Beyond circularity! Integration of circularity, efficiency, and sufficiency for nutrient management in agri-food systems

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3116476/v1

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Beyond circularity! Integration of circularity, efficiency, and sufficiency for nutrient management in agri-food systems

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3116476/v1

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published 15 Feb, 2024

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Circularity is a new paradigm of nutrient management that is seeking to mitigate environmental impacts of agriculture by reducing nutrient losses through their recuperation and reuse. However, circular nutrient management is not an end goal in itself, but rather a means to a transition to sustainable food systems. We argue for a conceptually stronger and more explicit combination of circularity strategies with efficiency and sufficiency. A conceptual framework to combine these three transition strategies is presented and the relationship between the three strategies is demonstrated. An example of regional N flows is used to quantify the systemic effects of each strategy. Results show that circularity does not alter overall system’s efficiency but reduces primary inputs. Circularity can also lead to rebound effects if reused products have a lower efficiency than the products they replace. Targeting efficiency as a strategy has systemic, non-linear negative effects, as it reduces opportunities for implementation of circular solutions and reuse of nutrients. Sufficiency as a strategy can affect circularity, as a shift towards a more plant based diet will likely increase nutrient use efficiency, and will therefore reduce the available recoverable nutrients and limit circularity. Moreover, circularity, efficiency and sufficiency as strategies may have different time frames. Consequently, policy makers and practitioners need to consider the short-, medium- and long-term consequences of the three strategies and their relationships. Finally, regional nutrient management should aim to combine the three strategies in models, planning and decision making.

reuse and recovery

protein transition

nutrient use efficiency

material flow analysis

Global elemental cycles of essential plant nutrients, such as nitrogen (N), potassium (K) and phosphorus (P) are strongly altered by current practices of globalized food production and consumption. Cheap and easily available synthetic fertilizers have driven the excessive use of nutrients beyond the safe operating space of the planetary biogeochemical cycles (Campbell et al., 2017), stressing the importance of local tipping points associated to intensified regional nutrient cycles (Rockström et al., 2023). A new paradigm of nutrient management is now emerging that is seeking to mitigate environmental impacts of agriculture by reducing nutrient losses and dependencies on non-renewable resources related to the mining of P or K and the production of N via the Haber-Bosch process. The ambition is to create closed nutrient loops in agricultural systems. This falls in line with the wider societal normative vision of a circular economy as an essential strategy for a sustainable society (European Parliament, 2023).

In the EU, a circular economy of nutrients has emerged as one of the building blocks of the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy, urging for a holistic, producer-to-consumer or agri-food value chain perspective on the management of nutrients (European Commission, 2020). Circularity of nutrient flows is key for such a holistic management, and will require the exchange of nutrients between different sectors and actors (Figge et al. 2023). The most traditional form of nutrient exchange is between the livestock and crop production sectors, via the reuse of animal excrement as organic fertilizer. Other emerging approaches for increasing circularity focus on technology development to recover nutrients from liquid waste streams (Sigurnjak et al., 2019), or the processing of food waste to produce feed and fertilizers (Muys et al., 2020). Following Harder et al. (2021) and Vingerhoets et al. (2023) we define nutrient circularity as a strategy that seeks to capture nutrients from point source losses and by-products along the agri-food system and return them to agriculture with the intention to reduce the dependency on primary nutrients (i.e. mined N, K or synthesised N).

Recent estimates for nitrogen circularity suggest a 35% reuse efficiency (i.e. the fraction of total input reused) in Flanders (Vingerhoets et al. 2023), 31% for France (Le Noë et al., 2017), 32% for Denmark (Hutchings et al., 2014) and 35% for Austria (Tanzer et al., 2018). Further increases in N circularity are possible if side streams and point source emissions were to be fully utilized. These include emissions from liquid streams that are currently treated with nitrification/denitrification, stable N emissions to air, or food wastes from retail and consumption (Spiller et al., 2022). Vingerhoets et al. (2023) estimated that if N from all by-products and point emission sources were recovered, N circularity in Flanders would reach 64%, a 29% increase compared to the current situation and consequently a reduction in the need for synthesised N.

Circularity is therefore an important strategy to improve regional nutrient management. However, nutrient circularity and associated concepts (recovery and reuse, circular economy, bioeconomy) have recently become fashionable, and they are on occasion seemingly presented as an end goal to solve problems of resource constraints and environmental concerns (Giampietro, 2019). We argue that circularity is certainly no end goal, but rather only one strategy to enable better nutrient management which will support the transition to sustainable agri-food systems (Fig. 1). With focus on nutrition and the environment, a sustainable food system, can be defined as a system that provides nutritionally adequate food while minimizing adverse environmental impacts (Allen and Prosperi, 2016). Indeed, a sustainable agri-food system is also the end goal of the F2F. Implicitly, the F2F applies three strategies to realize the agri-food system, which are circularity, efficiency and sufficiency. Circularity is indicated by arguing for a potential for a circular-biobased economy that taps into unused resources to produce bio-based fertilizers and proteinaceous feed. There is further an argumentation for increasing efficiency through better data and analysis in order to improve environmental performance (European Comission, 2021). Finally, the F2F argues for a sufficient access to nutrition that upholds dietary needs while ensuring plant health and animal welfare (European Commission, 2020). Scientific evidence confirms that implementing a mix of strategies, rather than a sole focus on circularity, is the way forward to realize sustainable food systems. Recently, Leip et al. (2022) showed that a combination of efficiency increases and shifts in diet are required to realize the F2F ambitions.

Efficiency can be defined as measures to minimize system losses, by increasing the output per input unit. For the purposes of this article, we define nutrient use efficiency (NUE), as the ratio of nutrients in a desired system output over the amount of nutrients in an input (Vingerhoets et al., 2023). From an agri-food chain perspective, the inputs are fertilizers, atmospheric deposition, soil nutrient mobilization and recycled flow (e.g. manures), while output is the food consumed by humans. For the EU’s agri-food system the NUE has been estimated to be 21%[1] (Leip et al., 2022). Regionally NUE’s differ, with estimates ranging from 10% to around 40% (Erisman et al., 2018).

From the perspective of a transition to a sustainable food system each sector must take responsibility for increasing efficiencies. Arable and livestock production are some of the best studied sectors. Global NUEs in arable production have been reduced since the 1960s to ~ 47%, while a reverse, increasing trend is observed in Western Europe (Lassaletta et al., 2014). NUEs in livestock production have increased in the last decades, though at a slower pace in recent years, reaching approximately 10% for beef, 33% for poultry, 20% for pigs and 75% for milk (Mekonnen et al., 2019). Hutchings et al. (2020) estimated maximal technically feasible NUE ranges of 82%-92% for the arable sector, of 6%-53% for livestock in Northern Europe and 36–62% for livestock in Southern Europe. Overall, further improvements in NUEs for each of these sectors are potentially achievable, illustrating that there is untapped potential for efficiency increases to reduce losses and therefore environmental impact.

Within the context of food systems, sufficiency is defined as “producing enough healthy food for those who need it and doing so in ways that promote the welfare and stewardship practices of those who produce it.” (Mcgreevy et al. 2022). In other words, sufficiency includes providing nutritionally and culturally appropriate diets, while respecting socio-ecological limits, and the embeddedness of agriculture in the wider ecosystem. From this definition, it becomes evident that it is difficult to capture sufficiency in the context of nutrient management in a single equation, as it spans across the social and health dimensions. For the purposes of this article, we focus on sufficiency as meeting, and not overshooting, the dietary recommendations, i.e. providing a nutritionally adequate diet. Currently, people in wealthy parts of the world consume more food than needed. These excess calories, along with the fact that a large share of them is derived from animal products, is causing large scale health and environmental problem (Willett et al., 2019). Therefore, a shift towards an agri-food system focused on delivering the right amount of nutrients in a varied diet, that is mostly based on fruits and vegetables, is increasingly seen not only as an answer to rising malnutrition, obesity rates and the resulting non-communicable diseases, but also as a response to the adverse environmental impacts of the food system (Aiking and de Boer, 2020).

In short, focus on circularity should be paired with strategies that emphasis increasing sufficiency and efficiency. Further exploiting the improvement potential in these three domains will likely be the most effective strategy to realise first a better nutrient management and eventually a sustainable food systems (Fig. 1). However, when applying these three strategies together, one should be aware of their relationships and potential trade-offs. For the remainder of this perspectives paper, the relationships between the three strategies will be examined to inspire and inform research and decision making with regards to a sustainable agri-food systems. We do this using an illustrative quantitative example of the relationships between the three strategies and their overall effect on nutrient flows in a regional agri-food system.

To demonstrate the potential effects of efficiency, circularity and sufficiency on the sustainability of food systems, three purely illustrative scenarios were developed to assess the changes in the N flows. The scenarios are not intended to be interpreted as feasible or implementable options.

The data used to generate the example are taken from Vingerhoets et al. (2023) for the food system of Flanders (see supplemental material (SM)). To focus on the effects within the system boundaries of Flanders only, food exports were excluded from the raw data, which make up for 2/3 of the total N in food produced in Flanders. To do this, the inputs required to produce the food consumed locally only were calculated, using localized Nutrient Investment Factors (NIFs – which provides an indication of how many kg of N is be utilized to produce 1 kg of N embedded in food (i.e. NIF = (N in losses + N in by-products)/ N in food) (adapted from: Leip et al., 2015). This was derived from the inverse of the domestic NUE in Flanders, which is 36% (Vingerhoets et al. 2023). The rest of the key parameters (primary inputs, total losses, and recovered streams) were downscaled, assuming the same ratios between them and the total input as in the original study data. It was assumed that N in food consumed, although technically a loss after consumption and discharge with faeces and urine, is distinct from recuperable losses as it is not reused to agricultural land in several countries (e.g. NL, BE).

From the data improvement scenarios for efficiency, circularity and sufficiency were derived (Table S1). For the maximum efficiency scenario, a NUE increase of 25% was implemented as used by Leip et al. (2022). In their study they showed this level of efficiency increase together with other measures can realize the F2F ambition of reducing nutrient losses by 50%. For the circularity scenario, the method followed Vingerhoets et al. (2023) who suggested a potential reuse efficiency of 64% (an increase of 29% from 35%), if all point source emissions and by-products in the Flemish system would be recovered and reused. The sufficiency scenario was defined in a simplified manner assuming that the total protein intake is reduced without changes in the relative composition of the diet (i.e. the ratio between plant and animal protein). The recommendations of the Belgian authorities were used to approximate a healthy diet (Superior Health Council, 2019) and average N intake. This resulted in a protein nitrogen content of 3.3 kgN cap^− 1 year^− 1.

The baseline (i.e. the current situation in Flanders – BE, for flows that enter, leave or are recycled within the agri-food system) shows that primary inputs make up nearly two thirds of the inputs, while only about one third is recovered and thereby transferred from the output to the input side (Fig. 2, relative change provided in the SM). The largest output is related to losses of N (43%) either as reactive N or non-reactive N₂. The remaining N relates to food consumption totalling 5.1 kg N person^− 1 year^− 1, which can be split into recommended intake (3.3 kg N person^− 1 year^− 1) an excess consumption (1.7 kg N person^− 1 year^− 1) (Fig. 2, rounded numbers). Results further show that the combination of the three strategies maximizes the reduction of total resource demand in our case by more than 50% (Fig. 2, all scenario).

If circularity is the independent variable total inputs remain the same, but losses are reduced as they are now transformed into recuperated streams (Fig. 2). Consequently, the share of recuperated N on the input side increases. With our selected input parameters, the recovered stream increases to 64%. As a consequence, the primary inputs reduce in our case by 29%. In conclusion, when applying circularity, the system’s NUE does not change and no repercussions on the other strategies occur as simply the losses are redirected to the input side.

When increasing efficiency only (i.e. increasing NUE), different effects can be observed. The amount of losses is reduced and consequently total inputs decline as well (by 26%). This has system wide implications, since recovered streams will reduce in absolute and relative terms. The combined effect of these two tendencies is that the total demand form primary N reduces, while the relative share increases (see SM). Furthermore, it becomes evident that, as one progresses to a more efficient system, the share of N contained in food becomes more important. This is in particular relevant for the overconsumption as a flow that can be targeted through sufficiency strategies. In conclusion an efficiency increase affects the circularity strategy by altering the share of recoverable N.

When sufficiency is the independent variable overconsumption is avoided. Therefore, inputs reduce in absolute terms. No change occurs in the relative share of primary and recovered N on the input side. This is the case because it was assumed, for the purpose of this model only, that sufficiency is realized through a proportional reduction in consumption and not through a shift in dietary composition. As input and output changes are proportional to each other the NUE does not change. In conclusion, sufficiency has no effect on circularity and efficiency, but only reduces total inputs to the system.

4.1 Key interaction patterns and complexities

From the analysis above, it is evident that the application of strategies to improve efficiency and circularity while striving for sufficiency will maximize the reduction in overall input to the agri-food system and in particular the reduction of the primary input. Therefore, the three strategies should be applied together as much as possible to attain a low (primary) input and a low environmental impact of the agri-food system. However, the three strategies for a sustainable agri-food system are not always in harmony. As indicated above higher efficiencies will reduce the opportunities for circularity, simply because there is less to recuperate. It is important to note that this is an exponentially negative relationship. In other words, as the efficiency increases the marginal reduction in recoverable losses will disproportionally decline (see SM). Therefore, as the efficiency increases the circularity is disproportionally strongly affected. As a result, circularity can only make a lower contribution to the reduction of primary input as efficiency increases.

A similar situation applies for sufficiency. In the scenarios developed, we assumed that there will be no structural change in the food production chain. However, reducing animal protein consumption, and therefore downscaling the livestock sector is a central strategy towards increased sufficiency (Willett et al., 2019). This will likely reduce options for circularity as the recuperation potential in agri-food system lies often within point source emissions linked to intensive livestock production (Vingerhoets et al., 2023). In simpler terms, a shift towards a plant-based protein supply, may result in higher efficiencies and less point source emissions and therefore in a reduced relevance of circularity in agriculture. A key challenge related to sufficiency is its inherent complexity, as it requires changes in the socio-economic, ecological and technical dimension (McGreevy et al., 2022).

Circularity as a strategy is notable as it does not affect any of the other strategies. This is because circularity and recuperation of nutrients, is a novel concept for waste (i.e. losses) treatment (Figge et al., 2023); or more relevant here an end-of-pipe measure. However, circularity is of course more than a novel waste treatment (an output feature). Recovered products also need to meet the expectation of users, such as farmers and feed manufacturers with regards to costs, quality and user-friendliness of the recovered products (an input side features). If the circulated products cannot meet efficiencies of current market alternatives, circularity may have adverse effects on the efficiency of production and hence actually increases environmental damage. An illustration of this is the use of raw manure or digestated instead of more refined, often inorganic N products (e.g. recovered ammonium sulphate ammonium nitrate). The NH₃ emissions of raw manures and digestates are higher than that of the inorganic fertilizers, they can therefore increase diffuse N losses that are difficult to recuperate and recycle in the agri-food system (Vonk et al., 2016). Finally, implementing circularity may require different business models or new intermediary players, as companies may develop from waste treatment experts to product manufacturers, connecting the output to the input side in agri-food systems (De Keyser and Mathijs, 2023). The challenges of this business innovation are many related to product uncertainty, variability, complex supply-chains and scale (De Meyer et al., 2015; Spiller et al., 2022).

4.2 Further research directions

The intention of the modelling shown in this paper was illustrative. A number of major assumptions have been made to demonstrate the effects of efficiency, circularity and sufficiency. The scenarios applied should be further improved by elaborating on the details of the technological and societal assumptions that underly them. This should lead to a critical reflection on the feasibility of realizing the full potentials and an identification of the actual realization of these efficiencies. By defining the sectors and technologies applied it will also be feasible to assess how the three strategies interact. That is where trade-offs between circularity and efficiency occur. In simple terms one could ask the question whether it is, from a systemic perspective, better to invest into increasing efficiency in food conversion or whether it is better to recuperate emissions in stables and from manures as a means of recycling nutrients. Such studies could apply multi-criteria optimization models that account for costs and environmental impacts at the same time.

This perspectives paper framed sufficiency exclusively as a consumption-level measure. This is an effective place to begin with the sufficiency concept, because changes in consumption affect the whole value chain. Future research should investigate how shifts in diets could be implemented, going beyond consumer psychology and behaviour studies, to recognize and address the responsibility of actors along the F2F value chain for what they produce, promote and make available to consumers (Biesbroek et al., 2023). In addition, it is important to gather further evidence on the implications and effects of applying sufficiency measures across the agri-food system. That is, to examine the functioning of agri-ecological systems within local social-ecological limits and recognizing inherent rights to non-human agents.

Moreover, implementation routes of regional nutrient management considering the three strategies need to consider their different time scales. Increases in nutrient use efficiency through technical and product innovations in (e.g. precision agriculture and novel fertilizers products) might be implemented relatively short term. Similarly, the pace for the adoption of recirculated products has accelerated recently, enabled by new legislation and increasing resource prices (European Comission, 2019). However, the speed of implementation of regional nutrient circularity is also constrained by the development of entirely new products from waste streams, their legalisation and the establishment of new business models. Finally, sufficiency requires a behavioural change of consumers that will have repercussions through the supply chain (e.g. the reduction of livestock), likely taking place in the long run only.

To improve nutrient management and to reduce environmental problems derived from nutrient losses, research and practice needs to move beyond a focus on circularity. It should give equal attention to circularity, efficiency and sufficiency as strategies that need to be combined to improve nutrient management and progress towards a sustainable agri-food systems. Our analysis illustrates that the three strategies are interrelated and affect each other. The presented findings should be used as a starting point to inform the thinking, debate and research about how to progress towards a sustainable agri-food system.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of the colleagues of the sustainable, air, energy and water technology research group of the University of Antwerp. Their critical views were invaluable to improving the manuscript.

Competing interests

The authors declare not competing interests.

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Ignoring the use of virgin N outside the EU; Leip, A., Caldeira, C., Corrado, S., Hutchings, N.J., Lesschen, J.P., Schaap, M., de Vries, W., Westhoek, H. and van Grinsven, H.J.M. 2022. Halving nitrogen waste in the European Union food systems requires both dietary shifts and farm level actions. Global Food Security 35, 100648.

No competing interests reported.

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Beyond circularity! Integration of circularity, efficiency, and sufficiency for nutrient management in agri-food systems

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1 Integration of circularity, efficiency and sufficiency

2 Design of an illustrative example

3 Interactions between circularity, efficiency and sufficiency

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