The development of cereals and oilseed production until 2050 under different socioeconomic conditions in Finland

Abstract

We will use Finland as an example of a small, developed country with difficult climatic conditions to show how changes in global food consumption patterns and global population growth will influence local production. In order to do so we use two different models. First, an agricultural sector model for Finland, and second, a regionally adapted version of a global, spatially explicit agroeconomic land use model. We use both models to investigate how Finnish cereals and oilseed production develops under different socioeconomic conditions, as defined in the Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). We find that without a major improvement of oilseed yields, oilseed production will be disrupted by 2050 and even with a major increase in oilseeds yields only in the SSP2 scenario production of oilseeds can be sustained. Cereal production on the other hand does not change in the simulations with the global model, but does almost decrease by half in the simulations with the national model. This shows that even with an enormous global population growth and reduced international trade, Finland will not become a major agricultural producer.