We contributed to developing scenarios for CONCITO, a major Danish green think tank, for its report “The Importance of Agriculture for Future Land Use” (Jordbrugets Betydning for Fremtidens Arealanvendelse), published in May 2024. The scenarios set out different visions for land use in Denmark, weighing sustainability, climate neutrality and the pressure on natural resources.
They explore the potential for a substantial shift towards plant-based food production and a corresponding fall in livestock numbers, and what such a shift would mean for the economy and for the wellbeing of the Danish population, while keeping Denmark’s contribution to global food production at its present scale, enough to help feed around 22 million people by 2050.
We used DK-BioRes, the model for Denmark’s bioresources that Energy Modelling Lab developed for the Danish Energy Agency in 2021, updating and tailoring it to CONCITO’s needs. Taking crop distribution, livestock, land distribution and the available technologies as inputs, the model traces how biomass flows through a network of processes to show the resulting production, land use and greenhouse gas emissions, including non-edible by-products such as straw. DK-BioRes is open access and built in Excel, with the model and data available on GitHub.
DK-BioRes is calibrated to a 2019 base year using Statistics Denmark data, and calorie data for edible products was added specifically for the CONCITO scenarios.
The scenarios show which crops and livestock, in what quantities, and how much land, could meet CONCITO’s target of keeping Danish agriculture’s contribution to global food production at its present scale as the population grows.
The results feed into CONCITO’s Rethink Denmark project, which focuses on land use, and support the think tank’s aim of finding enough healthy food in the least space possible, with the lowest emissions and the smallest impact on nature and animal welfare.
Client: CONCITO
Reference: Not stated on the existing page
Collaborators: Not stated on the existing page
EML team: Ida Græsted Jensen
Budget: DKK 160,000
Duration: Spring 2024
Model: DK-BioRes