Optimising land use and consumption of livestock products in the human diet with an increasing human population in the Netherlands

Land use related to food production is generally quantified using product-based life cycle assessments. We, however, quantified land use of diet scenarios with a land use optimization model. Energy and protein requirement of human populations, varying from 15 to 30 mil-lion people, were met with the consumption of arable crops, meat and milk. Diet scenarios explored contained 0% up to 80% of animal protein. First findings show that a limited contribution of animal protein in the diet resulted in lowest land use per capita, because of utili-zation by livestock of products inedible for humans. Moreover, utilization of land unsuitable for crop production provides the opportunity to sustain a larger population compared to a situation in which these soils were not used to produce food.