3.1 Integrated systems ...... - 25 - 4.3.2 Resource management ...... - 28 -

4.4 PERMANENT CULTURE ...... - 33 - 4.4.1 Transformative potential ...... - 34 -

5. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION ...... - 39 -

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... - 42 -

7. REFERENCES ...... - 43 -

APPENDIX I ...... - 50 -

APPENDIX II ...... - 51 -

APPENDIX III ...... - 52 -

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Abstract

This thesis examines the transformative potential of grassroots movements for sustainability and thus asks how citizen-led initiatives can contribute the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda. In focus is the permaculture movement and its efforts to promote small-scale farming in balance with ecological systems and principles. The study draws upon an ethnographic study of the permaculture farm Kosters Trädgårdar, located on the west coast of Sweden. Through extended participant observation and four interviews with owners and workers at Kosters Trädgårdar, this thesis seeks to identify the transformative visions, practices and agents mobilized by the permaculture movement. Although permaculture has a strong ecological heritage and is closely tied to small-scale farming practices, this study identifies a shift in the meaning of the term as explained hereafter. The experiences of Kosters Trädgårdar indicate that the cultivation of social community and alternative livelihoods is an equally important aspect of the permaculture movement that holds significant transformative potential. By inviting multiple actors to participate in and learn from the farming practices, and to enjoy and socialize around ecological food, Kosters Trädgårdar is effectively building local community and spreading its visions of sustainable food production beyond the circuits of the farm. Although we should not over- estimate the upscaling potential of local experiences, this permaculture farm emerges as a site of grassroot innovation, experimentation and learning and may hereby function as a testbed for the grand transformative visions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Keywords: Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development Goals, green societal transformations, grassroots movements, citizen-led transformations, permaculture, Kosters Trädgårdar

- 1 - List of abbreviations

FN – Fieldnotes Int. – Interview KT – Kosters Trädgårdar PD – Permaculture Design Diploma PDC – Permaculture Design Course SD – Sustainable Development SDGs – Sustainable Development Goals WECD – World Commission on Environment and Development

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1. Introduction

In 2019 the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems released a report in which they called for a Great Food Transformation (Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2020; Willett et al., 2019). Central to the report was the claim that current global food systems are the drivers of multiple environmental problems such as , the destruction of , loss and pollution (Stockholm Resilience Center, 2020; FAO, 2019). With a world of 7.8 billion that will grow to approximately 10 billion people in 2050, the pressures on natural resources are likely to increase. According to Carter (2007) and Baker (2016), authors who focus on the politics of the environment and sustainable development respectively, global food systems have exploited natural resources to a point they cannot regenerate. As a consequence, current efforts to guarantee nutritional needs for the world’s population have turned into a matter of food insecurity in the long-term instead (Carter, 2007). Therefore the Great Food Transformation aims for “a substantial change in the structure and function of the global food system […]” (Willett et al., 2019, p. 476), while focusing the food production on environmental and human health (Willett et al., 2019).

In fact, the seemingly recent political debates about how to protect natural resources and secure livelihoods have been ongoing for more than thirty years. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) brought the concept of sustainable development to international attention for the first time by releasing the report (WCED, 1987; Meadowcroft, 2000). Sustainable Development has, since then, been discussed and criticised perpetually, leading to a change of focus of key factors of the concept over the years. In other words, starting off with the aim of reorienting economic activity, moving on towards taking ecological consequences of economic growth into consideration, to finally shifting the main focus towards active transformative solutions for a sustainable development (Linnér and Selin, 2013; Salleh, 2016; Linnér and Wibeck, 2019). The latter is mirrored in the most recent adoption of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that goes by the name Transforming Our World (UN, 2015). The agenda calls for transformative and presents seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that aim to channel transformative action towards sustainability. They are lead by the 5 overarching principles “people”, “planet”, “prosperity”, “peace” and “partnership” (Carter, 2007; Rogers et al., 2008; UN, 2015; Baker, 2016; Meadowcroft et al., 2019). In order to reach these SDGs, the 2030 Agenda calls for alternative economic activities, energy resources, resource management, education as well as production and consumption patterns. In the same context of the 2030 Agenda indicators that show the nature of the targeted transformations, Scoones et al. (2015) make a useful distinction between four perspectives in which green societal transformations are embedded in, saying that transformations can either be technology-led, state-led, market-led or citizen-led. In this thesis I focus on the citizen-led transformations, also referred to as grassroots transformations, and hereby examine how small- scale, local, bottom-up and mostly community-based practices can contribute to a more sustainable food production.

Although the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals included in the 2030 Agenda are to be considered as an entity, this thesis draws particular attention to SDG 2: End hunger, achieve and improved nutrition and promote and SDG 12: Ensure and production patterns (UN, 2015). Both of these SDGs advance a

- 3 - small-scale and local approach towards sustainability, in which citizens are the main actors, and food systems represent the setting in which the change is implemented. The studied case of this thesis will therefore draw a parallel between the alternative practices of the permaculture movement and the advanced targets and indicators that describe the transformative challenge of the SDGs.

1.1 Aim and research questions

The aim of this thesis is to examine the transformative potential of grassroots mobilizations for sustainable food production. To that end I draw attention to the permaculture movement which is an international network of citizens and communities that advocate sustainable lifestyles. Permaculture is a portmanteau word that is built from permanent and agriculture or culture. The basis of early permaculture thinking was to find out where people could have a positive contribution to societal change towards sustainability, identifying local and small-scale food production as a common denominator. The permaculture movement is a concept that combines indigenous knowledge, system thinking and natural science. Together with the active observation of nature and patterns found in ecosystems, this combination is then mostly applied to food production units. Permaculture is mirrored through a design of the site (e.g. garden, forest, farm, balcony) that allows the permaculturalist to understand and imitate processes of natural ecosystems, resulting in having a sustainable food production system and resource management. According to Mollison (1981) and Holmgren (2013) permaculture is a concept and practice that is applicable by everyone who is interested in constructing human settlements that are based on ecological principles, in rural as well as in urban areas. To that end, permaculture is said to lead to more sustainable and independent lifestyles, with sustainable food production very often representing a key activity that mobilizes people (Veteto and Lockyer, 2008; Holmgren, 2013; Smith, 2015).

In order to examine how the permaculture movement seeks to transform the food system in sustainable directions, the thesis is grounded in an ethnographic study of the permaculture farm and restaurant Kosters Trädgårdar (KT), located on the Swedish west coast island Sydkoster. The field work was conducted during three weeks from Mid-March to the beginning of April 2020 and involved working alongside the KT’s team in the greenhouse and on outdoor projects. In this thesis I make use of this field observations to analyse the transformative potential of the permaculture movement.

The thesis is informed by the following research questions (RQs): • RQ1: What is permaculture and which actors does it mobilize? • RQ2: Which ideas about sustainable food does the permaculture movement advance? • RQ3: How does the permaculture movement seek to change society and the food system? Which transformative strategies does it draw upon? • RQ4: What is the transformative potential of grassroots movements such as permaculture?

Due to the broad scope the research questions would cover, it is of importance to state that the research questions will only be answered within the context of this ethnographic study. Assumptions or generalizations about the permaculture movement outside the circuits of Kosters Trädgårdar therefore have to be minimized.

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1.2 Thesis structure

The thesis is organised as follows. First, I elaborate on the materials and methods that were used to complete the research, followed by the limitations and research ethics of the methods and the study itself. Second, I introduce the theoretical framework of the thesis. After a brief introduction of the concept of sustainable development and how the literature describes different transformative practices, I turn to grassroots transformations, which permaculture is a case of. In the empirical chapter I introduce the permaculture concept and design principles. As a next step I turn to Kosters Trädgårdar and present the ethnographic data gathered during my field stay. This data is then used to assess the transformative potential of permaculture as a grassroots movement, and how it seeks to foster sustainable food production. In the final chapter I return to the research questions by discussing the transformative potential of the permaculture movement at Kosters Trädgårdar, before ending the thesis with concluding comments.

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2. Methods and Materials

This study is informed by an ethnographic approach that includes several qualitative research methods such as participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Whereas ethnographic research was initially a tool for anthropological studies, ethnography has evolved as a methodological approach and is now used in a variety of social science fields. Within sociology and political science, ethnographic research allowed for the first time in the 1980’s to gain first- hand knowledge about power relations, social actions and interactions, as well as forms of living (Vrasti, 2008). According to Wedeen (2010), ethnography allows the researcher to study peoples’ lives and the places where they live through immersion, making the researcher both “actor and spectator” at the same time (Wedeen, 2010, p. 257). The longer the stay, the bigger the opportunity to witness “annual rituals and seasonal variations in environmental conditions and associated behaviour” (Vine et al., 2018, p. 3). Whereas the qualitative methods of ethnographic research have been criticised for being subjective and hereby lacking “validity” (Vrasti, 2008; Roulston, 2010, p. 201), they can help disentangling complex structures between human beings and to understand contexts in their entity (Schensul, Schensul and LeCompte, 2012a; Vine et al., 2018).

2.1 Participatory Observation

This ethnographic study was conducted during a three weeks period (due to limited research time) from March 16th until April 4th, 2020 on Sydkoster, Sweden. Sydkoster is an 8 km2 island on the Swedish Westcoast, about a forty-five-minute ferry ride away from the closest city on the mainland called Strömstad. For this thesis, the object of the ethnographic study was Kosters Trädgårdar, a farm that is growing food for the on-site restaurant, as well as its founders and workers. Kosters Trädgårdar (KT) describes itself as a place that follows the principles of permaculture with the aim to live more sustainably, and at the same time as being a meeting point that offers inspiration to its visitors by showing sustainable ways to produce food (Int. 1;2). To that end, an ethnographic research was necessary to find out what practices and strategies the founders and workers at Kosters Trädgårdar apply to produce food in a sustainable way and what role permaculture plays in that endeavour.

The main research method of my ethnographic study is participatory observation. It was used to experience social interactions and practices by the garden workers, and to explore how they understand sustainable food production and the transformative potential of permaculture. The participatory observation allowed me to grasp multiple aspects of the farm (e. g. farming practices, strategies, opinions, customers, visitors, surroundings, communication and relationships to island inhabitants etc.) and hereby identify the transformative potential of its permaculture activities on the island of Sydkoster. Clark et al. (2009) describe participatory observation as a collaboration between the researcher and the participants that achieves “action- oriented goals” (p. 346). Both, researcher and participants have different skills to offer, which ends up in mutual learning (Clark et al., 2009). To that end, I worked for three weeks from 8:30 to 16:00 at Kosters Trädgårdar with the farm’s team. Five people were part of the team and hereby also of the participatory observation. Out of these five people three were permanent research participants, as they are permanent Sydkoster residents, compared to the other two who were a guest worker and an intern.

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I talked to them, learned from them – both philosophical and practical knowledge about permaculture and life decisions –, shared lunch with them and observed how they thought about things and handled things in their everyday life on the farm. It included working in the greenhouse with the sprouts of the annual plants for the food production, planting/replanting, making new paths out of wood chips, helping to make new garden beds, preparing the garden shop for the summer season, painting, spring cleaning, upcycling an old kiosk into a chicken shed and a hut, implementing a new permaculture design at a second site belonging to KT. All these tasks were either daily or weekly projects, making the working days vary from day to day. My daily task in the morning consisted of caring for the farm animals (sheep, chicken, bees), which included feeding, cleaning and washing the eggs to store them for customers. As I lived next doors to Kosters Trädgårdar, I also spend time with the KT team on weekends and engaged with them and island inhabitants in other activities (e.g. beach clean-up to get rid of plastic waste).

According to LeCompte and Schensul (2010), ethnography allows the researcher to understand what the research participants’ behaviours mean to them. In that sense, the researcher does not exclusively rely on documented information found in literature or on meanings imposed on the research participants’ behaviours from the outside (LeCompte and Schensul, 2010c). This is of importance for this research because experiencing the daily life at Kosters Trädgårdar, could set opinions and practices about the permaculture movement in a context that is strongly intertwined with the participants’ personal experiences and also with the location of the farm. The gathered data can therefore be more specific and accurate according to how practices and thoughts about the permaculture movement are being implemented and lived. However, at the same time, the specific research of people, their behaviours, opinions and practices does not allow generalizations about the object of study, in this case being the worldwide permaculture practices. Climate, location and landscape of the site as well as the scale of the farm property and its orientation are only a few factors that determine seasons and the natural setting for the permaculture farm. Notably, the natural conditions for the permaculture practices on the farm are very location dependent, which must be taken into account during the ethnography itself and the processing of the gathered data, especially in case the data is being compared to more general statements about permaculture practices.

The observations gathered during the three weeks were written down every evening after work. These fieldnotes contain what LeCompte and Schensul (2010) refer to as physical settings, acts, activities, interactions patterns, meanings, beliefs, emotions and objects (LeCompte and Schensul, 2010a). Mainly they contain everything that happened during the day, including routines as well as specific practices about how the farm is run, and informal conversations with the participants. The focus was on practices that are essential for the implementation of a permaculture design, statements about permaculture more generally, the connected personal worldviews and the role of society within Kosters Trädgårdar. The fieldnotes were structured as soon as relevant categories/codes or reoccurring themes could be identified. A number in front of the sentence in the fieldnotes helped to identify which category the information belongs to. According to Ryan and Bernard (2003) this categorization helps to identify themes for the content analysis after completion of the ethnographic study. In this thesis, the fieldnotes will be referred to as ‘FN’, with the respective date from when the information was acquired. If no date is specified, the information is a conclusion from the researcher that has taken all information gathered over three weeks of participatory observation into consideration. In addition to the fieldnotes, pictures of Kosters Trädgårdar’s environment and animals were taken with a smartphone during the participatory observation. However, they were not part of the analysis but presented for visualization purposes only. - 7 -

2.2 Interviews

The second method used in this study is semi-structured expert interviews. Experts here denote people who have expertise in specific social contexts or practices they work with on a daily basis. The expert interview is the method that allows the researcher to channel this expertise and make situations understandable for the researcher and her analysis (Gläser and Laudel, 2004).

To conduct these interviews, an interview guide with approximately 30 questions was prepared beforehand (see Appendix I). The questions varied slightly depending on the interviewee. Four face-to-face interviews were conducted during my field stay at Kosters Trädgårdar. Three interviews were with research participants working permanently at Kosters Trädgårdar, and one with a gardening student working voluntarily at KT at the time of the participatory observation and who is planning on doing an internship at KT in the summer season 2020. The interviews lasted 1-1,5 hour, were conducted in English, and were recorded with a dictaphone issued from Linköping University. To minimize the interviewer-interviewee power relation, spontaneous follow-up questions were asked to make the interviewee feel more comfortable and engage in a discussion rather than a question-answer dynamic. Also, all the interviews were conducted in a known and quiet setting (e.g. informant’s or my terrace or kitchen). In case the English language was considered a barrier, words or small passages were expressed in Swedish. After each interview, the recorded conversations were transcribed (and the words or passages translated from Swedish to English) in order to have a written trace of the interviews and simplify the following content analysis. Conducting interviews within an ethnographic research allows the research to get in-depth information about selected topics (Roulston, 2010). LeCompte and Schensul (2010) argue that learning about personal histories and cultural knowledge and beliefs play a significant role because they add information and meaning to the study field. In this case, being able to understand the history of Kosters Trädgårdar and the island it is located on, as well as the process Kosters Trädgårdar has seen during the years is necessary to understand descriptions of specific on-site permaculture practices and past or future visions representative individuals have or had for the place. In this thesis, the interviews will be referred to as ‘Int.’ with the respective interview number (1,2,3, or 4), from which the information is issued from (see Table 1).

Table 1: Overview and details of interviews conducted Interview Date of interview Interview respondent’s role on the farm 1 2020.03.25 Owner/founder, CEO, head gardener, agronomist 2 2020.04.02 Owner/founder, gardener, builder/maintenance, guide, biologist 3 2020.04.02 Employee, gardener and manager of growing operation (annuals) 4 2020.03.17 Gardening student, intern at KT (summer 2020)

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2.3 Secondary data

In this thesis I use peer reviewed scientific articles and books, as well as permaculture websites and magazines as secondary data sources to set the permaculture movement in a historical and geographical context. Access to the secondary data was mostly gained through Linköping University’s online library, Google Scholar and scientific journals. The literature was selected based on critical scholarship on modern food production, which called for or suggested transformative food production strategies. The review then constituted the theoretical background of this thesis. Search terms were, for example, sustainable development, SDGs and food, food production and environmental pressures, global food systems and unsustainability, transforming food productions, actors of change, green societal transformations. On this way a parallel could be drawn between conventional large-scale food production systems and the small-scale grassroots movements aiming to challenge the latter from below, meaning through citizen action. Within green societal transformations, mainly the works from Scoones et al. (2015), Baker (2016) and Gibson-Graham (2006) and Bradley and Hedrén (2014) were considered and lead the way towards the grassroots transformations, which the permaculture movement is a part of.

This initial review helped to identify data about permaculture. Permaculture and the connected movement is mostly represented online through permaculture Facebook groups, worldwide networks, country specific associations, but also through permaculture magazines and books. Criteria for selection was to only use official national or international permaculture association websites (e.g. Permakultur Sverige, Permaculture Research Institute). The selection criteria for magazine articles and books were focused on the authors being either the founders of the permaculture movement (Mollison, 1981, Holmgren, 2002, 2013) or practical guides which contributed to the understand of the system thinking in permaculture (Mars, 2003). Here, it needs to be stated that although peer reviewed articles on permaculture were used (e.g. Veteto and Lockyer, 2008; Ferguson and Lovell, 2015; Janzon, 2018), the majority of the historical and geographical data originates from the mentioned online sources, books and magazines. Even though, permaculture is a concept, its pragmatic nature (anchored in agricultural/horticultural practices) and its low representation in academia make it part of the analysis. Thus, treating all information about permaculture as empirical and not as theoretical data in the scope of this thesis.

2.4 Qualitative Content Analysis

The field notes and transcribed interviews from Kosters Trädgårdar were subject to qualitative content analysis. This method aims at completing the experiences the researcher made during the ethnography with theoretical explanations. Gläser and Laudel (2013) describe this step as converting text into interpretations. Even though qualitative research initially aims at increasing the complexity of social situations and processes in order to grasp them holistically, the gathered data now has to be deconstructed in order to make it less complex for the analysis (Gläser and Laudel, 2013). The structuring and summarizing help to reduce the complexity step-by-step (Kohlbacher, 2006).

In order for the researcher to conduct a critical study despite the close involvement in the field of study, the data at hand was analysed in relation to the theoretical background. Based on the theoretical background on grassroots movements and green societal transformations, as well as

- 9 - the research questions of this thesis, analytical coding themes were identified before the start of the participatory observation. This deductive approach means that the theory and the research questions channelled the content analysis towards the positioning of grassroots movement such as permaculture in the green societal transformation . Indicators for societal transformations forwarded by the 2030 Agenda, such as identifying the actors of change and the nature of change that is targeted in the SDGs 2 and 12, helped to assess whether or not permaculture at KT intertwines with these indicators (see 3.1). The same was done with the literature about citizen-led transformations. Here, parallels between permaculture practices and worldviews observed at KT were assessed according to the forwarded definition about citizen- led practices and strategies and their potential to grow towards a bigger societal transformation (see 3.2.2).

Once the empirical phenomena have been observed and understood during the ethnographic research, further specific categories (e.g. resource management, community feeling, broader scope of permaculture) have to be identified. In other words, in qualitative content analysis a theory-guided approach is used for text analyses by taking categories or codes as a tool (Mayring, 2002; Kohlbacher, 2006; Scheufele, 2008). As mentioned earlier, some codes were identified in the fieldnotes, when situations, conversations or activities reoccurred during the three weeks’ stay. Furthermore, once the main themes have been applied to the gathered data with the research questions in mind, the fieldnotes and interview transcripts have been read over several more times to make sure key phrases and/or repetitions that did not seem as relevant in the beginning of the content analysis were taken into consideration as well.

The transcripts, fieldnotes and recordings also helped to identify transitions, which can differentiate themes. In text, for example, new paragraphs usually indicate a shift in topics, whereas pauses, changes in voice tone, the mentioning of concluding words or linguistic connectors do the same in speech (Ryan and Bernard, 2003).

According to Ryan and Bernard (2003), themes come from an inductive approach, meaning from the gathered data but also from an a priori approach, which refers to the researcher’s theoretical understanding of the studied phenomenon. This information can be gathered before, during and after the field study through literature reviews and theoretical orientations, but also through the researcher’s personal experiences and values.

2.5 Limitations and research ethics

One of the most common limitations in ethnographic research is time. Often, researchers have a limited period of time available for the entire study, reducing the fieldwork time to a minimum of a few weeks or months. According to Vine et al. (2018), however, six months to one year should be devoted to the ethnographic research because that would allow to grasp the entity of the phenomena, for, example by experiencing variations in seasonal or even annual social and environmental behaviours or activities. For this thesis, the fieldwork lasted three weeks, which corresponds with the length of the entire study, which lasted four months in total. The time of the ethnographic study was from Mid-March to the beginning of April, which means that the beginning of spring was covered by the fieldwork and that the transition from the winter to the spring season at Kosters Trädgårdar, also meaning the change of working habits and practices, could be experienced. Nonetheless, it has to be noted that, especially for this ethnography that was focused on permaculture and therefore also on food production, environment and weather variations, a longer field study may have helped to grasp the life and practices of Kosters - 10 -

Trädgårdar in different seasonal settings. The vegetable food production is dependent on seeding, replanting, growing and harvesting periods that are majorly concentrated during the spring, summer and early autumn season. The same goes for national and international customers of Kosters Trädgårdar that visit mainly in summer and might have an influence on activities at KT. Data about annual or other seasonal fluctuations concerning permaculture practices and the life at KT could therefore not be gathered during this field study. However, for the small size of the island and the permaculture farm studied and also the analysis aspirations of this master’s thesis, a longer stay would have risked compromising the objectivity of the researcher. The researcher then risks being implicated too much in the daily life of KT, eventually leading to a loss of perspective, for example, not recognizing relevant observations because they would count as “normal” phenomena after a certain amount of time. Hence, in this ethnographic research, a stay longer than a month would have “blinded” the researcher in the sense that no more data would have been gathered and that her observations and analysis might have lacked objectivity.

The second limitation is the location. Even though already mentioned above, the ethnography was conducted in a very local setting. Assumptions or generalizations about the permaculture movement in other places of the world will therefore have to be minimized. Location and scale of the permaculture farm may influence practices and views and might differ from permaculture farms in different locations or countries. A counterargument to this limitation is that other case studies on permaculture, often in relation to food insecurity and empowerment of vulnerable people have been conducted. Namululi (2011), for example, assessed the potential of permaculture in addressing food insecurity in the Karamoja District in Uganda. The local character of permaculture does therefore not allow generalizations when it comes to permaculture agricultural/horticultural practices, as mentioned above. But the environmental and ethical principles permaculture is based on and the effects (positive and negative) that were observed in different case studies may surpass the local setting. The more case studies exist, the more accurately the transformative potential of permaculture can be assessed.

A different limitation that comes along with ethnography is the researcher’s closeness to the field of study and to the research participants. This positions the ethnography in a debate about subjectivity, objectivity, bias and overall quality of the analysis (Roulston, 2010; Schensul, Schensul and LeCompte, 2012b). Although the role of the researcher is defined at arrival and during her stay, complete objectivity is impossible, neither is it strived for in ethnographic researches. Immersion of the research in the field of study is more important because a balance between subjectivity and objectivity allows to get access to the field and engage in daily phenomena in a first place. A balance between both then allows the researcher to: firstly, become attentive to behaviours or activities that seem obvious to the participants because a neutral perspective is possible for them, and secondly, to build up a relationship with the participants, leading to mutual respect, trust, help and learning. In that sense, the researcher has access to information from within which gives a more authentical, holistic and complete perspective of the studied phenomena (Murdock, 1943; Baker, 1987).

When it comes to the collecting of data and the data analysis, the socialisation of the researcher is also of importance. During conversations, for example, the informant may leave out statements that are obvious to him or her, because what is not mentioned is seen as cultural background knowledge. The researcher might be tempted to fill up these unsaid words or lacunae in the transcripts with meaning by unconsciously making cultural assumptions (Schensul, Schensul and LeCompte, 2012b). This limitation underlines that the researcher of an ethnographic study should be aware of her role and position within the field by continuously - 11 - engaging in critical self-reflection. Myself not being from Sweden but having a basic understanding of the Swedish language, facilitates this step because less cultural assumptions are being made automatically because socio-cultural differences are being identified, turning what seems obvious to the informant into unknown and newly found information. The English language might have constituted a barrier for the research participants in the beginning of the field study, however, this changed with the field study moving forward. The participants started getting to know me and it is safe to say that the growing mutual trust decreased insecurities related to the language. As mentioned before, during the interviews and the participatory observation the language was at times unconsciously switched from English to Swedish if words of expressions could not be found.

The research ethics and the protection of the research participants’ personal data goes hand in hand (LeCompte and Schensul, 2010b). For that reason, each research participant and interview partner signed a letter of consent (see Appendix II) that the researcher signed as well. Two copies, one for the researcher and one for the participant/interview partner were signed. The document explains that the gathering of personal data will be minimized and treated confidentially. The people having access to the data and the duration of the data processing is stated as well. Contact information about the researcher, the supervisor of this thesis and LiU are mentioned and the aim of the thesis is explained in the document. Furthermore, it mentions that nicknames for the informants will be used in this thesis to protect their identity. This ethnographic research gave the researcher access to the private lives of the research participants by being in close and daily contact with each other and by working together. To maintain the privacy of the participants, all data that is not crucial for the understanding of this thesis’s topic and argumentation is categorically not mentioned.

A last consideration is the context within which the ethnographic research has been conducted. It is of importance as possible derivations in daily routines or social/intercultural relations may come along with it. In Mid-March the Covid-19 disease caused by the Coronavirus has been spreading over the world, leading to many European countries going into lockdown. However, on my journey to Sydkoster, traveling within Sweden was possible but the worldwide situation of the pandemic worsened during my stay. At Kosters Trädgårdar preventive measures such as physical distancing and minimizing travels to and from the island were taken. Neighbouring countries had closed their borders already, limiting international and national tourism to Sydkoster.

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3. Theoretical background

3.1 “Transforming our World” – the UN Agenda on Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a policy concept that is closely tied to the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) and its mandate to formulate a hopeful story for global development in the late 20th Century. In 1987, the WCED report Our Common Future launched the concept of sustainable development and defined it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987, p. 43). While the WCED’s agenda was endorsed by more than hundred and seventy leaders at the Rio Conference in 1992, the concept has been widely debated ever since (Langhelle, 1999; Meadowcroft, 2000; Carter, 2007; Linnér and Selin, 2013; Linnér and Wibeck, 2019; Meadowcroft et al., 2019).

Critics of the concept like Bernstein (2001), Gibson-Graham (2006) and Blühdorn and Deflorian (2019) have suggested that the economic dimension has taken precedence in the implementation of the agenda, even if the concept of sustainable development tries to challenge the conventional economic activity, in a first place. Therefore, according to Baker (2016), the understanding of sustainable development after the Brundtland development paradigm at the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) should be adopted. Baker underlines that the Brundtland development paradigm sees sustainable development as a process that is not only based on “technological and institutional change but [also] on social, economic, and cultural and lifestyle transformations” (Baker, 2016, p.32). In that sense, the author argues for a more profound kind of bottom-up societal transformation, rather than transforming society through top-down measures. Here, the understanding of sustainable development therefore extends from state to non-state actors who are, for example, locally and regionally engaged in societal change (Baker, 2016).

Critical calls for transformative social change were picked up in the process leading to the adoption of the United Nations’ 2030 for Sustainable Development in New York in 2015. The agenda goes by the name Transforming Our World (UN, 2015) and advances 17 Sustainable Development Goals that aim to guide global development until the year of 2030. With the opening words “we the peoples” of the Charter of the United Nations (UN, 2015,p. 14), the 2030 Agenda addresses transformative change on different levels, for example on an international, national, regional and local policy level, as well as on a green and technology level. It also recognizes the importance of transformative social change in small- scale and every day contexts and calls for citizen involvement and empowerment in the implementation of the SDGs (UN, 2015). Especially the hereafter presented targets advanced in SDG2 of the 2030 Agenda enhance the significant role of citizens for transformations towards sustainability. Simultaneously, it combines the citizen involvement and empowerment with small-scale farming as both are intertwined in their local character. As the SDG2 presents it, local and small-scale food systems may act as a medium through which the transformative potential of citizen involvement towards sustainability may be increased and vice versa.

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The SDG 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, for instance, forwards the idea of making nutritious and sufficient food accessible to all people, by increasing the and income of small-scale producers through equal access to resources and other inputs, such as knowledge and markets (UN, 2015). Furthermore, the most relevant aspect for the context of this thesis is stated in paragraph 2.4 of SDG 2 that argues that sustainable food production systems should be implemented through resilient agricultural practices. They should “increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.” (UN, 2015). To that end, genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants as well as farmed and domesticated animals should be maintained, and an equitable share of the resources and the gained products as well as the associated location-based traditional knowledge should be supported (UN, 2015). The SDG 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns focuses on the efficient management and sustainable use of natural resources, promotes awareness about sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature, targets to monitor and aims at decreasing waste generation through prevention, reduction, and reuse (UN, 2015).

The above stated targets of the 2030 Agenda help defining the transformative potential envisioned in the scope of this thesis. The societal transformation is to be understood through local, bottom-up actions by citizens. Most relevant is the spread of the actions and ecological awareness by the means of education, communication and close collaboration between citizens. Hopefully resulting in new initiatives that are in line with the idea of sustainable livelihoods, the action of a person or of a community constituting the basis for a potential societal transformation. The sustainable ecological and social practices advanced by one represent the gateway for action of the many. From this multiplying effect, the transformation should move towards other layers that structure society in order to secure the spread and longevity of the transformation. Focusing on production feeding this transformative potential in a first place, Willett et al. (2019) address the need to take the small-scale change worked for by citizens and to continue the change on institutional levels. They therefore state that

“[T]his transformation will not happen unless there is widespread, multi-sector, multilevel action to change what food is eaten, how it is produced, and its effects on the environment and health, while providing healthy diets for the global population.” (ibid., p. 476)

Zooming out again from citizen involvement promoted in SDG2 to all the 17 SGDs, it now needs to be identified how the 2030 Agenda is best realized in practice. Whereas Scoones et al. (2015) suggest different green societal transformations in the following chapter, the main focus will be drawn on the civil societal actors.

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3.2 Categorizing sustainability transformations

As the title, Transforming our World, of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development implies, the debates about sustainability and about food security imply that the current system is not qualified as being sustainable and that something needs to be changed in order to move towards sustainability. According to Meadowcroft (2000), sustainable development is, in a first instance seen as a process of improvement, not as a specific institution, environment or even practice. There are, however, several levels from which this change can be initiated from. In their book The Politics of Green Transformations (2015), Scoones, Leach and Newell categorize potential structural changes and strategies into technocentric, capitalistic, state-led and citizen-led approaches. They argue that the emphasis often lies on the need for massive public and private investments in new technological revolutions and continue by stating that, if sustainable development is set in the context of the limits to growth, grassroots movements are often forgotten and not seen as potential contributors to sustainability. The following sections will therefore present the different types of green and societal transformations, before elaborating on the role of grassroots movements.

3.2.1 Technology-led, market-led and state-led transformations Scoones, Leach and Newell (2015) define technocentric transformations as the most frequently implied type of transformations. The reason for this is, that although it follows the aim to reduce ecological footprints, this same aim is to be reached without changing current systems, but with using human ingenuity and technological innovation instead. can be found in different sectors with high water and energy consumption, such as in exponentially growing agriculture, for example. Innovations that can be found in different kinds of sectors and come in the shape of solar-panels, windmills, water turbines, drip-irrigation systems and many others.

In a political context, it needs to be discussed which ones of the new technology-led green transformations should be implemented by weighing off the best innovations that have the most environmental and economic advantages. It is difficult to separate technological innovations from economy because both aspects are married in the discourse. Green technological innovations, which are dominated by the private sector, are dependent on investments for their research and their implementation in the first place and close the circle by being purchased in significant numbers (mostly by governments) due to their ability to reduce carbon emissions or the amount of natural resources needed. In that sense, new and green technology are intertwined with each other and with the green economy, which Scoones et al. (2015) define as “-led growth” (p. 11).

These technocentric approaches lead us to the second type of transformations, where the market is the main actor of transformation. The market-led transformations to sustainability have, for example, pricing and the creation of new markets as tools to channel the market towards a greener vision of economy. In that way, nature is perceived as a natural capital that is needed for further economic growth. By economically valuing the natural capital, the market puts a price tag on natural resources and territories, which transforms nature into a good. Simultaneously, marketized transformations are dependent on the state, demanding that the market leans toward a green economy in a first place. Whereas, the marketized transformations are closely linked to governmental decisions that set the direction the market should take. They are, as mentioned before also linked to technology-led transformations.

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Green entrepreneurialism and human ingenuity are premises for the market to flourish when the economic activity of the public and the private sector goes in the same direction as the guidelines of the state (Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015).

The third category has already been mentioned and goes under the name of state-led transformations. Governments are able to communicate and incentives that can shape the boundaries within which the economy, the technological advancements and communities should operate. Scoones et al. (2015) explain that a state has the power to, literally spoken, reinstate social control over markets, meaning that they can be actors of social and economic stabilization but also managers of transformative processes. However, the authors argue further, that transformations in favour of environmental, social and economic sustainability are often derived by “overwhelming national and interest-group political– economic interests” (Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015, p. 15)

The three presented types of dimensions are to some extent interdependent. They all incorporate a top-down approach of sustainability transformations and emerge on international, national and sometimes regional levels. The technology-led, market-led and state-led approaches lead to an attempt of green transformation within a neo-liberalist system that aims to satisfy demand and supply, as well as current production and consumption patterns.

3.2.2 Citizen-led transformations Grassroots movements are community based and citizen-led types of action and mobilization. Just as for any other kind of green transformation, grassroots movements come in different shapes, practices and strategies of implementation. Scoones et al. (2015), therefore, separate the grassroots into two main categories. Both of these categories are positioned in a Society- Policy-Culture-Nexus and therefore place resource ownership, treatment and distribution in the centre of the debate. They call or work in favour of ecological modernisation from non-state actors (Langhelle, 2000).

The first category represents the activist organizations that focus on a particular political issue and confront it through more radical actions and protests. As an example, they mention the non- governmental organization , that mobilizes its actions towards the condemnation of whaling or the extraction of fossil fuels, for example. The protests follow the aim of breaking the ignorance of society, the government and the towards namely, but not only, environmental degradation but also human rights violations. The result should be a raise of awareness and a change of these current practices through a change of policies that either transform production and consumption patterns or make people, governments and corporations responsible for their actions.

The second category contains the less visible, less politically centred kinds of activism that embodies bottom-up movements. These grassroots movements’ effects are characterized by growing through multiplication but not by up-scaling (e.g. food production systems). They can be led individually or be community-based. So, although they take place in local and/or regional settings, bottom-up transformations often extend transnationally to other parts of the world. This kind of activism connect people who want to live in a more alternative and sustainable way with a similar state-of-mind concerning “business-as-usual” (Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015).

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Gibson-Graham (2006), for example, argue for bottom-up experimentation with community . The idea is to mobilize small-scale communities to experiment with alternative economic practices and hereby shift the economic discourse towards a non capitalocentric one. Instead of having a dominance of on one hand and the negatively connoted “noncapitalism” on the other hand, Gibson-Graham suggest rethinking and deconstructing the heterogeneous economy and turn it into a “multitude of specific economic activities and relations” (2006, xxxiv). At the same time, the authors state that capitalism is not only a discourse but a reality that is deeply rooted in our society that we all grew up in. To that end, re-educating ourselves would be necessary, in order to adopt different attitudes and therefore making it possible to bring more diversity to the current economic model. The emphasis of this paradigm lies on the collective action, also called community economy, meaning that conscious and combined efforts are key to build a new kind of economic reality. Collective actions are seen as economic experiments that could transform society by enhancing its well-being, constructing and recognizing an economic interdependence, restructuring distribution and “surplus appropriation” networks through increasing community communication, and promoting community and environmental sustainability while adopting an “ethnic care of the other” (Gibson-Graham, 2006, xxxvii). In that sense, the transformative potential of the grassroots movements will have as a result that the initial alternative way becomes the normal and more sustainable path in the long-term.

Bradley and Hedrén (2014) for their part, underline that green transformations are unlikely to happen through economic measures, such as greenhouse emissions taxes, new technologies or sustainability policies. The authors are convinced that top-down measures coming from within the neo-liberal system “treat the symptoms rather than treating their cause” (Bradley and Hedrén, 2014, p. 1), which is why they argue for a systematic change that is based on societal arrangements that do not rely on the exploitation of peoples, territories, species and non- renewable resources. This transformation should be gained through a networked, bottom-up socioecological transition they call the Do-It-Yourself Culture, where society tries to find “ways out of the corporate work-and-spend cycle” (ibid., p. 12). This approach focuses on starting by changing everyday practices such as how we live, work, eat, consume, and socialize, but also on increasing the “practical making” (ibid., p. 12) of everyday life that includes, for example, growing food, baking, repairing and reusing things, building houses and remaking collective spaces. The change of daily practices can then spread from a do-it-yourself dimension to a broader social dimension, where the own home and/or the workplace, friends and the neighbourhood grow through mutual exchange of knowledge, skills and labour force. The medium through which these practices (specific projects, themes or events) are communicated and connected is most commonly social media. The step from personal transformation happens through building alliances that are born through the mentioned mutual exchange and communication and then constitute a basis for institutional change (Bradley and Hedrén, 2014).

As Bradley and Hedrén (2014) point out, grassroots movements are mostly mirrored in an individual or communal change of personal behaviour and practices, social interaction and culture. This may result in a change of lifestyles, mostly implying different ways of food production and housing standards. In the same context, Scoones et al. argue that the emphasis of grassroots movements “is often on diversifying and democratizing knowledge for transformations, and so ‘culturing’ sustainability, through an emphasis on everyday and lifestyle politics” (Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015, p. 15). In other words, in addition to forwarding small-scale and local alternative ways in contrast to current unsustainabilities, grassroots movements act on a practical and strategical layer but also advance a cultural and pedagogical approach to unsustainabilities. - 17 -

In the following chapter of this thesis I will explore the permaculture movement as an example of citizen-led transformations towards sustainability. It is a movement that was developed in Australia in the 1970’s and since then has spread across continents in the search for more sustainable food production.

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4. Permaculture as a case of grassroots transformations towards sustainability

For clarification purposes, first an overview of the structure of this result chapter is given, to connect the presented analysis with the responding of the RQs. The two first chapters cover the history of permaculture (see 4.1) and the introduction to the field of study Kosters Trädgårdar (see 4.2) which are forwarded to answer RQ1, namely to explain what permaculture is and what actors it mobilizes. Followed by the chapter about permaculture design at Kosters Trädgårdar (see 4.3), which mainly focuses on the ideas about sustainable food that are advanced by the permaculture movement, answering RQ2. In this thesis, the term permaculture design stand for both, the design of the permaculture farm and the practices that go with it. The last result chapter discusses the permanent culture understanding of permaculture (see 4.4) answering RQs 3 and 4. It is more closely connected to how the permaculture movement at KT seeks to change society and the food system. The identified strategies then lead towards analysing the transformative potential of grassroots movements such as permaculture, which will be discussed further in the concluding discussion (see 5).

4.1 The history of permaculture

Permaculture is a concept that was coined in the late 1970’s by Bill Mollison, a senior lecturer in at the University of Tasmania in Australia. Together with his student and later on friend, David Holmgren, the idea came up that people should be able to create food production systems that could imitate nature and therefore be as resilient and diverse as natural ecosystems. The social utopian Garden City movement that was active in the late 19th century, the Organic Growers Movement from Tasmania as well as Joseph Russell Smith’s forest farming systems are said to have served as inspiration for the birth of permaculture, because they all represent citizen-led, bottom-up transformative movements (Mollison, 1981; Namululi, 2011; Holmgren, 2003, 2013; Smith, 2015). The “limits to growth” debate (Meadows et al. 1972), also plays a significant role in the development of permaculture, as the concept is strongly connected to the discourse about the limited of our planet’s ecosystems. In that sense, the permaculture concept was embedded in a critique of the late modern development and meant to be a “rejection of rising consumerism, stifling authority and the rejection of dominant cultural forms” (Smith, 2015, p.1). According to Mollison (1981), permaculture then became a practical counter-movement that aims to reduce the human footprint on earth by “working with nature and not against it” (Mollison, 1981).

The permaculture movement spread within rural and urban Australia in the 1970’s and came to international attention in the 1980’s (Smith, 2015). Mollison and Holmgren paved the way for permaculture by starting off with focusing on how to improve food production systems, which is reflected by the portmanteau word permaculture that initially combines the words permanent and agriculture. To achieve a permanent agriculture the first aim of permaculture was to build stable, resilient and productive agricultural systems that are based on perennial food crops1 mainly, especially on berry-hedges and/or fruit and nut trees.

1 Plants that live longer than one year. They can be short-lived (only a few years) or long-lived, e.g. trees. - 19 -

The permaculture site would be designed in a way that natural flows are being respected and that annual and perennial crops would support each other and act as a polyculture guild (Mars, 2003). Mollison and Slay (1991, cited in Suh, 2014) describe permaculture as the connection between “the wisdom contained in traditional farming systems, and modern scientific and technological knowledge” (Suh, 2014, p.1).

However, Mollison and Holmgren rapidly came to the conclusion that the initial meaning of the portmanteau word would need to expand from “permanent” and “agriculture” towards “permanent” and “culture” (The Permaculture Society, 2020). By “culture”, the permaculture concept now covers not simply environmental-friendly ways to produce food, but stretches over all aspects of human beings and human settlements, such as housing build from natural materials, finances, designs and the communal governance of natural resources (Smith, 2015; Permaculture Research Institute, 2020, The Permaculture Society, 2020). Mars (2003) describes permaculture as a framework that unites many disciplines, like technology, horticulture, soils, ethical investments and aquaculture. The interdisciplinarity approach does not deliver concrete techniques but offers the permaculturalist a way to identify how many combined techniques can build a system that harvests energy from natural resources. The idea is to borrow natural energy flows as long as possible by catching, storing and directing them to where they are needed. This goes together with the thinking in zones to save human energy, where zone 1 represents the most attended areas (e.g. the garden beds in a food production system) whereas the following zones designate further in distance (e.g. orchards). This explains why permaculture is a design strategy that is based on and in ecology and aims to have an integrated system with animals, humans and landscape. (Mollison, 1981; Holmgren, 2013; Ferguson and Lovell, 2015).

Ferguson and Lovell count to the few first researchers (around 2014) that have started assessing the international permaculture movement and its potential to move towards the sustainability of farm practices (Ferguson and Lovell, 2015). According to them, the permaculture founders Mollison and Holmgren, started spreading the permaculture idea for decades after its founding in the late 1970’s by teaching internationally on local farms, in small villages and in towns. Today, the permaculture movement has spread to all continents, many countries having national permaculture associations; in Sweden, for example, represented by Permakultur Sverige or The Nordic Institute of Permaculture. Due to the low level of group institutionalization, an exact number of permaculture practitioners around the world cannot be estimated (Ferguson and Lovell, 2015). However, a network of individuals and projects can be identified through permaculture design courses (PDC), the Permaculture Research Institute, national permaculture associations, the World Permaculture Association, the Permaculture Worldwide Network, local workshops (urban and rural), an abundance of websites, permaculture magazines and literature.

According to Mollison (1981) and Holmgren (2013) the aspect of culture turns permaculture into a concept that is applicable by everyone who is interested in constructing human settlements that are based on ecological principles, in rural and urban areas, in all kinds of climates all around the world. However, Holmgren (2013) argues that the concept is largely unrecognized by academia, nor is it supported by business or governments, which he says explains why the concept and idea have rather been advanced by citizen groups who want to change their lives towards a more sustainable future by leaning on the permaculture ethics, Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share (see Figure 1). By making small local changes that lean on permaculture principles, these permaculture practitioners are assumed to “influence action

- 20 - in the fields of sustainable development, organic agriculture, and intentional community design“ (Holmgren, 2013, p. 5). In this context, Aiken (2017) explains that although permaculture is primarily about reproducing nature through design, nature can also be seen as a medium through which permaculturalists realize their activities. “(T)his is why permaculture can be seen as not just an environmentalist movement but an ecosophical one” (Aiken, 2017, p. 175).

Holmgren explains that ecological principles, which are forwarded in permaculture, are also applicable to social systems such as education, technology and economics (Holmgren, 2013; Janzon, 2018). Macnamara (2012, cited in Aiken, 2017) and Starhawk (2016) for instance, emphasize the “social permaculture” in which the permaculture principles are being applied to social fields (e.g. education, personal well-being). The ethics of permaculture are then used by people to weigh decisions and actions in everyday life. In that sense, the permaculture principles can also be applied for management purposes by “people without a garden” (Macnamara, 2012, cited in Aiken, 2017, p. 175). Vitari and David (2017) therefore describe permaculture as a design tool for the construction of a “holistic life system” (p.16) (Vitari and David, 2017). In that sense the of farms or gardens practices, or the production of food, constitute one element of the permaculture concept that exists next to others (Janzon, 2018).

4.1.1 The permaculture design principles

Figure 1: The 3 core tenets & the 12 permaculture principles

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According to Holmgren (2013) a cultural revolution would be necessary to provide for people’s needs with ecological boundaries. This is why permaculture is guided by an ethical framework which involves the three core principles; earth care, people care and fair share. Care for the earth involves respecting soil, water and forests, care for people means to take care of one-self, of your kin and the community. The fair share should raise awareness of consumption and reproduction limits, while redistributing the surplus. Twelve principles are derived from these core tenets, which are seen as universally applicable. The methods that will be used can however vary depending on location and situation. They exist to help to make decisions when complex design options occur, but can also be applied if personal, social, economic or political change is intended (Holmgren, 2002, 2013; Mars, 2003).

These principles have first been explicitly communicated in 1984 with the development of the curriculum for the Permaculture Design Course (PDC) by the founders of the permaculture movement. The PDC is a tool to spread permaculture inspiration and education worldwide. Since the curriculum has evolved over the years and permaculture teachers from all over the world are giving the course, slightly different and localized understandings of permaculture as well as localized methods and experiences have developed in time. However, according to Holmgren (2013) the PDC has a bonding function between all people who are interested in permaculture, which allows the worldwide network of permaculturalists to be classified as a . Here, the social movement refers to the sustainable production of food or other products. This sustainable production is promoted and practiced through people interested in permaculture and spread through the PDC. The international permaculture network is further structured by the diploma in permaculture design (PD) that allows all diploma holders not only to practice permaculture but also to teach permaculture. The diploma is a two-year long education during which 10 permaculture designs need to be invented and implemented (SAI, 2020; FN,2020.03.24).

Whereas the PDC and PD suppose a spreading of the movement through institutional structures, this is not the case as the local and small-scale character is held up when spreading the knowledge face-to-face from one person to another. As the permaculture teachers are the permaculture practitioners and/or active in the education of environmental sciences, the bottom- up origin of the movement is being guaranteed. According to Mollison (1981), the principles of permaculture ensure equitable access and democratic governance with no formal hierarchies in place, as permaculture is based on voluntary action and majorly self-funded it is not controlled by external institutions (Mollison, 1981; Ferguson and Lovell, 2015).

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4.2 Kosters Trädgårdar

“It’s a place for diversity, it’s a place where we try to inspire and look for good changes that we want to see in the world.” (Head gardener, Int. 1)

Kosters Trädgårdar is a permaculture farm located on the Koster Islands on the Westcoast of Sweden. The Koster Islands (Kosteröarna) consist of a North and a South Island (Nordkoster, Sydkoster) and are located in an archipelago that counts as Sweden’s most biodiverse marine reefs. Kosterhavet National was inaugurated in 2009 and classifies most of Koster’s environment as a nature reserve, meaning that both flora and fauna are protected. Due to its northern location and closeness to the Northern sea, Koster has short summers (between June and September) as well as long and cold winters, meaning short days without much sunlight. The strong and cold wind is an element that can be found all year around on the island. The direction of the Kosters Trädgårdar site, together with location-based permaculture practices, however, allows the plot to capture the most possible sunlight and break the heavy wind. How this is managed will be elaborated later on (FN, 2020.03.16-18.; Int. 1; 2; 4; Figure 2: Location of KT in Sweden Kosterhavets Nationalpark, 2020, Kosteröarna Syd & Nord, 2020, Kosters Trädgårdar, 2020).

Figure 3: Close-up of the Koster Islands and the mainland

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Kosters Trädgårdar (KT) is located on Sydkoster. It was founded approximately 25 years ago by a married couple and has been changing ever since (Int. 1; 2). The property is 8 hectares big and with its 60 meters in width and 1 and a half kilometers of longitude, the plot is broadest in the beginning, slowly narrowing down the further inland one goes. About 2 to 3 hectares of this entire land, meaning the broader part of the plot, are in daily use, whereas the rest and narrower part of the plot mainly consists of forest (mainly birch and pine trees) and rocky landscape, which is used as an art exhibition at the moment (FN, 2020.03.31). A pond marks the border between the food production site and the non-agricultural land use behind. The property is facing South and is surrounded by hills, forming a protected space in the middle.

Today, KT’s open entry leads past a flower bed and a medicinal herbs garden inside the gardens. KT has about 30 to 35 outside planting beds for annual plants intertwined with perennial plants. Next to the outside garden, three greenhouses allow the early seeding and the survival of plants originating from warmer climates. Next to the greenhouses, that also function as a meeting point, a restaurant made out of clay and straw, serves pizzas with the toppings coming from the garden. During my stay, the restaurant was opened Friday afternoon and evening, as well as Saturday from morning to the afternoon. A garden shop allows the customers to buy the home- grown vegetables and plants and home-made products (e.g. vegetable bouillon, honey) (FN). Kosters Trädgårdar receives students from garden schools and guest workers from all over the world, such as “WWOOFers” (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), for example. Additionally, to the production and selling of food, the learned agronomist and now founder, CEO and head gardener of Kosters Trädgårdar offers Permaculture Design Courses (PDC), Permaculture and Yoga courses, Arts and Crafts courses on site. An Earth Activist Training (EAT) is also planned in 2020 (FN, Int. 1). The second founder of KT and learned biologist offers guided walking, biking and Kayak tours on the island and around the archipelago (FN; Int. 1; 2).

KT is a mixed system, in this case meaning that bees, sheep and chicken are integrated in the system. The 11 sheep live behind the restaurant during winter and beginning of spring. The 5 bee colonies are located in a calmer area of the garden. The approximately 50 hens live in a big greenhouse at a 5-minute bike ride away from the gardens. This represents Kosters Trädgårdar second plot, where the greenhouse is home to the chicken during the cold months of the year. The land in front of the greenhouse was in the middle of a restructuring towards a new permaculture design during the participatory research. The land is redesigned to offer outdoor spaced for the hens that can be opened and closed depending on need and vegetation health in the different compartments. The rest of the land will be focusing on orchards, on berry- producing hedges and on potato growing (FN).

In this thesis, Kosters Trädgårdar serves as a case of the permaculture movement, in terms of permaculture practices and principles. Therefore, in order to assess permaculture’s transformative potential towards sustainable food production, the following chapters will present the most relevant strategies that are practiced at Kosters Trädgårdar, focusing on the food production but also on the significant social relationships on and around the farm.

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4.3 Permaculture design at Kosters Trädgårdar

The following subsections elaborate on integrated systems and resource management. Both are key concepts of holistic management, which again is a key aspect of permaculture. Integrated systems and resource management are being forwarded to give a concrete example of how the previously explained permaculture concept can look when applied by its actors, in this case by Kosters Trädgårdar. These subsections are of importance because they explain how ecological challenges are addressed through a permaculture design approach (Hathaway, 2016). They help to visualize permaculture at KT and to understand how permaculture practices have been used, which responds to RQ2 and RQ3: Which ideas about sustainable food does the permaculture movement advance? Referring to the explanation about permaculture that was given before, the following subsections that describe the permaculture design at KT belong to the understanding of permaculture as permanent agriculture. In that sense, they allow to understand that the holistic permaculture management on Kosters Trädgårdar is directly and indirectly connected to the food production and the sustainability aspect of the whole gardening system, making food production a key aspect of KT, but not the only one. This again will help to lead the results part towards the broader scope of the permaculture movement, referred to as the permanent culture perspective of permaculture, forwarded to answer the research questions 3 and 4, concerning the transformative potential of permaculture.

4.3.1 Integrated systems One of the main aims in permaculture is to have a system that does not only take energy but also gives some back into the system (Mars, 2003). While observing and learning from ecosystems it can be observed that animals have the ability to close nutrient cycles in nature. The gardener of KT explains that this “giving back to the system” through closing the nutrient cycle is the reason animals are kept at Kosters Trädgårdar (Int. 3). On the farm, they are integrated in the daily life and all serve one or several purposes and therefore contribute to the whole system as will be shown below (Int. 1).

Chicken During the winter months and the beginning of spring, the chicken live in a big greenhouse that has an opening to a fenced pasture.In late spring they move to a chicken shed where they have all-time access to the outside. Roosters live together with hens. In total, the hens lay between 45 and 57 eggs every day, which are gathered every morning, cleaned and stored in a stone basement. A self-serving egg box, including an honesty payment box is put on a table in front of Kosters Trädgårdar for the inhabitants of the island. Others have a subscription to pick up the eggs every week. Figure 4: Underground egg storage at KT

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Chicken are omnivores, meaning that they eat a variation of fruits, vegetables, grains, roots, plants, worms, table scraps etc. The food leftovers from the restaurant as well as from the founders of KT and employees serve as food for the chicken on a daily basis. An empty waste bin in front of the chicken shed invites the island inhabitants to “donate” their daily food leftovers. This allows the chicken to have a nutritional diet and at the same time, reduces the buying of additional chicken fodder (FN). The food leftovers are fed at the same spot every day, as the flock gathers and eats there, the soil is compacted. However, when most of the fodder is gone the chicken start scratching the soil with their claws to find leftovers. In that manner, the rest of the biodegradable waste that the chicken do not eat is mixed with the soil. Every other week, the soil in that area is turned, in order to decompact it, allowing microorganisms to decompose the leftovers further. This again gives additional fodder to the chicken as they can eat the newly growing oat sprouts and worms in the soil. According to the head gardener and the gardener up to 5 wheelbarrows of new soil can be gained in this way every year. The chicken manure is composted, and the newly gained soil is high in phosphate, nitrogen and potassium and can increase the hummus layer when added to plants. Furthermore, older hens are taken out of the production and used for meat (FN, 2020.03.16). Thus, additionally, to the egg and meat production, chicken can help reducing food waste and produce soil at the same time at Kosters Trädgårdar (FN, 2020.03.16-2020.04.03).

Figure 5: Area designated for the feeding of the chicken, which enhances the soil production

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Sheep Kosters Trädgårdar is not the only owner of the sheep on the site, instead, several sheep owners of the island have a cooperation to keep the sheep at Kosters Trädgårdar and move them to different pastures belonging to the owners throughout spring and summer months. The cost for fodder, water and well-being of the sheep is thus spread on all the owners. Beginning of March, the week before the field study, the sheep have been sheared. They eat hay and get additional sheep fodder and minerals to keep warm without their wool (FN). During week 2 and 3 of the field study, the sheep reached the last month of pregnancy, meaning their food and water consumption increased significantly, in other words, one hay bale a week and 50 to 60 l of water a day were consumed (FN, 2020.03.23-2020.04.03). During the following months, the sheep will move to pastures and some of the sheep and lambs will be slaughtered for meat production at a later point. The gained meat and the wool skins will be shared among the owners. Bones and remains from the slaughtering will be fed to the compost, what significantly increases the activity in the compost and therefore accelerates the production of new soil (FN, 2020.03.20). At the same time, the pastures the sheep are grazing on are being fertilized by the sheep’s manure, making additional fertilization unnecessary.

Figure 6: The pregnant sheep and young sheep in their winter shelter at KT

Bees The third animal at Kosters Trädgårdar is the endemic black bee. Five colonies of these honeybees live on the farm, in a calm area with the least human passage. All five colonies survived the winter (FN, 2020.04.01). As soon as the temperatures rise above 10 degrees, they feed on nectar and pollen, where nectar represents a source of energy and pollen offers protein. Honey bees assure the crop pollination, making them vital for the farm’s food production. At the same time, their nests composed out of wax, are used for the colony’s honey production and storage. Some of the honey is then taken, filled into glass jars and sold in the garden shop. Some honey is left to the bees to insure they have enough food and some of the honey is stored in the wax forms to ensure their survival during winter by adding some honey in case they were low on reserves (FN, 2020.04.01). - 27 -

The keeping of animals requires an abundance of natural and human resources., and is combined with financial costs, when it comes to buying additional animal fodder or veterinary costs if needed. However, they also stand in direct connection to the food production and the economic security of the farm, because as elaborated above, a circular use of taking and giving-back energy as well as the sale of animal products can be observed at Kosters Trädgårdar. In what way the resources at hand are being used on the site, will explain how permaculture tries to close the energy cycle by using resources sustainably.

Figure 7: The 5 bee colonies in a remote area of KT

4.3.2 Resource management As introduced, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems state that a transformation of global food systems is needed to reduce environmental pressures, the destruction of ecosystems, biodiversity loss and pollution. Mimicking ecosystems, as it is the aim in permaculture, would mean that natural resources cannot be exploited but merely make a detour before continuing their cycle in the . The owners and the gardener described it as “borrowing” and “slowing down” flows within Kosters Trädgårdar, before letting them move on (FN; Int. 1;2;3). The energy of the sun, the wind and the water are flows that are being slowed down by mixing design with ecological knowledge, which in this case was gained by observation of the nature, education and mostly by experience (Int. 1). To keep resources around for a longer time has direct effects on the food production as all of the presented resources are needed and have to be sustained to enable the food production in a first place.

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Figure 8: Design of Kosters Trädgårdar, Zones 1-3 (FN)

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Water When it comes to water, Kosters Trädgårdar managed to install a closed loop on the farm. As KT is located between slopes, the rainwater gathers in the valley. At the same time the high level of groundwater on the island pushes up through the soil during relatively moist periods, risking making the soil water-sick. By adding an underground drainage through the middle of the garden, the site was designed to store the high amount of water finding its way to Kosters Trädgårdar and to use it later on for irrigation purposes. In that manner the ecosystem was not disturbed by digging ditches or trenches, for example (Int. 4). Instead, a 2,5 m deep pond was created at the end of the garden to catch all the drained rain- and groundwater from the garden surface as well as rainwater that funnels from the slope (see Figure 8, centre & bottom). As mentioned, the water from the pond is now used to irrigate the garden beds, trees, hedges and flowers in the garden, allowing to have a water reserve for drier periods during summer months. (FN, 2020.03.18, 2020.03.23) At the same time, the pond enhances biodiversity by creating a new habitat and resting spot for wildlife, such as frogs and many bird species (Int. 4).

Another water reservoir is gained by the rainwater falling on the roof of the greenhouses, which is then gathered in 4 IBC tanks (1000L volume each). This water is used for the irrigation of the plants and trees inside the greenhouses (FN, 2020.03.20; Int. 3). The resource water is channelled, borrowed for some time and released into the soil where it is needed.

Sun and wind Kosters Trädgårdar is facing the south side, allowing the garden to capture as much light as the season allows. The most northern part of the garden has been designed to capture as much of the sun’s heat as possible, especially in winter and early spring, by using ecological sun traps. Ecological sun traps are formations of vegetation that are designed to maximize the utilization of the sun’s energy (Int. 1).

At KT, the traps consist of three layers of vegetation, incrementally increasing in height, where the lowest layer is closest to the south, allowing all layers to be equally exposed to the sunlight. (see Figure 8, top right). The first layer consists of two adjacent half-moon shaped garden beds, where the west one contains tall hedges and the east contains medicinal herbs. The herbs are shielded by an identically shaped wooden fence that stands behind the herb bed, which makes sure the heat is trapped. At the second layer, two rows of hedges are able to collect the heat that is escaping from the first layer since the hedges are taller than the wooden fence protecting the herbs. The last layer, that is closest to the owners’ private property consists of apple trees, which are spread and even taller than the hedges. The apples of these trees also serve the purpose to make apple juice and sauce to be used in the restaurant or sold in the garden shop. The efficiency of the ecological sun traps is enhanced by the fact, that they allow the plants to catch the light and sun coming from the South and at the same time to break down and block the strong North winds. At the same time, the sun traps create an ecological border between the public space of Kosters Trädgårdar open for customers and the private space of KT’s owners, which is especially important during the summer season, when an abundance of customers are on the site every day (FN, 2020.03.23).

Hence, these ecological sun traps and borders make sure that the cold wind is weakened and that the light and heat are caught and bounce back into the garden. According to the head gardener, this creates a microclimate in the already protected area, helping the soil in the garden beds to heat up quicker after winter months. This again allows the vegetable sprouts, that were grown indoors, to be planted outside earlier than on an area that would have been more exposed - 30 - to the wind and might have captured less heat (Int. 1; FN, 2020.04.03). Furthermore, combining “appropriate technology” (Holmgren, 2013) with a permaculture design might help to capture and renew energy even more efficiently and for different uses. At Kosters Trädgårdar, the technology is applied on housing and comes in forms of solar thermal collectors. The collectors absorb and store sunlight and convert it into heat that can be used when needed. They are installed on the roof of the owners’ house as well as on the restaurant. The solar thermal system is used explicitly to heat up water for both buildings (FN, 2020.03.27.-28.; Int. 2).

At the same time, the restaurant on site is equipped with a bakery using electric ovens, which, according to both of the owners of Kosters Trädgårdar, need a great amount of electricity and therefore increase the electricity costs per month (Int.1;2). At this point it must be explained that solar thermal collectors, as they exist on the restaurant’s roof differ from solar photovoltaic systems which convert sunlight into electricity that can be used for other applications than heating water (GreenCoast, 2019). Both owners of KT expressed their wish to also install a solar photovoltaic system on the restaurant roof in the future but explaining that this size of investment would need financial resources that are not available at the moment (Int.1;2). Additionally to this future project, using the resource wind more efficiently was a vision expressed by the informants 2 and 3 because it is abundant all year long on Sydkoster. A windmill producing renewable energy existed in the past but was not replaced once it ceased to function (FN, 2020.03.24, Int. 2; 3).

Soil During the ethnographic study, the word ‘soil’ was one of the most reoccurring ones. It is often forgotten that not only sun and water are crucial for the growth of plants but that nutritional and healthy soil is just as an important resource for food production. On Koster, for example, the valuing of agricultural soil is mirrored by the tradition to build houses only on rock formations in order to save the soil surfaces for agricultural purposes (FN, 2020.03.16.-17).

Different soils are being produced in different manners at Kosters Trädgårdar. As can be seen on Figure 8, a round compost is positioned centrally between the garden beds and a different compost exists on the South-Western part of the garden. The first one is a heap on which all the non-edible parts of plants and vegetables are being gathered on before and after the harvest. After one year, when the pile has been partially decomposed, pumpkins are planted in that heap in order to use the space efficiently. After two years, the heap will be fully decomposed, and three new garden beds will be formed on the same spot out of the newly gained soil. This practice implies that the garden is constantly changing according to what resources are at hand and adapted to the needs of Kosters Trädgårdar (FN, 2020.03.23). The second mentioned compost space consists of different single composts. One with dead leaves gathered after autumn, one with kitchen leftovers from the restaurant, and one with weeds that are put into plastic bags and left for three years until it generates new soil. The non-edible parts from the sheep slaughter, mentioned at an earlier point are added to the leaf or kitchen leftover compost. Meanwhile, the kitchen leftovers mainly consist of coffee grounds as the rest of the food waste is fed to the chicken who then take care of the composting (FN, 2020.03.17).

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A very location-based practice is that the garden beds at KT are manured with seaweed, which can be found abundantly on the beaches of the island. To avoid the growth of weeds on the garden beds after manuring it, the beds are covered with straw, gained from old straw bales that cannot be used for other purposes anymore (due to rain exposure or age) by farmers of the island (FN). Many different types of the produced soil are being used in the garden, whereas a small amount of the newly gained soil is being sold at the garden shop. However, the amount of soil produced at Kosters Trädgårdar is not sufficient to meet the planting soil needs, especially during the seeding season. Therefore, additional pallets of soil bags have to be bought from an outside distributor (Int. 2).

Figure 9: The first outdoor food production of the season (garlic), the still seaweed and straw- covered garden beds with the greenhouses and the restaurant in the background The previously explained soil production practices show that soil production is only achieved when a whole cycle has been completed, soil therefore representing the end but simultaneously the start of a new cycle; the plants that are growing in the garden beds will eventually (after 2- 3 years) return to the garden beds in shape of soil (FN). In this context, the CEO and the gardener/farm manager state that the food production at Kosters Trädgårdar is regenerative and can therefore be called sustainable (Int. 1). While regenerative agriculture usually exists as a farming practice on its own, it is here a result of a permaculture system. The fact that biodiversity is increasing, and that topsoil is rebuilt instead of lost within that same system counts as the main aims of regenerative agriculture, thus the name (Rhodes, 2012). The holistic management in permaculture designs gives the tools to include a minimum number of external factors into the ecosystem, allowing the system to support and regenerate itself. But, as demonstrated, the permaculture design and the animals of KT do not allow full independence from external input. Additional soil and animal fodder, for example, have to be bought because they cannot be generated on the farm (e.g. sheep fodder during winter) or not in large enough quantities (e.g. soil from composts)

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At this point, specific integrated systems and natural resource management practices have been forwarded. At Kosters Trädgårdar, however, permaculture is not only about the ecological system, a just as significant role is given to the human resource, as humans are seen as the main drivers of change (Int. 1; 2; 3; 4). The resource human will be elaborated on in the following chapter and includes people that work for or on the farm just like visitors or customers that spend time at Kosters Trädgårdar.

4.4 Permanent culture

Whereas the previous section presented the permanent agriculture aspect of permaculture, this chapter will rather elaborate on the permanent culture perspective of permaculture (elaborated in 4.1). In this case, permanent culture relates to the social factor of the food production and consumption at KT in a way that it places social relationships, opinions and strategies in the context of a societal environmental awareness rather than agricultural practices alone. According to the owners of KT, the “culture” in permaculture allows permaculture to detach itself from the common opinion of it being a step back in time where small-scale, local production and traditional agricultural knowledge are used. Instead, “culture” allows to transform the permaculture idea into a concept that may advance contemporary daily practices and lifestyles towards a more sustainable future by the means of a societal spread of the permaculture concept (Int.1; 2).

Human resource From concrete permaculture practices on the farm, concerning the harvesting of every type of energy, underlining the cycle of taking and giving back, the cultural part of permaculture presents itself as the key factor at Kosters Trädgårdar as observed during the three-week participatory observation (FN). This refers to the community, where humans are also perceived as a resource that needs to be sustained in the sense that its well-being is a central aspect. The owners and workers of Kosters Trädgårdar are responsible for the food production and keep in mind that mental and physical health play just as an important role in food security as other resources.

Running a permaculture farm is connected with hard labour, the workload depending on the season. The winter and early spring are the calmest season, offering time for maintenance work and projects that are time intensive and can therefore not be done during summer (e.g. painting, mending, restructuring, upcycling an old kiosk into a new chicken shed) (FN, Int. 2). The spring, summer and autumn are the seasons with the longest and hardest working days, often without regular working hours (Int. 1; 2; 3). Due to this fact, the people working at KT (3 permanently and 3 during the field study, including myself) meet every morning in the greenhouse and before starting to plan the working day, they take the time to get to know how everyone is feeling that day. It is an opportunity to share one’s thoughts (could also be in the form of poems, reading a passage, sharing knowledge or skills) or just to communicate something that may affect the whole group. The practice enhances the community feeling and may prevent conflicts, in case someone would prefer working alone that day and has communicated this beforehand, others would most probably not be offended. During the field study, a lot of attention was given to the team’s health, enhanced by the Coronavirus discourse, but not only. In case anyone feels unwell (e.g. tired, sad, without energy, frustrated etc.), it is taken into consideration and acted on, making flexibility concerning the work that is being done on each day, a big part of everyday life (FN).

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Just as other natural resources produce energy, the human body is also perceived as a medium producing energy through its actions and work (FN; Int. 1; 2). The zones that help designing a permaculture farm are optimized to spare human energy; they minimise the effort to complete daily tasks on the farm by placing them in close proximity to each other (Mars, 2003; FN). As mentioned, running a permaculture farm is connected with physical labour, which means that it is reflected upon which work is necessary and which work takes too much energy for its outcome. Everything that is needed or visited several times is closest to the centre of the permaculture design (see Figure 8), for example, the greenhouses, the garden beds and the restaurant, the animals, which are taken care of once to twice a day are further away from the centre of the food production. At the same time, all the projects that can be done as a team are being prioritized as it conserves energy that might be needed for other individual tasks, strengthens the team spirit, keeps up the moral and completes the work more time and quality efficiently (FN, 2020.03.24).

4.4.1 Transformative potential While the first part of the participatory research has mainly been focusing on the environmental practices that could make food production more sustainable, the potential to transform society on a broader scope towards sustainability could mainly be observed in the social relations created through permaculture and the small-scale business on site. The team I have been talking to and working with at Kosters Trädgårdar made it obvious at several times, that community is the key factor of permaculture and therefore also of a sustainable food production. In line with Gibson’ and Graham’s (2006) account of grassroots experimentation with alternative ways of living, the results show that transformative potential of the permaculture farm can grow if more people are being included and willing to learn about sustainability in order to practice it or through practicing it. One of the owners describes the role of permaculture like this:

“We really must move from looking at permaculture as a gardening system because it is not that, […] how it takes its form in a place on the physical level is depending on the culture, the people and the decisions made on the way.” (Int. 1)

According to the informant, permaculture can have many different appearances and fulfil different purposes. The food production is the most common central aspect on permaculture farms because human settlements are dependent on food. However, the owner of KT continues by stating that producing food in a sustainable way only constitutes a first step. The next step would be to mobilize people by showing the interconnections of ecosystems and teaching them how food can be produced in a sustainable way (Int. 1). This statement underlines the transition from the do-it-yourself personal dimension of change towards the broader societal dimension forwarded by Bradley and Hedrén (2014). This represents a crucial shift in the understanding of permaculture, making it move from permanent agriculture towards a permanent culture perspective.

As mentioned before, Kosters Trädgårdar describes itself as a place that inspires people by suggesting an alternative for food production but also by offering art, music, and a central meeting point for Sydkoster’s inhabitants and tourists from within and outside Sweden. This is where customers, visitors, (guest)workers and interns come into play. The gardens are open for everyone and the restaurant and the garden shop serve as meeting point. People are invited to enter the site and ask questions, stroll and look around by the KT owners and workers, but also by the design of the garden itself. The paths through and around the garden slowing down flows, in this context to keep people around for a longer time (see Figure 8). One reason for this is to - 34 - get people to buy the local products but also to explain why practices are done the way they are done and what the aim of the garden is. The local school, for example, has two small garden beds at Kosters Trädgårdar that are reserved for the children to experiment on and learn about organic vegetable growing (FN, 2020.03.23). All these subjects learn specific practices about food production and they can apply themselves or spread the word about. This strategy, which the gardener of KT summarizes with “think global, act local” (Int. 3), constitutes the main strategy of transformative social change through permaculture at Kosters Trädgårdar. Ferguson and Lovell (2015) describe the change by starting with an awareness of current environmental degradation and the combined shift in worldview that can lead to further action, hence the permaculture movement. One could therefore say that the education gained by working at (e.g. interns, WWOOFers) or by visiting (e.g. tourists, island inhabitants) KT can then have a multiplying affect, as national and international people can be reached and the gained knowledge is spread back into their own communities.

When permaculture is understood as permanent culture, the food production constitutes the key factor that attracts and mobilizes people, but it is the people around the food production who turn permaculture into a permaculture movement that can only then move towards a societal transformation movement. In that sense, permaculture at Kosters Trädgårdar can operate on different levels, on the site itself but also on a bigger scope, i.e. the Sydkoster island (FN). Kosters Trädgårdar has been born twenty-five years back with a vision of what the place could look like and what it could represent until it had the purpose it has today (Int. 1). Permaculture is therefore described as a process that can expand from one level or “zone” to another. Just like permanent agriculture, the thinking in zones or levels in permanent culture always represents zone 1 as the closest and private space like the own house, whereas the following zones designate further in distance or bigger in numbers, scope or scale (Int. 2;3). This relates to the presented perspective of Scoones et al. (2015), Gibson-Graham (2006) and Bradley and Hedrén (2014) that argue for the transformative social change starting from a bottom-up initiative, potentially broadening in scope on the basis of these local and small-scale practices.

The first zone at Kosters Trädgårdar started with building up a permaculture design that is based on stability and permanence (FN; Mars, 2003). The second zone has been reached by offering people a meeting point, showing an alternative lifestyle and spreading awareness of current non-sustainable food production systems and lifestyles. The gardener elaborated on this by stating that she would want to embed Kosters Trädgårdar in a more political context by emphasizing and communicating the critique about current environmental issues and unsustainable practices on all societal levels (Int. 3). The political critique, mixed with the demonstration of how food can be produced more sustainably with the help of permaculture, would then generate a more activist character (FN; Int. 3). The food production is no longer the centre of debate but the understanding of why food is produced this way and not in the conventional and most common way. This would imply that this specific citizen-led transformation seeks to challenge established social, economic and political structures and procedures, as Bradley and Hedrén (2014) explained.

The third zone would be to inspire people to develop a similar mind-set and eventually unite in a common cause, which is to support and promote local and small-scale initiatives and . Then again, the fourth zone would be to inspire people in a way that they would also consider working with permaculture or other small-scale, citizen-led practices (Int.1;2). As a few customers have been seen on a regular basis at Kosters Trädgårdar and some have been entered in conversation with, it turned out that a few of the customers have already built a local business at Sydkoster, that may not have permaculture gardening practices as a main - 35 - occupation, but that are indirectly connected to permaculture principles and to Kosters Trädgårdar (FN). For example is sustainable and low- tourism (e.g. hiking, biking and kayaking) promoted by a few customers, which brings economical means to themselves, to the island and at the same time supports Kosters Trädgårdar.

The small tourist companies, including Kosters Trädgårdar itself, bring the tourists to the site, where they can meet, order food and beverage, and learn more about the function of the garden, which again may broaden the scope of the societal movement permaculture. A local beer company founded by the restaurant’s manager witnesses bilateral support as the products are easily accessed by Kosters Trädgårdar and sold in the restaurant at the same time. Other people, for example, promote crafting workshops of all kind on the island and in the closest mainland town called Strömstad (e.g. weaving, pottery) (FN). During the three weeks of participatory observation, many were seen to drop by on Fridays and look around in the garden to see and ask what kind of vegetables and seeds could already be planted and what may still be too early to be planted outside etc. (FN).

At this point it needs to be stated that the resilience and sustainability of permaculture can only be guaranteed if the business at KT (restaurant, garden shop, courses) has the number of customers needed to carry on with the activities. The functioning of KT is economically dependent on customers, mostly consisting of tourists and island inhabitants. The business character of KT, even if of small-scale nature, stands in direct connection to the transformative potential of the permaculture movement. The less customers and visitors KT counts, the less the word about permaculture, sustainable food practices and alternative lifestyles can be spread outside the circuits of the farm. Furthermore, the lack of financial stability due to the lack of customers could negatively affect the food production as planting seeds, animal fodder etc. could not be afforded anymore by the owners of the farm. Therefore, it is important to note that although permaculture was used as a tool to design and sustainably run KT, the farm is still embedded in a capitalist structure. The livelihoods of KT’s owners and workers are dependent on the economic means generated by Kosters Trädgårdar. The disappearance of Kosters Trädgårdar would also mean the disappearance of an educative site in matters of sustainability. So, to reuse Gibson’s and Graham’s (2006) words, although an experimentation with community economies is pursued at KT (as will presented hereafter), the dependence on a large number of guests during the spring and summer season, could negatively impact the resilience of KT and the continuous spread of the grassroots movement.

Keeping this in mind, all these observations are provided to visualize the local net of small- scale companies and initiatives that have been built to some extent because of the example that was set by Kosters Trädgårdar. It shows that permaculture acted as a tool and guideline to construct the permaculture design and explains why one should thrive to live a more sustainable life through producing sustainable food at Kosters Trädgårdar. At the same time, it underlines the statement of the garden’s owner and head gardener; in this case, permaculture moves beyond the (gardening)practices of the movement as people are mainly oriented by the permaculture principles. The societal mobilization is gained through raising awareness about the limits to growth and offering an alternative holistic way. Which, as can be seen, also initiates creativity to build new types of locally based sustainable livelihoods among the inhabitants.

In this context, the co-owner of KT adds that permaculture is a citizen-led movement but does not have to stay that way. He continues by explaining that Sydkoster is an 8km2 that has 300 permanent residents and is part of the Strömstad municipality. All of these factors are in favour of the permaculture movement because the size and boundaries of the island allow sustainability - 36 - ideas, practices and regulations to be implemented faster and on a bigger scale. The different zones representing small communities, all the Sydkoster-inhabitants, the businesses on the island and following zones could represent the municipality, the region and even the country (Int. 2). In this context, Ferguson and Lovell (2015) explain that the worldview of permaculture “is reflected in a model of change that mostly spurns systematic engagement with existing institutions in favor of direct intervention into the means of subsistence, reintegrating production and resource management under the of local individuals and communities.” (Ferguson and Lovell, 2015, p. 4).

In that sense, the strategy of permaculture being a societal transformation that starts off by rebuilding “human-environment relations” without having to institutionalize processes of resources and their governance (Ferguson and Lovell, 2015). The permaculture movement would then still be a grassroots movement that has the potential to connect with other types of societal transformations, like for example, technology-led or state-led transformations. The owner continues by giving the example of the recycling centre that has been installed at Koster by the municipality, due to the repeated inquiries of Sydkoster inhabitants, including Kosters Trädgårdar. In his opinion, one next step among many others, could be to transform recycled products into biogas, so that the island’s moppets (most common transportation vehicles) could run on locally produced upcycled biogas, for example. In that sense, permaculture would serve as a base and could develop its transformative potential on a broader scope if it is applied in combination with other practices and mainly with other members of the community (Int. 2).

This perspective of expanding one local movement becomes clearer when the question was asked whether or not permaculture would be scalable in order to change Sweden’s food production systems. Here, all the informants responded in the same manner by first of all stating that permaculture can be practiced by everyone who is interested in sustainability issues, even in urban areas and for the one living in an apartment. Secondly, they are convinced that permaculture systems can grow but in a multiplying sense, not an up-scalable one (FN, Int. 1; 2; 3; 4). In the mentioned interviewees opinions, the global food system is not sustainable exactly because of its monocultural approach, making it less resilient to climate change and other unknown external threats impacting the food production. All informants argue that global food systems are majorly in the hands of large corporations, often detaching the food production from the world’s food demands and needs. Further consequences are that the overproduction as well as the unequal distribution of food stimulates food waste instead (FN, Int. 1; 2; 3; 4). According to both founders and the gardener of KT, 30-40% of the world’s produced food does never reach the customer, which makes the large-scale food production inefficient, although the initial idea behind large-scale monocultural systems was to build more efficient food production system than small-scale farms. In contrast, the interviewees argue that the local and small-scale character of the permaculture movement could avoid the food waste and the distribution issues by interconnecting demand and supply through direct communication of the customers and a sustainable resource management (Int. 1; 2; 3).

The gardener and founders explain the thought by suggesting that if the island would have 10 farms like Kosters Trädgårdar, which would all be interconnected in a sense that they would communicate which products or food is needed on the island and then each of the farms would adapt according to the identified needs. This would still keep the small-scale and local character and could, at the same time, make the island inhabitants less dependent to the mainland (in terms of transportation of commodities, energy and waste). If every permaculture would have a similar resource management and integrated system to the one at Kosters Trädgårdar, but all

- 37 - of the farms would grow or produce different vegetables or goods, the (bio)diversity and resilience would increase among the farms and the island (Int. 1; 2; 3).

Although these permaculture practicing infrastructures do not exist on Sydkoster at the moment of the study, Kosters Trädgårdar managed to locally promote its products on the island but also on the mainland through an existing network that is called Local Food Nodes. Customers are in direct contact with Kosters Trädgårdar by making their orders through the website. At the end of the week, one team member packs up all the orders and personally delivers them to Strömstad, the closest mainland city, where the customers pick up their orders (FN, 2020.03.27). In this way, the permaculture movement that in this case has its roots at Kosters Trädgårdar, spreads by first of all teaching people a different way of food production but also by creating a communication-based web. The web enables KT to encourage the people’s wish and/or attempt to live a more sustainable and locally based lifestyle by offering a platform that gives them access to local food and connects small-scale initiatives. Returning to Gibson’s and Graham’s perspective, the direct communication between producer and consumer Kosters Trädgårdar practices defines as the previously presented aim to have a “multitude of specific economic activities and relations” (2006, xxxiv). This described support and alliances with others, builds a network between people and concretely shows the gain in momentum of the permaculture movement from a private and very local permaculture practice towards a potential regional transformation.

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5. Concluding discussion

The aim of this thesis was to examine the transformative potential of grassroots mobilizations for sustainable food production. Scoones et al.’s (2015) typology on green societal transformations helped to orient the thesis towards the permaculture movement. The movement was treated as a case of citizen-led transformations and studied to assess the transformative potential of grassroots movements. By introducing the history of the permaculture concept, a shift in perspective of the concept could be observed. This same paradigm of the understanding of permaculture has then been transferred to the presentation of the results, where the first chapter focuses on the permanent agriculture perspective of permaculture and the second on the permanent culture perspective.

The presentation of both was necessary to understand permaculture in its entity and to respond to the 4 RQs. On one hand, the concrete visualization of permaculture design principles implemented at Kosters Trädgårdar and on the other hand the social movement growing from these practices and lifestyles, embed permaculture in the context of the suggested green transformation paths. These paths were forwarded in the SDGs 2: Zero Hunger and 12: Responsible Consumption and Production of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, but also by the Great Food Transformation forwarded by the Stockholm Resilience Center and the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems. To reach these goals both organizations call for transformations through building resilient food production systems which enhance instead of degrading it. They should maintain ecosystems, improve land and soil quality, empower small-scale producers and local economies, secure equal access to resources and allow an exchange of knowledge and skills (UN, 2015; Willett et al., 2019). Furthermore, efficient and and use of natural resources, spreading awareness about environmental depletion, reducing waste generation and consumption patterns are further suggestions to reach the goals until 2030. In that sense, the integrated and biodiverse system at Kosters Trädgårdar and the sustainable resource management due to the storing of energy flows stand in line with the environmental aspirations forwarded by the 2030 Agenda and the Great Food Transformation. Simultaneously, they answer RQ 2 by stating which ideas about sustainable food production the permaculture movement advances.

Additionally, the ideas about sustainable food production at KT relate to the presentation of grassroots movements forwarded by Scoones et al. (2015). They state that mobilizations for alternative bottom-up transformations constitute a critique to existing structural forms, using rights to food, water and energy as central role for transformation (Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015). To answer RQ 1, this concretely means that the actors permaculture mobilizes are citizens who decide to live a more local-based life through changing everyday practices and increasing the “practical making”, as Bradley and Hedrén (2014) describe it. In the case of KT, this approach focuses on starting by changing daily working, eating, consumption and socializing habits, but also production patterns, here, for example through building a that is based on permaculture principles.

At the same time, referring to the RQs 3 and 4 of how the permaculture movement seeks to change society and the food system, a bigger scope of societal transformation based on the permaculture movement could be identified. Here, it must be stated that the results did not advance information about how the permaculture practice itself is spread, in terms of people

- 39 - also building food production systems that imitate ecosystems and are based on permaculture principles. Instead, the national and international societal spread was shown through the cultural aspect of permaculture. The spread that could be observed in the scope of the ethnographic study is mirrored in different social relationships, initiatives and future projects. Here, especially responsible consumption and pedagogical measures which are central to the Kosters Trädgårdar’s operation, are in focus.

This aspect takes the permaculture movement away from the discourse about sustainable food production and instead pins it to the discourse about transformative societal change. To assess whether or not a transformative potential (see definition in 3.1) can be identified in grassroots movements such as permaculture, the SDG2 and 12 of the 2030 Agenda and the Great Food Transformation advance the idea to transform on different levels (UN, 2015; Willett et al., 2019). But, the citizen involvement is seen as the starting point from which the transformation then spreads into “multi-sector, multilevel action […]” (Willett et al., 2019, p. 476), such as politics, economy and education, for example.

Considering this idea in the frame of permaculture at Kosters Trädgårdar this starting point of the transformation can be observed. Through offering a meeting point (the greenhouses, the garden, the garden shop and the restaurant) and a design that invites people to move freely within the garden, KT build a platform for social interactions. The platform encourages the exchange of practical knowledge as well as of “ecosophical” (Aiken, 2017, p.175) and cultural approaches towards sustainable food production and lifestyles. To reuse Scoones et al.’s (2015) train of thought, it is through this educative approach towards “everyday and lifestyle politics”, that the local mobilization gains momentum by turning into diversified and democratized knowledge. This means that the knowledge and awareness gained at Kosters Trädgårdar does not stay on the site but spreads among the island and as presented in results, also in the municipality. The knowledge itself can be diversified in a way that it is not strictly attached to permaculture practices but more to sustainability issues and solutions. In this specific permaculture case, the central aspect that may elevate permaculture from a simple grassroots movement towards a grassroots movement with transformative potential is the “culturing” of sustainability (Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015, p. 15). The garden owners of KT emphasized that permaculture may not be the only solution to reach a socioecological transformation, but it could develop in potential if combined with other citizen-led transformations and parts of different types of green transformations (Int. 1; 2). At the same time, the grassroots movement at KT has already allowed to slightly combine types of transformations by, for example, including technology in the design and functioning of the site, or by helping to build a multitude of small economies on the island.

Nonetheless, the idea of grassroots movements should not be romanticized. Bradley and Hedrén (2014) remind us that the local character of grassroots practices is often criticised for failing to foster structural and institutional change. Although there is evidence of the will to “scale-up” the permaculture movement from KT into a regional and/or national socially transformative project (through multiplying actors, not through increasing scale), no evidence for a concrete consideration by the municipality or the state was given in this study. However, in the case of Kosters Trädgårdar, bottom-up mobilizations do challenge social, economic and political structures because its actors partially step out of these structures and create alternative ways of producing, living, selling and educating. The translocal spread of permaculture is achieved through the direct communication between KT and its customers, visitors and guest workers, for example. Bradley and Hedrén (2014) therefore underline that grassroots movements can be seen “as a predecessor to, and bringing about, institutional and political transformation” (p. 12). - 40 -

Yet again, the word partially needs to be underlined when discussing the challenging of economic structures. Because, even if new community-based economies are built and production/consumption patterns challenged at KT, the site itself is run as a business. Therefore, KT is still positioned in a capitalist societal structure, making it vulnerable to financial fluctuations which are linked to the number of customers it gets.

Reaching the next structural level from which the societal transformation could grow further and have a more overarching impact would be in need of a platform where non-state actors could communicate the bottom-up ideas and practices to state actors, which could then result in bigger systematic changes. At Sydkoster, for instance, the contact between Kosters Trädgårdar, the island inhabitants and the municipality (Strömstad) is already given due to the tourism and the dependence of the island to the mainland and vice versa. This could facilitate the mutual cooperation between grassroots actors of change and state actors. At the same time, it needs to be considered that the grassroots movements would lose their transformative potential in case the small-scale and local character of grassroots movements would not be adopted in state-led systematic changes. This could risk undoing the initial structural and political critique, in which permaculture acted as a tool to step out of in a first place, and lead to a potential fallback into business-as-usual instead (Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015; Routledge, Cumbers and Derickson, 2018). Nevertheless, Routledge et al. (2018) argue that grassroots movements such as permaculture “can bring the state into a space of engagement and negotiation rather than domination” (p. 84). This is due to the bottom-up approach, the creation of alternative practices and lifestyles as well as the citizen-led action confronting the status-quo, which remain a critical force (Gibson-Graham, 2006; Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015; Routledge, Cumbers and Derickson, 2018).

To conclude it can be said that the permaculture movement that was studied at Kosters Trädgårdar showed very specific permaculture practices due to the location and the individual designs its owners created for the past 25 years. However, the worldview that comes with the permaculture principles is not restricted to a location in which people practice them. Instead, the thesis showed that Kosters Trädgårdar acts as an initiator for the spread of ecological knowledge through a sustainable food production system. Hereby, permaculture transmits a different perspective on the three pillars of sustainable development. Figuratively speaking, it changes the structure of the current system by prioritizing the environment and using it as a basis for the well-being of the society. Only within these circles, economic activities are included for the empowerment of small-scale producers and social interactions, as without the environmental and the societal level, the economic level could not persist in the long-term. Through changing the attention given to each one of these 3 pillars of sustainable development, the socioecological transformation that is targeted in the 2030 Agenda can be found in citizen- led grassroots movements such as permaculture. This thesis also elaborated that permaculture cannot be seen as a quick solution but rather as a transitional process that can spread through local and small-scale citizen and community initiatives. On that way it has the potential to gain in momentum through institutionalization in case a cooperation between non-state and state actors is secured.

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6. Acknowledgements

Many thanks go to the supervisor of this thesis, Dr. Eva Lövbrand, for her tireless commitment of supporting me during these past few months. Her advice and constructive critique have guided me along this thesis, opened new perspectives when I couldn’t see any and encouraged me during the whole research and writing process.

I would also like to warmly thank Kosters Trädgårdar for giving me the opportunity to realize my ethnographic study. They welcomed me into their daily lives, inspired me and taught me that big projects also start small. The respective people know who is meant by this and although this risks to sound overdone, I thank you for your for open minds, warm hearts and courageous souls.

Last but not least I would like to thank my mother, my father, Jakob, the Lisas, Katrin and Maja for everything they have done to support me, no further explanations needed.

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URL

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Tables and Figures

Table 1: Overview and details of interviews conducted

Figure 1: The 3 core tenets & the 12 permaculture principles – retrieved from Permaculture Principles (2019) Available at: https://permacultureprinciples.com/principles/ 2019.11.15, 15:00

Figure 2: Location of KT in Sweden - retrieved from Google Maps on 2020.05.09, 16:50

Figure 3: Close-up of the Koster Islands and the mainland - retrieved from Google Maps on 2020.05.09, 16:50

Figure 4: Underground egg storage at KT – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 5: Area designated for the feeding of the chicken, which enhances the soil production – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 6: The pregnant sheep and young sheep in their winter shelter at KT – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 7: The 5 bee colonies in a remote area of KT – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 8: Design of Kosters Trädgårdar, Zones 1-3 (FN) – retrieved from Fieldnotes 2020.05.03

Figure 9: The first outdoor food production of the season (garlic), the still seaweed and straw-covered garden beds with the greenhouses and the restaurant in the background – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 10: Entry to Kosters Trädgårdar – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 11: The straw-covered garden beds in early spring surrounded by fruit trees and berry hedges. The garden shop shows in the background and the 1-year-old compost heap is on the far right of the image – picture taken during participatory observation - 48 -

Figure 12: New garden beds made out of the new soil gained out of the 2-year-old compost heap – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 13: Collage showing the greenhouse annuals and perennials in their early growing stage – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 14: The seasonal planning for outdoor garden beds for food production at KT – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 15: Chicken in their outside enclosure (left) and their shelter inside the greenhouse (right) – picture taken during participatory observation

Figure 16: Backside of KT, showing the pond (left), the restaurant (middle), sheep enclosure (right) – picture taken during participatory observation

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Appendix I Interview guide

Presentation of the person and environment - How old are you? - Where are you from? - What is your educational background? - What is your profession? - Is it a different profession than before you came to Kosters Trädgårdar?

Kosters Trädgårdar - (for owners only) What was your vision when you opened Kosters Trädgårdar? - (for employees only) Why did you decide to come to Kosters Trädgårdar? - What is your role/task here? - What does your regular working day at Kosters Trädgårdar look like? - How would you describe Kosters Trädgårdar? - How, when and where did you first get in contact with permaculture?

Permaculture at KT - Kosters trädgårdar describes itself as a permaculture farm. What characterizes permaculture according to you? - What specific practices or strategies do you use that can be defined as permaculture? - Which practices/strategies are not represented at KT? - Do you need a certain area of land at your disposal to execute permaculture? Are there other conditions that need to be fulfilled before you can work with permaculture? (Employees, animals, housing, tools etc.)

Societal transformation and food systems - What is sustainability according to you? - Do you think there are different levels to sustainability? - How is permaculture linked to sustainability? - How would you define a sustainable food production? - Do you think the global food production is sustainable the way it is at the moment? If yes, why? If not, what needs to change to make the food system sustainable? - The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that was adopted in 2015 includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals. To reach these goals the UN calls for societal transformation. What do you think needs to transform in order for society to become sustainable? - Do you see permaculture as a farming practice, or is it a broader societal movement? - What role does community play in permaculture? - Do you think everyone can practice permaculture? Does it take any previous knowledge/skills to work with permaculture? - What is the respective role of governments, business, civil society in the transformation towards sustainability? - Where would you say permaculture is positioned in the discussion about societal change to achieve a sustainable food production and lifestyles? - Do you think permaculture has the potential to transform business-as-usual? How can small-scale farming make a difference? Is permaculture up-scalable?

Follow-up questions - Would you say practicing permaculture can cover all 3 pillars of sustainable development? (society, economy, environment) - Would you say permaculture allows the practitioners to be independent? (concerning buying additional food, fodder, energy) - How is it on this farm? - Would you say permaculture increases the resilience of the practitioners’ livelihoods towards external threats? (financial fluctuations, natural catastrophes etc.)

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Appendix II Letter of Consent

Please take a moment to read this information carefully and ask additional questions. Contact details can be found at the end of this document.

1. Background and aim of the study This research forms part of a thesis project within the Master’s programme in Science for Sustainable Development at Linköping University (LiU), Sweden. The thesis examines grassroots mobilizations for sustainable food production, with a particular focus on the permaculture movement. The project seeks to understand the permaculture movements’ transformative visions, strategies and practices for sustainable food.

2. What will the study involve and why have you been invited to take part? The study involves ethnographic field work at Kosters Trädgårdar on Sydkoster and will include participatory observation, interviews/focus groups and photographs. The photographic data will not show people unless verbal consent is given beforehand. The researcher will take field notes of observations made during the participatory research. The interviews and focus groups will be recorded and later transcribed for further analysis. If you do not wish to be recorded, you can decide if the researcher is allowed to take detailed field notes instead. You have been invited to take part in this study due to your expertise on, and experience with, the permaculture movement.

3. Can I withdraw from the study? You are welcome to ask any questions about the study before deciding whether to participate. In case you decide to participate, you may withdraw yourself and the data you have provided at any time by informing the researcher of your decision. You do not have to provide reasons for your withdrawal.

4. What happens to the research data provided and will the research be published? The provided research data (transcripts of interviews and focus groups, photographs and the researcher’s field notes) will be handled confidentially and only be processed by the researcher and the supervisor of this thesis. To ensure transparency in the thesis evaluation, the collected research data will be safely stored by LiU up to one year after the final thesis examination. In this master’s thesis your answers will remain anonymous and a nickname will be attributed to you if your comments are being quoted. The thesis will be published by LiU Electronic Press (http://www.ep.liu.se).

5. Who do I contact if I have a concern about the study? If you have a concern about any aspect of this study, please do not hesitate to speak to the researcher Sue Schmit and/or her supervisor Associate Prof. Eva Lövbrand. In case you have a complaint concerning the provided data, you can consult the LiU data protection officer or the Swedish Data Protection Authority.

______Date & researcher’s signature Date & participant’s signature

Participant’s name & surname: Sue Schmit Master student at Linköping University

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Appendix III

Figure 10: Entry to Kosters Trädgårdar

Figure 11: The straw-covered garden beds in early spring surrounded by fruit trees and berry hedges. The garden shop shows in the background and the 1-year-old compost heap is on the far right of the image

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Figure 12: New garden beds made out of the new soil gained out of the 2-year-old compost heap

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Figure 13: Collage showing the greenhouse annuals and perennials in their early growing stage

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Figure 14: The seasonal planning for outdoor garden beds for food production at KT

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Figure 15: Chicken in their outside enclosure (left) and their shelter inside the greenhouse (right)

Figure 16: Backside of KT, showing the pond (left), the restaurant (middle), sheep enclosure (right)

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