Farmers markets and veg boxes, opportunities for a circular economy in agriculture

For all life on earth, food is important, and at any one point in time, its availability is the most immediate concern. Even for those of us blessed with a reliable and predictable food supply, what we eat and how we eat it is still of huge cultural importance. When it comes to sustainability, the food system to provides an almost perfect case study of the complex interlinkages between the three sustainability ‘pillars’ - social, economic and environmental. For example, industrial agriculture can be seen to lower food prices, increasing social sustainability by increasing access to calories but at the cost of the environmental sustainability of food production.

However, this simplistic overview doesn’t do justice to our national food supply systems which are complex and prone to unintended consequences and reinforcing loops. This complexity can be demonstrated using the example above: though it is known that industrial agriculture does indeed lower food prices per calorie, and this does come at an environmental cost (1), in reality, this does not translate into increased social sustainability. This is because as diets have shifted to include more of the calorie-dense food in which the system specialises (e.g. vegetable oils and high fructose syrups) the human preference for these foods has then motivated businesses to market even more high-calorie options, further fueling the demand from the industrial agricultural system. Ultimately, this has resulted in gradually worsening diets and increasing levels of obesity and associated health complications, lowering social sustainability.

This observation is in fact part of the ‘Junk food cycle’ identified by Henry Dimbleby in his recent National Food Strategy, a piece of work commissioned to identify the issues within the existing food system and to offer policy options to create a more sustainable alternative. As characterised by Dimbleby, our current food system can be thought of as both a “miracle and a disaster”, being incredibly effective at generating calories to feed a rapidly growing population but doing so at a staggering cost to our health and environment.

Henry Dimbleby’s strategy uses systems thinking to overcome the issues of complexity and identifies two key feedback loops that must be broken to improve the UK’s food system: the ‘junk food cycle’ mentioned above and another ‘invisibility of nature’ cycle, which describes how environmental impacts are not economically represented within the system. There is little to take issue with in the Food Strategy, which is a very well written analysis of the UK’s food system, offering a well-thought-through vision of a better alternative. However, of interest to the author (Jacob Hughes, Technical Consultant) was a lack of specific attention paid to the promotion of short food supply chains (SFSCs), which potentially could provide a powerful tool for improving the sustainability of agriculture at a local level. Not that there absolutely should have been (Dimbleby’s strategy focused on the national picture and attempting to break the two key feedback loops), but we feel that this could be a missed opportunity – hence this article on the benefits of SFSCs for the circular economy.

First, it would be good to lay out exactly what an SFSC is; definitions vary, but traditionally SFSCs can be understood to be food supply chains that seek to minimise the number of intermediaries between producer and consumer, with many technical definitions of SFSCs based on the number of intermediaries (2). This of course sounds very technical, but most will be familiar with the concept, as farm shops, farmers’ markets, vegetable boxes, producer cooperatives (where producers band together to collectively process and distribute their own produce) (2) and community-supported agriculture (where consumers contribute resources towards a farms operation in exchange for shares of future harvests) are all common examples of business models that would be considered to be SFSCs (3) (4).

For anyone who has ever bought produce from a farm shop or farmers’ market may well know, SFSCs are believed to offer many environmental, economic and social benefits over more traditional (longer) supply chains. These can include reductions in packaging, lower food miles, the revitalisation of local communities and increased profits for small and medium-sized producers. These are just a few examples, but a full accounting of the many purported benefits of SFSCs can be seen below (2).

Figure 1 Sustainability benefits of SFSCs taken from Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC) as Local and Sustainable Systems. Bourlakis, Michael, Bezat-Jarzebowska, Agnieszka and Jarzebowski , Sebastian. s.l. : Sustainability, 2020

The reason SFSCs are of particular interest to Oakdene Hollins; a circular economy consultancy with little experience in the agricultural sector is that as a business model SFSCs can be seen to align closely with the objectives of the circular economy.

Figure 2: Image showing how circular economy differs to linear economies

As a quick primer, the circular economy is an approach to economics and business which tries to maximise the value retained in any resource for as long as possible. Above you can see a diagram we have taken to using by Circular Flanders which illustrates difference between the circular and linear economies.

With this in mind, it should be apparent that under the right circumstances many of the benefits of SFSCs can also provide opportunities to enhance the circularity of food producers. The most obvious example relates to the reduced waste generated in the exchange of produce between intermediaries. At the same time producers may also be empowered to valorise (get value out of) the waste they do generate through anaerobic digestion, composting, reuse etc, which can be used as inputs into the farming process. What’s more, as mentioned above, SFSCs can also reduce the amount of packaging required for food and be more amenable for closed loop systems such as deposit returns for refillable packaging, helping to reduce waste in the food system.

Traditionally SFSCs have also been associated with producers who use more environmentally friendly and lower-input farming methods (organic, regenerative, etc) selling their produce at a premium to consumers. From a circular economy standpoint these practices have the added benefit of reducing the flows of resources such as fertilisers and pesticides into the system (4) (5).

Of course, it is not a given that a SFSC will be more sustainable or circular than an alternative supply chain but, given the context and the relatively low prevalence of SFSCs in the UK, for many producers SFSCs can offer great platforms from which to improve their own circularity by shortening loops, reducing inputs and increasing opportunities for waste valorisation. (This is in addition to the other purported social and economic benefits). It is for these reasons that Oakdene Hollins has been promoting the use of short supply chains when working with the York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnerships to grow the circularity of local SMEs..

There is no specific attention paid to the promotion of SFSCs within the Nationally Food Strategy. However, Henry Dimbleby does make efforts to promote ‘local’ purchasing, most notably recommending that Government procurement guidelines encourage purchasing from local businesses. Interesting too is the trials of new procurement portals, which empower buyers to source smaller quantities of produce from multiple local businesses. However, given the potential for increasing circularity, we would have liked to have seen more focus on the opportunities for growth of circular business models such as those enabled by SFSCs in the National Food Strategy. If the Government does take the National Food Strategy’s recommendations on board, we would hope that one of the ‘What works agencies’ could turn its attention to such circular practices in the future, as we feel that viewing such systems through the lens of the circular economy can often throw up opportunities that otherwise would have been missed.

Bibliography

1. Dimbleby, Henry. The National Food Strategy: The Plan. s.l. : National Food Strategy, 2021.

2. Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC) as Local and Sustainable Systems. Bourlakis, Michael, Bezat-Jarzebowska, Agnieszka and Jarzebowski , Sebastian. s.l. : Sustainability, 2020, Vol. 12. 11.

3. Davis, University of California. What is a Cooperative? Small Farms Research and Extension. [Online] 2021.

4. Agriculture, U.S. Department of. Community Supported Agriculture. National Agricultural Library. [Online] 2021.

5. Examination of Short Supply Chains Based on Circula Economy and Sustainability Aspects. Kiss, Konrád, Ruszkai, Csaba and Takács-György, Katalin. s.l. : Resources, 2019, Vol. 8. 4.

6. From Short Food Supply Chains to Sustainable Agriculture in Urban Food Systems: Food Democracy as a Vector of Transition. Chiffoleau, Yuna, Millet-Amrani, Sarah and Canard, Arielle. s.l. : Agriculture, 2016, Vol. 6. 4.