By SfL Board Member Lois Wright Morton and Ernie Shea

Since our inception two decades ago, Solutions from the Land has been helping farmers adopt systems and practices that enable them to sustainably intensify production, improve the resilience of their operations and concurrently deliver high value ecosystem services that benefit themselves, the public and the planet. We refer to this approach as “smart agriculture”.

The ultimate goal for most producers here in the United States and across the globe is for their operations to be economically, environmentally and socially sustainable over time and across generations. This is no easy task as multiple shifting variables like weather, markets, pests and invasive species combine to create unpredictable production platforms.

Many agriculture and food systems stakeholders advocate for “silver bullet” production practices. However farmers know from experience that they are managing complex systems that are continually changing in response to the environment, management, and crop and livestock genetics.  SfL advocates system approaches with farmers having access to all “tools in the toolbox.”  This means resources and policies that support a variety of approachesappropriate to geographies, ecosystems and watersheds, cultures and a wide variety of agricultural/forestry types and scales without predetermining technologies, production type or design components.

Over the past several years SfL has been observing circular economy practices that farmers are using to transform their current production systems into more profitable and environmentally responsive systems by reducing waste, recycling and repurposing resources to add value to their farm operations. Beginning with our work in Iowa, we have been learning from farmers who are transitioning from linear to circular production systems by diversifying crop and livestock systems and expanding their markets. Circular system management processes replace ‘take resources, make and dispose as waste what is not the main product’ with ‘make, use, retain value and reuse as co-products’ thereby retaining value from wastes that otherwise might be lost income or harm the system.”

In our own learning process, we discovered that many farmers do not know “where” to start to begin to experiment with circular systems on their farms.  Further, policy makers often do not know “where or what” to incentivize or regulate to increase the effectiveness of the wide variety of potential circular agricultural biosystems. In our second peer reviewed circular systems paper “Farm Level Circularities as Solution Pathways to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs[ES1] )” published this month in the distinguished Journal of Natural Resources and Agricultural Ecosystems, we show how circular systems, diversification and integration of biodiversity-friendly practices are key to adding on-farm value and regenerating ecosystem resources. In our paper, we outline “nodes” within farming systems-places where changes can move or accelerate the system from linear towards greater circularity and note that proven technologies, scientific breakthroughs, and networks are critical to scaling up profitable, sustainable circular farm bioeconomies.  Several farm enterprise examples are used to illustrate the nodes, activities, and decisions that can promote circularity within agricultural production systems.  These examples are drawn from archival materials, virtual and in-person meetings, and informal discussions with farmers who are experimenting with circular systems, including presentations by United States (US) farmers and farmers from countries around the world who have participated in Solutions from the Land and UN FAO platforms over the past four to five years.

Regardless of the kinds of circular systems farmers try out and put in place, they are finding past experiences, observations of current conditions, data technologies, and their external networks are of great value in creating sustainable and resilient systems. We invite you to review their experiences and learn from their work.