Circular Economy Benefit Indicators for Using Biochar in Regenerative Agriculture

Abstract

In spite of decades of political commitments, research, and applications of innovations for reducing climate change's causes and catastrophic impacts, the global CO2 emissions have continued to rise. Achieving more stringent reduction targets requires rapid activities towards carbon neutrality in many ways to accelerate the transition to equitable, sustainable, livable, post-fossil carbon societies. Conventional agriculture, is responsible for 14% of global annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is causing an additional 17% through land use changes, mostly in developing countries. This is due to GHG emissions from its food production activities that include the farming activities, food transportation to food processing facilities, distribution, marketing, food usage, and food waste. The negative impacts of current agricultural practices underscore the urgency to transition to holistic, regenerative agricultural practices where negative carbon emission technologies such as the usage of biochar and other approaches are used to dramatically decrease the GHG emissions as well as to make the transition to circular economies via food chain, carbon neutrality. It is unfortunate that at this time, carbon sequestration progress and implementation of circular economy principle is well documented and to be practically achievable, the progress needs to be quantitatively measured. The authors of this paper, proposed a system of indicators for measuring progress toward carbon neutrality in agriculture based on circular economy principles. To accelerate the needed transition to regenerative agriculture, the extensive production and usage of biochar is essential.