How much food can be produced on Swedish farmland?

The debate on Swedish food security focuses heavily on cultivating more crops and raising more livestock to increase self-sufficiency based on current eating habits. But another perspective is worth exploring: how much food can Swedish farmland actually deliver? PLATE researchers are now testing several different scenarios.

The food security debate in Sweden often focus on the assumption that we need to produce more to be better prepared in times of crisis. The Swedish Board of Agriculture has, on behalf of the government, proposed that an additional 340,000 hectares of land be brought into use and that livestock numbers increase by 15–25 percent. But if we instead ask how much food the agricultural land actually has the potential to produce, a different picture emerges.

That is the starting point for a study led by researchers Elin Röös and Ida Ekqvist at SLU. Using the model CIBUSmod, which calculates Swedish agricultural production and estimates various types of environmental impact, several scenarios for Swedish food production are currently being tested. The model was developed within the research program Mistra Food Futures and has previously been used for calculations for, among others, the Swedish Food Agency in connection to the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations.

In this round of tests, the focus is on maximizing the production of edible protein, based on four scenarios divided into two categories: how much meat and dairy is produced, and how much consideration is given to the environment. By exploring different ways of producing food, both opportunities and trade-offs become visible, showing how different choices affect the system's capacity to feed people.