Technovisions for Food Security as Sweden Restores Its Civil Defence

Abstract

After three decades of demobilising the Swedish defence sector following the end of the Cold War, Sweden recently revived civil defence planning, including new instructions to plan for food security in the event of war. This policy shift has raised questions as to how farming’s vulnerability to disruptions differs today from in the Cold War era, as well as how this vulnerability might best be mitigated. This article presents and discusses key vulnerabilities in Swedish farming as perceived by farmers and some technological solutions to these envisioned by rural entrepreneurs. The focus is on technologies that could increase farm-level self-sufficiency and decrease vulnerability to trade disruptions. Using a sociotechnical imaginaries framework, to which we contribute the concept of ‘technovisions’, we highlight how farmers’ perceptions of potential technological solutions are embedded in social, material and moral values. We conclude that the technovisions presented, based on the production of renewable fuels, can contribute to reducing dependency on imported fuel and fertilisers and thus decrease vulnerability, and that these technovisions are placed firmly within a productionist imaginary of how food security can be achieved.