This Platform Matches Farmers & Landowners To Boost Local Food Systems In Sweden

Editor’s Note: The following information is derived from an interview between the Agritecture team and Jonathan Naraine, Co-founder, Architect & Food System Designer of The Foodprint LAB, and Co-founder & Project Manager of Grow Here.

Sweden has long been heralded as a leader in forward-thinking food policies. From initiatives targetting food waste, to an inspiring plan to achieve the hefty goal of net zero GHG emissions from agriculture by 2045, Sweden is in many respects paving the path forward for a more sustainable agricultural system. 

And yet, even this eco-conscious country is not free of unsustainable agricultural practices. 

According to a 2018 market analysis from Flanders Investment and Trade Agency, half of all food sold in Swedish stores is imported. They report that “Sweden has traditionally been more or less self-sufficient in basic foods like meat, dairy products and cereals. However, during the last two decades, especially since joining the EU in 1995, imports have shown a steady yearly increase, also regarding the basic ‘domestic’ products.” 

This increasingly globalized food system has a heightened environmental impact, as well as increasing the likelihood of disruption along the supply chain. 

Growing awareness of these problems has led to an increased interest among Swedish consumers in sourcing locally-grown food and growing their own produce at home. There has been an explosion of local food markets to meet this demand, with customers looking to prioritize transparency and sustainability in their food choices. 

This booming interest in local farming has exposed some fundamental weaknesses in the local food model in Sweden. Issues in accessibility stem not from a lack of fertile land — 6.2% of Sweden's total land is arable, according to World Bank Data from 2018 — but rather from a lack of connection between farmland-owners and growers.

Noticing that this problem of access was blocking the potential of an increasingly localized food system, Jonathan Naraine decided to take action. Based in the city of Gothenburg, he had already been organizing urban farm “safaris” (tours) since 2011. He would often hear from new farmers that one of their greatest challenges was simply knowing how to access available farmland. So, in 2016, he co-founded a community initiative called Grow Gothenburg, now renamed as Grow Here, with the intention of creating a platform to easily connect new growers with land-owners in and around the city. The project was designed to be scalable to other cities in Sweden, and eventually across the world.

Naraine explains that the initiative “is essentially a sharing platform for farmland and farms, with the vision of a world where everyone can grow their own food or buy it from a local farmer. Our mission is to co-create local regenerative food systems all over the world in urban and rural areas by empowering local farmers through the matchmaking of land, knowledge and people.”

In his view, the Grow Here platform is multifaceted, solving three major agricultural challenges at once. 

Firstly and most fundamentally, it makes information of potential farmland and existing farms more accessible via an interactive digital map. This allows new growers to get an overview of farmland and farms, thus removing a barrier to access. Secondly, it facilitates a connection between land-owners and potential farmers, creating a mutually beneficial relationship with the possibility of social, ecological, and financial reward. 

Finally, the platform makes it more economically viable for growers to find suitable urban farming spaces. Here, the property owners can often aid in the financial costs of setting up agricultural infrastructure, “building up the main infrastructure of the farm, whether it's soil or beds, or structures like fencing, and so on,” such that growers take on less of the financial burden.

Naraine has been involved in the field of regenerative agriculture for many years, and is currently working on his Master thesis in architecture, which focuses on how design and physical planning can be used to facilitate more local regenerative food systems. 

In focusing on the potential of regenerative farming, he envisions a food system which can mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss, while feeding communities with local, nutritious food, and making societies more resilient. 

In practice, this platform facilitated the creation of multiple sustainable urban meeting places, as well as some more or less agriculturally self-sufficient household communities. Naraine highlights a collaboration with a landowner in Gothenburg, who owns several cultural and historical buildings in the city. He explains that “on one of the properties, we even created two farms. The plot was an unused lawn outside a former stable for a military building, and it's a really beautiful area. We worked together with a building antiquarian to design a community garden and collective market garden-style farm, which was initially actually a commercial farm, and later developed into a cooperative farm.”

Currently, this land serves as a collective garden for eight households, and allows them to be more or less self-sufficient on vegetables during the summer. “The farms really also created a strong social community where growers can learn from each other. And so I think we delivered quite a lot of value on this previously unused land.” 

Another successful implementation of this initiative includes what is known in Swedish as tillsammansodlingar (which translates to “together farms”). For this project, The Grow Here platform facilitated the transformation of parking lots into a “green oasis” of a collective garden and meeting place at Musikens hus. Similarly, they created a farm on the former “asphalt desert” of the entrance to the slaughterhouse area of Gothenburg, which is being transformed into a food hub for the whole city. “With a farm, we were able to actually lift up the whole face of the area, to look more attractive, and to be more active as well, so it felt more safe. I think all of these farms show in different ways how farming can add a lot of value for the whole community, but also for the property owners.”

Naraine also notes that the City of Gothenburg is actively working to promote a culture of urban growing. 

“The City of Gothenburg is one of the pioneers in Sweden in terms of urban farming. Since 2012, the Property Department has had a budget [for urban farming], and we actually have a couple of people working full-time at the city administration in supporting and facilitating urban farms. They work all the way from small-scale gardens close to housing areas, up to farms of several hectares. In fact, they have about 3,000 hectares of farmland in and around Gothenburg. They also have testbeds and an incubator called Stadsbruk, for people who want to grow commercially and try their wings as an urban farming business, and then scale up to the bigger land that they have in the countryside.”

For the so-called “garden box,” Naraine shares that the municipality supports interested hobby gardeners by investing in and financially supporting garden groups and associations. This, alongside incubator programs like Stadsbruk, are helping the Swedish population to start their own urban farming businesses. “It's really nice to know that the city sees the potential and is actively working to transform this unused farmland that’s currently used as grazing land for horses, but could produce lots of food. Little by little, we can transform these spaces back to farmland and increase the food production in Gothenburg.”

Building on the success of the Grow Here platform, Naraine and his team are now expanding their vision to create the We Grow Here community, which will allow them to attain “global outreach, and ultimately create more of a global community.” 

Not only do they want to expand their reach beyond Sweden to support farmers across the globe, but Naraine sees even more potential in the services they can provide as a community. 

Interested in becoming a part of the Community or using the Grow Here platform?

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