Realising biomass supply – farmers’ perspective on straw and short-rotation forestry

Collaborators: PhD project in collaboration with LTH (Lund University)
Financer: Swedish Energy Agency
Period: 2019-2023

Agriculture increasingly could supply high-quality carriers of energy and bio-based products in a growing bio-economy. In spite of opportunities for net return not all farmers make use of this opportunity. Why are residues and surplus land under-used for production of high-quality carriers of energy and bio-based products? To be realistic, estimated potential supplies not only need to take techno-economical and ecological constraints into consideration but also the farmers' attitudes, knowledge and goals with respect to delivering biomass from straw and short-rotation forestry on abandoned agricultural land. To enable adequate communications, new knowledge of the drivers of farmers’ attitudes and decisions is needed. This project aims at 1/ revised estimates of the available potential supply of biomass from straw and, poplar and hybrid aspen from abandoned agricultural land where the farmers' knowledge and willingness to realize the potentials have been accounted for and 2/ standards for the adequacy of communications for increased supply of biomass from these sources.