Harvesting Uncertainty: Navigating Future Risks in Swedish Wheat Availability

Food availability is central to humans' survival. Even though Sweden has a reasonably low self-sufficiency rate of only 50%, it has a high level of domestic wheat production and exports a lot of wheat yearly. Wheat is a good source of essential nutrients and is a cornerstone in Swedish agriculture and food production. Even though Sweden has a considerable domestic production of wheat, several risks pose a threat to domestic wheat availability in the future, which could endanger Swedish food security. Therefore, this essay evaluates three considerable risks to Swedish wheat availability: climate change, population growth, and trade disturbances. These risks have been assessed based on previous research and statistical analysis of the historical wheat production, consumption, and trade data. In addition, stochastic models have also been created to simulate the risk of a domestic shortage of wheat. Future opportunities in Swedish wheat availability are also discussed to give a nuanced picture of future wheat availability in Sweden. Among other things, ARIMA modeling has been used to predict Swedish wheat production's efficiency. The results indicate that there are positive trends in wheat production. However, wheat production is also an object of increased volatility, threatening wheat availability. This increased volatility can be linked to extreme weather caused by global warming. These extreme weather events are predicted to occur more in the future, risking volatility in wheat production to grow even further. The stochastic model implies that there is an inherent risk of wheat shortage in the future. However, when the stochastic model considers both population growth and increased efficiency in wheat production, the risk of wheat shortage decreases. The results show that population growth, trade disturbances, and especially climate change are risks that need to be considered, and resilience against these risks needs to be built up.