Ecodistrict Sörmland
Ecological transition can't be left to farmers alone. It takes producers, municipalities, businesses and residents pulling in the same direction, in a place with something real to build on. Sörmland is that place: 21% of its farmland is already organic, third-highest of any Swedish region, with active producers and networks already working the ground. Ekodistrikt Sörmland — Sweden's first ecodistrict — exists to bring those pieces together deliberately, rather than leaving that potential to chance.
An ecodistrict, as the EU's own Organic Action Plan defines it, is a geographical area where farmers, residents, tourism businesses, associations and public authorities agree on how to manage local resources sustainably, using ecological principles as the shared ground rule. It's a deliberately wide net: not just farming, but lifestyle, diet, human relations and the land itself, all treated as one connected system. Done well, it raises the market value of what local farms produce, simply because people recognise and trust where it came from. The idea sits inside the EU's broader push for organic farming: Action 14 of its Organic Action Plan, aimed at strengthening local and small-scale food production and shortening the distance between grower and plate. There are already 60 ecodistricts across Europe, loosely connected through the International Network of Eco Regions, with the Global Alliance for Organic Districts working to spread the model further still.
One region, many hands, one food system worth growing. Sweden's first ecodistrict, built to last.
Ekodistrikt Sörmland is Sweden's contribution to that network, the first of its kind in the country, and in the wider Baltic region. It covers the whole of Södermanland County and the southern part of Stockholm County: a landscape with room for a living countryside, cities fed on healthy, local food, and a working relationship between the two.
The work has already been recognised. In 2024, Bio-District Sörmland won Best Organic District at the EU Organic Awards, with Kalf & Hansen, one of the businesses inside the district, winning Best Organic Restaurant the same year. In June 2025, the ecodistrict took its most important step yet: it formed itself into an independent non-profit association, with its own board, so the work continues regardless of what happens to the project that started it. Two months later, Bio-District Sörmland stood alongside other EU award-winners on a panel in Copenhagen, making the case for why different actors need to work together if real change is going to happen at all.