Prospects, challenges and policies for carbon-negative circular agriculture

Abstract

Global conventional agricultural, livestock production and related land uses contribute a large proportion to the total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. On the other hand, circular agriculture reduces carbon emissions and has the potential to be a carbon sink within the agricultural systems. However, the successful adoption of circular agricultural practices requires a national-level policy framework. The key challenges for adopting circular agriculture practices are: financial obstacles to acquiring technology, limited access to affordable credits and subsidies, technical incompetence of farmers and lack of institutional support, agribusiness objectives and environmental attitudes. This chapter identifies key prospects of circular agriculture, including climate change mitigation through carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels by recycling carbon into valuable products, and enhancing carbon sequestration in forest soils and oceans. The integration of circular economy principles fosters economic opportunities, supports energy security and accelerates decarbonisation, ecosystem restoration and nature-based solutions. Policy challenges include fragmented governance, weak policy enforcement and limited institutional coordination. The policies to adopt circular agriculture by farmers need to focus on investment in circular agricultural research and development, institutional support, rewarding with carbon credits, incorporating circular agriculture models in regional development plans, development of technical standards and monitoring and evaluation capacity for the circular agriculture model, reforming agricultural subsidies and introducing innovative policy support, development of circular agricultural value chains, enhancement of private sector investment in circular agriculture, the establishment of more intersectoral circular bioeconomy models for sustainable and low-carbon rural development, and enhancement of international cooperation. The circular agriculture contributes to achieving maximum benefits from natural processes within the ecosystems through the application of environmentally friendly technologies with minimum input dependency, and efficient recycling of nutrients, energy and water. These processes transform waste into valuable food products with minimum costs and food losses by using the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle in the agri-food production and supply chain while contributing to tackling climate change.