New Pathways to a low carbon society: exploring the beef/dairy system as a community of interest.

Based on Norway's political obligations related to climate mitigation, NEWPATH is focusing on lock-in and path dependency within the dairy/beef value chain. We explore how path dependency can limit system changes that would allow for dairy and beef production with a lower carbon footprint. The project employs an interdisciplinary approach to understand the relationship between value chain actors, and how socio-cultural, economic and technological lock-ins occur. Based on empirical research, NEWPATH also develops political recommendations to reduce path dependency and contribute to more climate-friendly dairy/beef production. The first step of the project involved understanding how the system looks and functions, by mapping links and lock-ins in both the farming sector and wider sectors of the community. Analyses of lock-ins at the farm level show how changing lifestyle preferences and role expectations, in line with the larger societal development, make farmers purchase milking robots, involving large investments and farm adaption, to obtain increased flexibility and increase the possibility of farm succession. Furthermore, this development brings increased competition for land, which again leads to various emission-generating solutions, such as the cultivation of peatland, renting of distant fields and conversion of arable production to fodder with the negative consequences to the climate that these solutions bring about. This study illustrates how mitigation measures might be made more effective by understanding and addressing the broader cultural/structural environment within which farmers and their families are located. Findings concerning emission-generating solutions related to the increased robot-trend is challenged by the economic analyses at the farm level. Here, the results indicate that farms with the newest technology (milking robot) produce more intensively (i.e. the same amount of milk with less input) than other farms, and thus probably with fewer emissions per liter produced milk. Whether the milking robot has a positive or negative influence on total emission numbers is not known, but still, this general farm development has some negative consequences for the climate that should be dealt with. The project also includes an agent-based model that supports various socio-cultural and economic lock-in findings revealed at the farm level. In addition, we have found important lock-ins within the further value chain of milk and meat. The findings show that even though there is a desire for lower emission production, increased volume and efficiency in dairy and beef production are still promoted, combined with moderate measures to reduce emissions. The modesty in measures is among other things due to the perception that the opportunity for change only extends to the point where it is possible to combine climate gains with economic gains. Our findings on this indicate that the dairy and meat sector cannot be expected to reach the goal of reduced climate emissions on their own initiative. Voluntary treaties and pointed sector responsibility will not suffice. More radical changes seem to depend upon both push and pull actions from forces outside the agricultural system. The stakeholder groups discussing change scenarios requested a more holistic understanding and approach to climate challenges in agriculture, where resource use, land use, structural development, and landscape to a greater extent is seen as connected. Policy change should mainly employ a structural perspective, and establish incentives that both influence farmers to do climate-smart farming, and ensure reduced emissions in line with the overall political goals.

NEWPATH reveals quite limited room for maneuver both on-farm and in the wider value chain of dairy and meat, in a way that clarifies the improbability of significant emission-reducing changes being voluntary carried out by the farmers. The results also make it clear that nor would the remaining value chain work towards this. Thus, today?s strategies, such as voluntary agreements and pointing to sectoral responsibility seem not to be the best way to obtain requested emission reductions. Hence, this structural approach offers a less fronted perspective that may add important insight both in debates and in connection to political decisions regarding climate and agriculture.

The White Paper on climate change (Report No. 21 (2011-2012)) and the 2012 climate agreement in Stortinget (Innst. 390 S (2011-2012) require a commitment to radical reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, involving every level of society. However, there is a lack of research addressing the underlying framework conditions and policy instruments that currently lock social-systems into carbon intensive development pathways. NEWPATH examines the case of path dependency and lock-in in the beef/dairy value cha in in Norway as a 'community of interest'. Beef/dairy is important because of its connection with sustainable rural communities, the growing demand for beef in Norway, and the targeting of the sector by the authorities for considerable emission cuts. We t ake a value chain perspective in order to explore how other sectors ranging from transport to consumers create path-dependencies within the production system. NEWPATH takes an interdisciplinary approach to addressing this issue. In particular, social res earch advised by actor network and convention theories is used to generate qualitative and quantitative data for the agent-based model that forms the centre of the project. The model will then be used to run scenarios for decreasing carbon output from the beef/dairy value chain through policy mechanisms. Scenario analysis consulting key stakeholders will then be used to explore the wider consequences of such reduction (e.g. economic, environmental, social) and policies to promote transformation suggested. The outcome of NEWPATH will be a better understanding of how lock-in mechanisms may prevent social transformation into low carbon systems and how policy instruments can 'unlock' such systems. Because of the scope of the issue (lock-in across the entire chain) and the interdisciplinary nature of the research NEWPATH will meet many challenges. However, the outcome will be essential knowledge for meeting Norway's climate change obligations over the coming decades.