Publications

Matthew N. Hayek, Johannes Piipponen, Matti Kummu, Kajsa Resare Sahlin, Shelby C. McClelland, Kimberly Carlson. 2024. Opportunities for carbon sequestration from removing or intensifying pasture-based beef production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2405758121

Pastures, on which ruminant livestock graze, occupy one third of the earth’s surface. Removing livestock from pastures can support climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration in regrowing vegetation and recovering soils, particularly in potentially forested areas. However, this would also decrease food and fiber production, generating a tradeoff with pasture productivity and the ruminant meat production pastures sup...

Kajsa Resare Sahlin, Line J. Gordon, Regina Lindborg, Johannes Piipponen, Pierre Van Rysselberge, Julia Rouet-Leduc, Elin Röös. 2024. Author Correction: An exploration of biodiversity limits to grazing ruminant milk and meat production. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01498-1

Correction to: Nature Sustainability https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.1038/s41893-024-01398-4 , published online 25 July 2024. In the version of the article initially published, in Fig. 4a the colours in the key were switched and have now been amended so that “Total meat” is red and “Total milk” is green, and in Fig. 4b, the colours of the bars were incorrect, where “Bovine milk” appeared as dark blue, “Bovine meat” in o...

Kajsa Resare Sahlin, Line J. Gordon, Regina Lindborg, Johannes Piipponen, Pierre Van Rysselberge, Julia Rouet-Leduc, Elin Röös. 2024. An exploration of biodiversity limits to grazing ruminant milk and meat production. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01398-4

The production and consumption of animal-source foods must be transformed to mitigate negative environmental outcomes, including greenhouse gas emissions and land-use change. However, livestock are also key for food production and for livelihoods in some settings, and they can help preserve biodiversity and certain ecosystems. Previous studies have not yet fully explored sustainability limits to the use of grazing lands for fo...

Johannes Piipponen, Mika Jalava, Kajsa Resare Sahlin, Vilma Sandström, Gabriel Cramer, Matthew Hayek, Hannah Van Zanten, Florian Zabel, Matti Kummu. 2023. Protein and energy from grazing or crops - does livestock have a chance?. Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3392089/v1

Producing an adequate food supply to a growing population sustainably is challenging. Despite high-level recommendations for a shift to plant-based diets in most countries, global meat production continues to rise. Yet, we lack a comprehensive geospatial understanding of trade-offs between crops and livestock production efficiency. To address this, we developed a method to examine whether certain grazing lands could be more ef...

Resare Sahlin, K., Trewern, J. 2022. A systematic review of the definitions and interpretations in scientific literature of ‘less but better’ meat in high-income settings. Nature Food. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00536-5

‘Less but better’ is a pragmatic approach to tackling the sustainability challenges of meat consumption and production. Definitions of ‘less’ and ‘better’ lack clarity. Here we explore interpretations of these concepts, finding increasing use of ‘less but better’ in the literature from Western, high-income settings. Despite discrepancies among interpretations of ‘less’ meat, existing quantifications indicate that significant r...

Resare Sahlin, K., Carolus, J., von Greyerz, K., Ekqvist, I., Röös, E. 2022. Delivering “less but better” meat in practice—a case study of a farm in agroecological transition. Agronomy for Sustainable Development. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13593-021-00737-5

Eating “less but better” meat can be a strategy to guide meat consumption in Western or high-income countries towards sustainability, but what “better” means depends on the perspective. Multiple studies and reports suggest that agroecological farming systems could contribute to a broad range of sustainability benefits, but few studies have examined the implications for people and nature following trade-offs between sustainabil...