APPLYING THE PRECEPTS OF THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY The connection between agriculture and the circular economy is a fundamental one: if a piece of fruit or a vegetable (organic matter) ‘falls’ from a tree or plant and is not collected, it remains on the ground, where it is broken down into nutrients by microorganisms. These nutrients enrich the soil. This natural process closes the biological cycle by providing the tree, plant or soil with the nutrients it needs to begin a new production cycle. When put to use in agriculture and the food production industry, the circular economy is a way of applying this biological cycle more effectively. This can, for example, take the form of not incinerating food waste because this doesn’t return the nutrients they contain to the soil. It also makes the most of the potential offered by organic matter through the bioeconomy (cascading use of resources).
What is the bioeconomy? The bioeconomy is the name given to all economic activities based directly on the moderate use of biological resources. One principle of the bioeconomy is to maximise the use of renewable bioresources while taking into account the limits of agroecosystems. What this means in practice is applying circular organisation to agricultural production (re-using co-products, recycling waste and optimising energy flows). The bioeconomy is thus about the economical use of the resources produced by the living world, such as farm waste, which can replace the conventional synthetic materials produced by the chemicals industry.
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