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Gunnar Rundgren

Gunnar Rundgren has worked with most parts of the organic farmer sector – from farming to policy - since 1977, starting on the pioneer organic farm, Torfolk. Founder and Senior Consultant of Grolink AB, he worked for several United Nations agencies and development cooperation organizations including the World Bank. He was a World Board member of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements 1998 and the president 2000-2005. He has written several books, the latest being Global Eating Disorder. Curretly, he runs a small farm with vegetables, fruits and nuts as well as a handful of cows.

spider web

A life on our planet – review

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

Because the film is so compelling and Attenborough such a sympathetic person, viewers may accept all of its statements and arguments. This would, however, be a mistake in my opinion.

  • October 29, 2020
Palm oil

Of mice, men and elephants

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth Blog

In most prevailing sustainability narratives, increased efficiency is a prominent component. It is a prerequisite for the supposed possibility to combine decreasing pressure on natural resources with economic growth.

  • October 22, 2020
Card trick

Is the Green Deal a card shuffle trick?

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

Neither empirical evidence not the application of green technologies or practices discussed in this article support that economic growth can be combined with reduced resource demands.

  • October 5, 2020
first electric car

What a Milk Carton Can Tell Us

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

My milk package, the electric cars, agriculture land use and the wood saving stoves are all examples showing why overall reduction in resources use or emissions (absolute decoupling) through substitution and efficiency is a pipe dream in a growth economy.

  • August 11, 2020
Vertical farming Mongolia 2015

Do We Need Farmfree Food?

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

Instead of de-coupling human civilization from nature, we need to live in and by nature. We are fooling ourselves and betray the rest of the living by pretending we are a species that doesn't need the rest of the living – after all we are nature.

  • May 4, 2020
pop up market

Build a Future Outside of the Market

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

It is astonishing that so little of the food debate is enlightened by a proper understanding what the main driver of the food system is: Markets or even more precisely, capitalist markets (today, one can hardly find a market that is not capitalist).

  • April 21, 2020
Swedish landscape

Ask a Reductionist Question and You will Get a Reductionist Answer

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

In the article “Towards better representation of organic agriculture in life cycle assessments” in Nature sustainability, van der Werf, Knudsen and Cederberg, from France, Denmark and Sweden respectively demonstrate the inadequacy of LCA for comparisons between conventional production systems and agro-ecological and organic systems.

  • April 13, 2020
Sims Hill Shared Harvest CSA

To Feed or to Profit? To Eat or to Consume?

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

We can no longer let the distribution method - the market - dictate how we farm and how we eat. We need to develop new tools and institutions in order to cater for the many functions of food and farming.  A process of decommodification should be at the core of the alternative food movement.

  • January 24, 2020
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