Baljväxter - bästa maten i klimatkrisen

Sammanfattning: Only 50 percent of Swedish food supply comes from domestic production, which creates a high dependency on an international trade to import foods. This leads to a high vulnerability within the food system. In order to secure food supply in times of crisis Sweden must increase its food production. According to climate research, future climate will be characterized by a higher rate of extreme weather events and natural disasters, which makes food safety a very urgent and important topic. The purpose of this study is to explore the self-supply of food in Sweden and how it could increase in the future by growing more legumes and consequently reduce the vulnerability in the food system. This study shows that legumes are produced on a very small scale in Sweden despite it being both beneficial for the environment and the agricultural land. Although global warming will have a mostly negative impact on the Earth’s climate, the conditions for cultivation may improve in Sweden. A warmer climate will increase the vegetation period as well as the cultivable area, making it possible to grow more and other kinds of legumes. Furthermore, Sweden has a high demand for plant-based proteins and the growing conditions are good, thus it should be possible to increase the legume production. The limitations start to occur after harvest where there is a lack of manufacturers to process the crops. This is due to a lack of investments in this industry which hopefully will change in the future.