Description
Recent geopolitical developments, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, US ‘tariff wars’, and, in particular, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have put questions of supply security back on the agenda for European countries. This new focus on supply security is perhaps particularly visible in the area of food supply, and stands in sharp contrast to the de-securitization of food that followed the end of the Cold War. This paper takes a closer look at Sweden, which is a particularly illustrative case, where the entry into EU in the 90’s saw previous emphasis on preparedness and stockpiling policies as part of total defence, turn into food policies that emphasised international competitiveness and just-in-time distribution. The recent turn ‘back’ to total defence strategies include food preparedness and draw a lot of its vocabulary from the historical total defence tradition. But it remains unclear to what extent food supply really is becoming part of the new security agenda. In the paper, we seek to understand the dynamics of food as a security problem. Using Swedish parliamentary data covering the last 100 years, the development of food as a security issue in the Swedish national context is analysed, capturing periods of both securitization and de-securitization of food. By understanding more about how food security has been part of defence and preparedness policy debates historically, we contribute to a better understanding of the conditions affecting the current state of food security and preparedness policy in Sweden, which hopefully can inform the broader understanding of this issue in the European countries.
