Can the Area of Organically Cultivated Arable Land Increase When Utilizing Perennial Grasses as Feedstock for Biogas Production?

This paper investigates how the use of legumes (here perennial grasses) as feedstock for organic biogas production, can enhance the share of organic farmland, increase the arable soil quality by various Ecosystem Services (ESS) and provide renewable energy based on a more sustainable and readily available biomass feedstock; grassclover. With an analytical framing taking point of departure in the concept of sustainability, and with data retrieval from both primary and secondary empirical data, the paper proposes on a new ‘organic-agricultural-biogas'-system facilitating internal farm supply of biogas feedstock and the production of valuable digestate (soil fertilizer). When utilizing between 15-20 % of the farmland for perennial crop rotation a more self-sustaining and hence sustainable farm system can be developed. The paper further concludes that future policies and actions supporting this development could be e.g. higher construction grant or feed-in tariff for organic biogas plants digesting perennial legumes as grassclover, more knowledge of the benefits of using grass-clover in farm systems and for energetic purposes in biogas plants, co-digested with straw, and deployment of organic biogas plants in non-animal dense areas also.