David Zilberman, Gal Hochman, Madhu Khanna, Bruno Basso
The world continues to confront the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change, improving food security, protecting soil and water quality, and preserving biodiversity. Several strategies have been introduced to address these challenges, including climate-smart agriculture, circularity, and the bioeconomy. Climate-smart agriculture promotes practices that adapt to climate change and sequester carbon while increasing the productivity of agriculture. Circular practices reduce, reuse, and recycle residues from economic activities to produce valuable final products. The bioeconomy, broadly defined, comprises the sectors of the economy providing goods (food, chemicals, fuels), services, and processes (carbon sequestration, purification of water, decomposition of wastes) from biological resources (plants, animals, microorganisms). It utilizes advances in life and information sciences to enable a transition from fossil fuels towards a renewable economy.
Climate-smart circular bioeconomy agriculture (CCB) is a unified strategy that integrates these diverse approaches for developing policies, directing research, and introducing technologies and supply chains of products and services from renewable resource sectors, including agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and aquaculture. The notion of CCB has several implications. Agriculture and other renewable resource industries should produce more than food and fiber. While renewable resources like solar and wind power and conservation are essential to address climate change, they cannot do it alone. In the spirit of Obama’s “all of the above,” renewable resource industries should play a significant role in transitioning from fossil fuels and climate change adaptation and mitigation. To achieve this, improving farming productivity in the land and ocean by using our resources more efficiently to avoid the “food vs. fuel” dilemma is crucial. Food and fiber production should consume much less land and other resources, which will allow the production of fuel, pharmaceuticals, and other products from existing cropland and preserve biodiversity. CCB also implies reducing or eliminating adverse external effects of farming practices, frequently resulting from over-application and un-targeted agricultural inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) that result in waste and run-off that cause environmental degradation. Large yield gaps among countries and wasteful and environmentally harmful disposal of agricultural residues (often through burning) imply an immense potential to double, or even more, the availability of biological resources for meeting food, fuel, and biochemical needs by changing practices. Most of the world has not taken advantage of new life and information sciences and emerging artificial intelligence technology developments that can substantially enhance productivity and reduce pollution.
One way to improve bioresource industries’ productivity is to increase the efficiency of input applications through precision agricultural practices. With traditional application technologies, including flood irrigation or aerial spraying of chemicals, more than 50% of the applied input does reach the crops and may become a source of pollution. With drip irrigation and chemigation, input use efficiency reaches 90%. Improved monitoring technologies in the field and remote sensing, combined with advanced computation technologies, allow for optimizing input use at different locations during different periods. This can increase output and reduce input use. Digital twins provide new avenues for increased precision by bridging between the physical and digital worlds. They can enable interventions and constant monitoring, providing real-time data on resource flows and environmental impacts. They can optimize input applications and help verify compliance with environmental regulations and sustainability standards. Their use requires a multidisciplinary systems approach considering environmental side effects, externalities, and market conditions to determine input use. Digital twins can provide a foundation for databases that will increase the transparency of production systems and evaluate the pursuit of sustainability goals.
Information technologies and robotics can monitor crop and animal health and enhance the precision of weeding, harvesting, and processing systems. It will also reduce the hardship and risk of farmwork (worker safety in agriculture in the US is relatively worse than in other sectors, much during the harvesting season). Precision weeding and harvesting through robotics and automation can improve food quality and reduce negative chemical spillover from agriculture and forestry.
New opportunities provided by discoveries in the life sciences can further enhance agricultural productivity and its sustainability. Modern breeding techniques and crop improvements, including transgenic and CRISPR, have resulted in higher yields and product quality and reduced use of chemical pesticides. They provide means to adapt to climatic changes, as well as adaptation to varying biophysical conditions. Improved varieties can expand the conditions where crops grow and provide disease resistance among crops and livestock. Precision farming should combine new capabilities of information and monitoring technologies with breeding capabilities to select the best varieties for each location over time. Discoveries in the life sciences provide other opportunities. For example, scientists discovered synthetic biology discovered an approach to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis in certain crops – thus increasing yield and producing oils in sugar-rich plants such as sugarcane and sorghum. Several technologies fix nitrogen, reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with nitrogen production. The different approaches to producing plant-based proteins have the potential to reduce the footprint of meeting the protein demands of a growing and wealthier population.
Furthermore, biotechnology has already produced valuable medical solutions and identified traits that accelerate the growth of fish species. Improved productivity is crucial to expand the range of products in the bioeconomy. If we increase rice productivity by 25% through crop improvement and another 25% by precision technologies, we can use 50% of the land use for producing biofuel from sugarcane or other products. Technological developments are essential for circularity. Macro and microalgae can be used for food, producing fine chemicals, food coloring, water purification, and carbon sequestration. Changing the diet of the livestock can significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and some of these emissions can be collected to produce natural gas. The larva of insects like the black soldier fly can digest food and other organic residues and convert them into protein that may be used for augmenting the diet of livestock, pets, fish, and even humans.
Pursuing CCB requires significant investments in research and development and appropriate policies and regulations both in the developing and developing world. Since climate change is global, the knowledge base and human capital must expand worldwide. One strategy to do so is by increasing the capacity of the CGIAR of the land-grant systems to catalyze innovations and products and develop the human capital essential to building the bioeconomy. Other strategies include public and private sector partnerships in scaling up technologies developed in universities, labs, and start-ups, lowering costs.
However, new technologies also need to be adopted. The benefits of CCB practices to producers may be smaller than to society. Policies and regulations that stimulate demand-pull and supply-push are necessary to develop the CCB production supply chains. These policies include fees for carbon and other pollutants emissions, cap-and-trade systems, intensity upper bounds, and pollution intensity scoring matrices. They include support to establish new industries to overcome the “chicken and egg” problem of supplying new feedstock and the capacity to process them (establish algae farming and industries to process it). Governments should provide extra access to credit for new ventures in the bioeconomy and extend demand through subsidies or direct purchases. Regulatory constraints sometimes hinder disruptive and beneficial technologies. While modern biotechnologies revolutionize medicine, their limited use in agriculture impedes the ability to increase productivity and significantly harms farmers in developing countries. Governments should also pursue international agreements leading to the global adoption of CCB practices. Technological advancements require taking calculated risks. Policy and regulation design should be guided by social benefit-cost analysis adjusted for risk. These tools should be science-based, continuously updated and improved, and consider regional differences, uncertainties, and random shocks.
Science needs to provide arguments supporting solid political leadership and cultural change that will lead to implementing CCB principles. While pursuing these principles in public policymaking is essential, information and awareness should modify private sector behavior. Corporate social responsibility initiatives have the potential to alter their choices to enhance sustainability and social well-being. In addition to improving the public good, such behavior will enhance brand image and be consistent with changing consumer preferences. Consumers will use their purchasing power to support more products produced in a CCB.
We introduce the Climate-Smart Circular Bioeconomy (CSCB) concept as a comprehensive approach to enhance long-term social sustainability and resilience to climate change. This strategy uses renewable resources and promotes climate adaptation, biodiversity, food security, and circularity while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Establishing the CCB requires expanding R&D investments beyond traditional processes and introducing incentives that promote renewable-based feedstock supply chains and the products they produce. To transition to the CCB, it is critical to understand the political and economic dynamics guiding the implementation of this strategy. Future work should assess the financial and environmental value of novel technologies and their impacts. Understanding the importance of these novel technologies and the political and economic dynamics can guide us to successfully transition to the CCB, promising a sustainable and resilient future for the agricultural sector.