Division of Food Production and Society
CircAgric - Strategies for Circular Agriculture to reduce GHG emissions
End: feb 2025
Start: mar 2022
CircAgric-GHG will unravel mechanisms by which farming systems can enhance circularity whist reducing GHG emissions and provide ecosystem services at multiple scales.
Project participants
Anette Tjomsland Spilling Norbert Pirk Lindeque Toit Sophie Wynne-Jones James Humphreys David Styles James Gibbons Dave Chatwick Clemens Scheer Cornelia Zauner Luciana Bava Francesco Fava Guillermo Pardo Agustin del Prado Claudia Arndt Stefania Colombini Lampros Lamprinakis Valborg Kvakkestad| Status | Active |
| External project link | CircAgric Website |
| Start - end date | 01.03.2022 - 28.02.2025 |
| Project manager | Vibeke Lind |
| Division | Division of Food Production and Society |
| Department | Grassland and Livestock |
| Total budget | 5090000 |
European farms trend towards specialisation and high yields but have become increasingly dependent on externalinputs to compensate for declining recycling of nutrients. Farms in sub-Saharan Africa less specialized, have lowinputs and yields and higher vulnerability to climate change. In Europe, re-coupling of livestock and crop systems could play an important role in more efficient (re)cycling of resources across livestock and crops, and food valuechains.
In Africa, integrating sustainability and resilience objectives with enhanced food security could avoid some of the trade-offs currently experienced in Europe (e.g., high GHG emissions and N pollution).CircAgric represents 17 world-leading researchers from 8 countries with expertise in livestock, croppingsystems, farm and landscape modelling, LCA and ecosystem services. The consortium will draw upon state-of-the-artknowledge, research methods and models to assess how circular practices can deliver sustainable food systems.
Using farm typologies as a baseline, the extent of existing circular practice implementation will be evaluated. Promising practices to enhance circularity will be proposed across typologies and agro-ecological zones. High resolution modelling of resource cycling and GHG emissions at farm and landscape level will be undertaken using process- and farm models, with remote sensing of particularly uncertain land use emission fluxes using novel satellite and drone technology. LCA will be applied to integrate modelling outputs into environmental footprints of food production, developing a novel framework for future projects.
Farm-scale modelling will also inform a marginal abatement cost curve and a decision support tool, enabling robust comparison of GHG abatement efficacy of specific circular practices. Stakeholder dialogue via workshops and focus groups will identify systemic lock-ins and levers pertinent to wide scale deployment of circular practices, culminating in a Transition Roadmap.
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