Full case study report: Upplandsbondens - Sweden

Summary

Upplandsbondens (UB) is a farmer owned cooperative that was established in 2006. There are approximately 100 members. All members are organically certified meat-producing farmers (beef, mutton, pork) in the county of Uppland, Sweden (figure 1). UB is certified according to the organic certification KRAV, the Swedish organic standard, which is somewhat harsher on e.g. animal husbandry than the EU organic regulation. The overall value chain in which the bulk of the meat is channelled is comprised of the farmers, the UB cooperative (in which only farmers are members), slaughterhouses, meat wholesalers, retail shops and consumers. UB negotiates prices and looks for market solutions for its members. Market partners have changed throughout the years. The largest volumes of meat are channelled via a large meat wholesaler based in Stockholm, to supermarkets all over Sweden (a national retailer). This meat is sold under the retailer’s own organic brand and thus the meat cannot be identified as UB meat. UB has its own brand for meat that is processed and sold in the Uppland region only. During the time of the case study data collection (2014), only retail shops that could cut up and package their meat themselves could sell under this brand since the wholesaler UB works with locally did not yet have the facilities to cut and package. Thus, only a minor part of the meat from UB members can be identified as such. Other (smaller) volumes of the meat are sold directly to consumers in meat-boxes1 , to a restaurant wholesaler or in public procurement processes. Many of the member farmers also sell meat directly from their farms, but this is outside of the UB value chain. Figure 1. Map of Sweden and the county of Uppland (just north of the Greater Stockholm region), where all 107 UB farms are located. 1 Discontinued since Autumn 2014 because the meat box entrepreneur went out of business. 5 UB is interesting in the HealthyGrowth project for several reasons. First, while regional organic food is not new in Sweden, it is a small market and larger efforts such as UB are still very scarce. Second, despite the fact that many experts say there is great demand for regional/local organic food, and despite the fact that the UB farmers want to deliver just that, they experience significant obstacles in reaching their local consumers and have been trying in different ways since the start. Third, the potential for a mid-scale initiative such as UB in the Stockholm metropolitan area, and in a context where Uppsala municipality has decided to procure 100% organic food, is very large and thus interesting to follow. Finally, UB is interesting since it is an initiative based on cooperative ideals, in a market dominated by profit-seeking businesses. The value chain in focus is the one that UB wants to develop: where their meat is sold under their own brand to retailers in the Uppland region via a regional meat wholesaler.