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Type: Book

Developing circular agricultural production systems

Editor

Dr Barbara Amon is an Associate Professor for Environmental Engineering and Agricultural Engineering at the University of Zielona Góra, Poland, and a Senior Research Scientist and Coordinator of the Research Programme “Precision farming in crop and livestock production” at the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB) in Potsdam, Germany. In addition to her research, she sits on many panels looking at sustainable agriculture, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), European Innovation Partnership-AGRI and the FAO LEAP Partnership. She is also the Co-Chair of the Agriculture and Nature Panel as part of the UNECE Task Force on Emission Inventories and Projections and of the Expert Panel on Mitigation of Agricultural Nitrogen under the UNECE Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen.

Dimensions:

229x152mm
6x9"

Publication date:

28 November 2023

Length of book:

400 pages

ISBN-13: 9781801462563

Hardback - £150.00
£150.00
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Description

With the agricultural sector pledging to improve its sustainability, there is an urgent need to move away from linear food production models which rely on significant raw material inputs and generate large amounts of residual waste.

Developing circular agricultural production systems reviews the emergence of circular agriculture as an approach to improving the sustainability of the agricultural sector. The book addresses recent advances in understanding and developing closed-loop systems to optimise crop nutrient cycles and resource use, as well as ways agricultural wastes can be recycled back into agricultural production or used as feedstock to produce a range of bio-based materials.

With its comprehensive coverage, the book showcases how to develop circular agricultural production systems, from using crop residues as livestock feed and developing new bio-based fertilizers, to producing biogas from livestock manure and manufacturing bio-plastics from agricultural waste.

Key features

  • Summarises the wealth of research on the ways in which circular agricultural production systems can be achieved
  • Highlights how agricultural waste can be reused and upcycled for the benefit of crop and livestock production, e.g. the use of crop residues as biofertilisers and livestock feed
  • Reviews our current understanding of closed-loop farming systems and includes case studies of the successful development of closed-loop dairy farms, pig production and aquaponic systems

What others are saying...

“Current agriculture wastes both agricultural inputs and outputs, leading to lower system productivity, higher costs and environmental pollution. A drive toward circular agricultural production systems is necessary to ensure nutrition security and to meet our goals of tackling climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution. This volume, edited by Professor Barbara Amon – a world-leading scientist in the field – features contributions from an array of expert authors and will be a must have item to anyone concerned with the challenge of developing circular agricultural production systems.” (Pete Smith, Professor of Soils & Global Change, University of Aberdeen, UK and Science Director of Scotland's ClimateXChange)

“The proposed book on circular agricultural systems will be an important contribution to the development of a sustainable bioeconomy. The book includes an ideal strategy for achieving this development, focussing on optimising inputs, reusing residues and developing co-products.” (Tom Curran, Associate Professor and Vice Principal for Internationalisation in the College of Engineering & Architecture, University College Dublin, Ireland)

Table of contents

Part 1 Optimising inputs
1.Designing circular, closed-loop agricultural systems: key principles and challenges: Rolf Meyer, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany;
2.Understanding and developing closed-loop nutrient cycles in crop production: Theun Vellinga, Wageningen University, The Netherlands;
3.Closed-loop precision farming technologies to optimise resource use: Thomas Bartzanas, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece;
4.Closed-loop combined crop-livestock farming systems: Friedhelm Taube, Kiel University, Germany;
5.Developing closed-loop dairy farms: Rodolfo Garcia-Flores, CSIRO, Australia;
6.Aquaponics as a closed loop agricultural system: Alberto Pardossi, University of Pisa, Italy;

Part 2 Re-using agricultural and other wastes
7.Using crop residues/by-products as livestock feed in a circular economy: Andre Brito, University of New Hampshire, USA;
8.Optimising livestock manure as a biofertiliser and bioenergy source: Victor Riau, GIRO-IRTA, Spain;
9.Optimising slurry management: Daniel Fangueiro, ISA, Portugal;
10.Safety/quality issues in using biofertilisers: April Leytem, USDA-ARS, USA;

Part 3 Co-products
11.Producing biogas from livestock manure and agricultural residues: Rita Fragoso, University of Lisbon, Portugal;
12.Multi-feedstock biorefineries for converting agricultural wastes into co-products: Butch Bataller, University of the Philippines Los Banos, The Philippines;
13.Developing bioplastics/bio-packaging from agricultural wastes: Marianna Villano, University of Rome, Italy;
14.Developing polyphenols from agricultural wastes: Miguel Prieto, University of Vigo, Spain;