Balancing tensions for just transition: A case study of an agricultural cooperative’s climate initiative

Recent years have witnessed an increasing corporate interest in food system climate actions – concurrent with a delay in public authorities’ willingness to implement effective policies in the sector. Within the field of just food system transitions, there is growing concern that mitigation activities are being strategically slowed down with social justice arguments. Yet the roles and responsibilities of private sector actors have been understudied. We highlight the agricultural cooperative as a particularly interesting case for examining how the tensions between social justice and sustainability are navigated in practice. Through our case study on the Finnish dairy manufacturer Valio and its Climate program we examine whether just transition provides an arena for cooperatives to regain their role as transformative agents in food systems. Our results, based on a qualitative case study, indicate that the dairy cooperative foregrounds farmer-owners’ recognition and economic benefits and offers sustainable intensification as the main sustainability pathway. We conclude that sustainability and justice are both understood narrowly in and through the program. Further, we suggest that the cooperative structure may create impediments for realizing ambitious and timely climate targets, especially if the actions have potential to disrupt the core elements of cooperative members’ operations. This raises broader questions about the role of agricultural cooperatives in realizing just transitions, as well as the dynamics of public-private governance in food system transitions. Critical attention is needed to ensure the societal accountability of private-sector involvement in just and sustainable food systems governance.