Torsåker Farm
Torsåker Farm is Axfoundation's development center for future food and materials. Here, we aim to accelerate the transition to sustainable materials and food systems - for the benefit of the climate, the environment, and public health. Together with researchers and practitioners, we take on complex challenges and develop concrete solutions - whether in the soil, in the water, or in Ladugården’s (the Barn’s) test kitchens and test facilities.
From Soil to Soil
At Torsåker Farm, we evaluate sustainable farming and aquaculture methods, test-grow both new and traditional crops for food and bio-based materials, and identify waste streams to create circular solutions. The results from the fields and water are brought to Ladugården’s (the Barn’s) test facilities, where we can refine new ideas and address infrastructural challenges before scaling them up. Our ambition is to accelerate the pace of innovation in sustainable materials and food.
Sustainable Food Systems
The global production and consumption of food drastically affects the climate, the environment and human health. We are consuming food far beyond planetary boundaries. To safeguard our food supply, more initiatives are needed that make concrete contributions to the transition to sustainable food systems.
Sustainable Materials Systems
Global economic growth has dramatically increased material consumption, making it a leading driver of climate change. To transition to circular materials systems, we need more practical solutions that efficiently utilize raw materials and existing material flows – while also creating business value.
About Torsåker Farm
Torsåker Farm is a test farm and a practical development center for the sustainable food and materials systems of the future. Since 2017, Axfoundation has been exploring the future of food here, and starting in 2023, the site is also being developed to explore the future of materials. The farm is located in Upplands Väsby, about 30 km north of Stockholm. It includes:
- Fields, meadows, forest land, and an experimental garden
- The Barn with four test kitchens, a restaurant kitchen, a bakery, and a packaging room
- Meeting facilities and a seminar hall
At Torsåker Farm, projects are conducted in collaboration with researchers and practitioners, and therefore the farm is not open to the public.
Knowledge Exchange and Practical Innovation
At Torsåker Farm, actors from across the value chain come together for knowledge exchange and engage in practical innovations. As an independent and non-profit organization, Axfoundation brings together both industry and academia to take on challenges that are too complex for a single actor to tackle alone.
The entire food chain is represented here – researchers, farmers, fishermen, processors, chefs, entrepreneurs, and representatives from retail and wholesale – working together to test-grow, raise, process, and develop new methods, new foods and new meals.
Additionally, in the materials sector, representatives from different parts of the ecosystem who typically wouldn’t collaborate, also come together to pursue a common goal: To develop commercially viable solutions solutions in everything from material shifts to system innovation. Our only competitor is the unsustainable production and consumption.
We hope that Torsåker Farm will be a catalyst that contributes to the development of future food through knowledge transfer and sustainable innovations in everything from primary production to consumption.
– Madeleine Linins Mörner, Program Director for Future Food, Axfoundation
At Torsåker Farm, researchers are given the opportunity to conduct practical tests in the fields together with farmers. For example, Axfoundation and SLU are currently adapting and refining perennial wheat at Torsåker farm, for cultivation in a northern climate.
In the experimental garden, trials are being conducted with new fertilizers and soil amendments made from bio-based materials. A few materials that have caught our interest are, among others, reed and wool.
In the Fields
Torsåker Farm has fields, meadows, woodlands and an experimental garden for open field cultivation. This gives us the opportunity to practically test methods, techniques and crops that contribute to a sustainable transformation of agriculture. Together with practitioners and researchers, we evaluate, for example, sustainable cultivation methods with a low climate impact, test cultivation techniques for increased biodiversity, try innovative soil amendements, and we experiment with crops that could contribute to a Swedish protein shift or be used for bio-based materials. Torsåker Farm also conducts research aimed at developing perennial crops for a Nordic climate.
Torsåker Farm develops attractive, sustainable and nutritious seafood products. For example, a production chain for underutilized fish species has been developed, which has resulted in a minced bream product made from bycatch from Swedish lakes.
In the Water
To contribute to a blue protein shift, Axfoundation is running several seafood projects with researchers, fishermen and fish farmers. At Torsåker Farm, we then evaluate the results together with chefs and entrepreneurs, with the aim of developing attractive, sustainable and nutritious seafood products that suit people’s everyday lives. Axfoundation has for example collaborated with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to develop a pilot-scale infrastructure to convert vegetable-based waste streams into a high-protein feedstock for farmed fish. The result is Sweden’s first green rainbow trout, bred on a circular-based feed made mainly of insects raised on a diet of food waste – a project that has widened its approach to develop the future feed for fish, pigs, poultry and laying hens.
The test kitchen operations enable innovators to make the leap from sustainable ideas to finished solutions. For example, tests are currently being conducted in the kitchens to examine how we can tap into the potential of unused waste streams from the food industry and contribute to circular solutions.
In the Test Kitchens of Ladugården
Ladugården at Torsåker Farm houses four test kitchens, a restaurant kitchen, a bakery, and packaging facilities. The test kitchens are Axfoundation’s innovation arena, providing practical support for researchers and entrepreneurs. The goal of the test kitchen operations is to sow the seeds for the sustainable, nutritious and tasty foods of the future and make it possible to evaluate solutions in practice before they are scaled up. Our ambition is to work together to accelerate sustainable food innovation.
The Innovation Support provides access to Torsåker Farm’s test kitchens and is designed to help further develop your sustainable innovation.
Innovation Support for Sustainable Solutions
At Torsåker Farm we also offer practical innovation support to entrepreneurs and researchers who want to further develop innovative, transformative solutions within sustainable food systems or related areas. A prerequisite for the support is that your innovation has the potential to positively contribute to a more sustainable society, locally and/or globally. Learn more at axfoundation.se/en/innovation-support
We want to help more sustainable, tasty and nutritious products and meals find their way onto grocery store shelves and restaurants. We believe in raising the bar for all the foods we consume, and exploring innovations that work in ordinary people’s everyday lives.
– Anna Henning Moberg, Head of Operations, Torsåker Farm
Around the Table
Axfoundation is a “do tank.” We believe in less talk and more action. Through the projects we run, entrepreneurs from the same industry, as well as researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers, come together around the same table to solve problems. It could be a hands-on workshop about circular solar panels or a practical knowledge seminar on potential protein crops. The goal is to understand each stakeholder’s needs, enhance collaboration, address challenges, and jointly find new practical solutions.
Our ambition for Torsåker Farm in the future is to be a place for actors who want to accelerate the transition to circular and resource-efficient materials systems.
– Hanna Hobohm Skoog, Program Director, Future Materials, Axfoundation
