FFTC Journal of Agricultural Policy

Circular Agriculture for Sustainable Healthy Diets: Perspectives and Policy Implications

Objectives of study is to calculate the potential of plant nutrients from animal wastes and crop residues. Animal population data was collected from Ministry of agriculture and Rural development report and crop residue data were collected by Institute for Agricultural Environment project of current use of crop residues. Annual amount of equivalent fertilizers can be calculated from massive wastes and residues from the current agricultural production. Crop residues contain equivalent to 43.40 million tons of organic matter, 1.86 million tons of urea, 1.68 million tons of single super phosphate and 2.23 million tons of potassium sulfate, while animal wastes contain the equivalent of 42 million tons of organic matter, 1.20 million tons of urea, 3.10 million tons of single super phosphate and 2.40 million tons of potassium sulfate. In total, wastes and residues from both sub-sectors contain
In Taiwan, millions of livestock are raised for animal protein supply, however most of the feed ingredients are imported. For food safety and sustainable environment, exploring the available locally produced feed resources is more and more urgent. There are lots of by-products produced from agriculture and food processing. The previous and ongoing utilization research work are introduced in this paper. The high moisture content (> 90%) of pineapple pulp (PP) restricts its utilization. It was suggested that PP could be mixed with the drier source like rice straw (RS), wheat bran (WB) or Flammulina velutipes (FC) spent substrate. Diet containing 12 kg a day of fresh PP+RS silage supported normal milk yield and milk fat percentage for Holstein cows. Unfortunately, PP sugars were almost used up by lactic acid bacteria when ensiling. No response to our high milk protein and gravity
Taiwan has more than 7,400 pig farms and 5.5 million pigs. The annual output value is about US$2.3 billion, accounting for 43% of the livestock industry. It is one of the most important agricultural economic sectors in Taiwan. However, due to the large number of herds, a huge amount of pig manure and urine are continuously discharged from the livestock farms. If they are not treated very well, it will seriously affect the environment and ecology. Pig manure contains a large amount of degradable solids, which is a high concentration organic wastewater. This high concentration organic wastewater undergoes a typical anaerobic fermentation process called three-step piggery wastewater treatment (TPWT), and biogas will be generated during the treatment process. Biogas is a combustible gas and its main component is methane, which accounts for 50 to 65% of the volume of biogas. In this study, a
The population of the world is ever-growing. It is expected to reach 10 billion in 2050. To feed all those people, significant improvements in our food production systems are required. Current agricultural practices have proven to be damaging to ecological systems worldwide, leading to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and water pollution, among other problems. Moreover, two-thirds of agricultural land is currently used to feed livestock. We have already overstepped the Planetary Boundary as defined by Rockström et al., (2009) for reactive nitrogen usage. Simply upscaling agricultural activities to meet the demands of the growing population is therefore not an option. Such an  approach would lead to a nitrogen fertilizer requirement which is three times higher than the world can sustain. We therefore need to become three times more efficient in using
Many areas in the world produce more manure nutrients than available cropland can assimilate due to the agglomeration of livestock production.  The development of technologies for nutrient reuse was identified as one of the five main challenges in waste management within a circular economy. More sustainable techniques using nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) recovery for both solid and liquid waste are important to close nutrient cycle loops in both livestock agriculture and municipal sewage systems.   A circular economy in agriculture is a way of agricultural production that benefits with inputs from recycling or renewable sources. Animal manures contain many valuable materials such as ammonia, phosphorus, proteins/amino acids, compost materials, and clean water for reuse that could be extracted, recovered, and reused in a circular agriculture. The recycling and reuse of