Companies in the agri-food sector are under increasing pressure to adopt sustainable business models that consider not only economic but also both social and environmental aspects. This paper examines how Swedish food producers use sustainable business models to innovate their businesses. The empirical data comes from a telephone survey with 204 companies and from case studies of 4 companies. A conceptual framework regarding sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) and a eight sustainable business model archetypes are used to map and analyse the sustainability innovation practices and the sustainable business models. The results show a surprisingly sustainable business focus taken by many companies, which is not only on optimization, but also on organizational transformation and on systems building. The results show the companies vary as far as which archetypes they match. The most common archetype matches are ‘Maximise material and energy efficiency’ and ‘Adopt a stewardship role’. Only 10% measure success solely in financial terms, while 80% measure success in financial terms as well as social and environmental terms. Another conclusion is that companies in the agri-food sector have unique characteristics and the value intention of the entrepreneurs is an important building block in sustainable business model innovation.

农产品行业的公司承受越来越大的压力，要求采用可持续发展的商业模式，这种模式不仅要考虑经济因素，还要考虑社会和环境因素。本文研究了瑞典食品生产商如何使用可持续商业模式来创新其业务。经验数据来自对204家公司的电话调查以及对4家公司的案例研究。有关可持续发展导向创新（SOI）的概念框架和八种可持续商业模式原型用于绘制和分析可持续发展创新实践和可持续商业模式。结果表明，许多公司都出乎意料地实现了可持续的业务重点，不仅关注优化，而且关注组织转型和系统构建。结果表明，公司在匹配的原型方面有所不同。最常见的原型匹配是“最大化材料和能源效率”和“采用管理角色”。只有10％的人仅从财务角度衡量成功，而80％的人从财务以及社会和环境角度衡量成功。另一个结论是，农业食品领域的公司具有独特的特征，企业家的价值意图是可持续商业模式创新的重要组成部分。