Swedish food system transformations : Rethinking biogas transport logistics to adapt to localized agriculture

Ensuring future food and energy security will require large changes in consumption and production pat-terns, 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 x 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 sce-narios, 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 diges-tion. 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 Skane and Vastra Gotaland 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. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers.Funding Agencies|Swedish Council for Sustainable Development [Formas-2019-02221]