Abstract
Ensuring future food and energy security will require large changes in consumption and production patterns, including enhanced animal and human excreta recycling. Although these shifts are considered in many scenario studies, their implications on the logistical requirements for effective recycling are rarely analysed. Here we translated two existing stakeholder co-designed food system scenarios for Sweden to 5 × 5 km resolution maps of animals, crops, and humans. We used optimization modelling to identify biogas plant locations to minimize transport costs and maximize nutrient reuse. We then compared scenarios, including full recycling under current landscape configuration, through Life Cycle Assessment. The reduction in meat consumption and imported food in both co-designed scenarios, by definition, led to less nutrients available in manure for recycling back on cropland, and less material available for digestion. Less excreta meant lower national benefits, for example 50% less greenhouse gas emissions savings in the most divergent scenario. However on a per transport basis the benefits of recycling were more important: recycling remained a net financial benefit even if transport costs were to increase. Although fewer biogas plant locations were necessary (184 and 228 for alternative futures, vs 236 under current conditions) to process human and animal excreta, the regional clustering of locations did not change substantially across scenarios. Regions such as Skåne and Västra Götaland consistently required the most biogas plant locations across scenarios. Focusing early construction investments in these regions would be resilient to a large array of food system futures. Our spatially-explicit open access scenario maps can be used to explore logistics for such planning, and explore the impact of landscape configuration on other sustainability priority areas.
Highlights
Current food systems are largely unsustainable and require transformation (Foley et al, 2011)
Decreasing animal product consumption alters options for nutrient recycling as it decreases the amount of manure available for reuse on fields
The spatial distribution of crops and animals reflects both current patterns and the target values and rules from the future scenarios used in the model
Summary
Current food systems are largely unsustainable and require transformation (Foley et al, 2011). There is a growing body of work imagining what such sustainable futures might look like when multiple behavioral and technological changes are combined (Tälle et al, 2019; Willett et al, 2019). Implementing even just one intervention can have such systemic effects that it must be considered in the planning of multiple sustainability spheres. The climate crisis requires agriculture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and adapt to a rapidly changing set of grow-. Meat consumption has a very large impact on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and land requirements (Poore and Nemecek, 2018; Röös et al, 2018). A systemic approach to planning for a more sustainable food system is required to minimize trade-offs and unintended consequences
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