Towards a Circular Economy in Australian Agri‐food Industry: An Application of Input‐Output Oriented Approaches for Analyzing Resource Efficiency and Competitiveness Potential

Abstract

Summary The food industry in Australia (agriculture and manufacturing) plays a fundamental role in contributing to socioeconomic sectors nationally. However, alongside the benefits, the industry also produces environmental burdens associated with the production of food. Sectorally, agriculture is the largest consumer of water. Additionally, land degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, and waste generation are considered the main environmental impacts caused by the industry. The research project aims to evaluate the eco‐efficiency performance of various subsectors in the Australian agri‐food systems through the use of input‐output–oriented approaches of data envelopment analysis and material flow analysis. This helps in establishing environmental and economic indicators for the industry. The results have shown inefficiencies during the life cycle of food production in Australia. Following the principles of industrial ecology, the study recommends the implementation of sustainable processes to increase efficiency, diminish undesirable outputs, and decrease the use of nonrenewable inputs within the production cycle. Broadly, the research outcomes are useful to inform decision makers about the advantages of moving from a traditional linear system to a circular production system, where a sustainable and efficient circular economy could be created in the Australian food industry.

Circularity Brokers: Digital Platform Organizations and Waste Recovery in Food Supply Chains

“…This implies an inefficient use of scarce resources, which are spoiled instead of being preserved or employed productively (Gokarn and Kuthambalayan 2017). The natural environment is (often irreparably) affected by the disposal and landfilling of products and materials, which cause pollution of air, water and soil (Pagotto and Halog 2016;Papargyropoulou et al 2014;Ribeiro et al 2018). In addition, the particular case of food waste is seen as morally unacceptable (Ribeiro et al 2018) in social terms: while onethird (approximately 1.3 billion tons) of the food produced for human consumption is spoiled every year (FAO 2017), one billion people globally suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition (Devin and Richards 2018).…”

A Metric for Quantifying Product‐Level Circularity

“…). At the meso level, MFA has been applied to measure IS in industries such as forestry (Karlsson and Wolf ), printed circuit boards (Wen and Meng ), highway traffic systems (Wen and Li ), and the agri‐food industry (Pagotto and Halog ). Emergy‐based assessments of energy and labor intensity have been applied to various industrial parks in China (Geng et al.…”

Transition towards Circular Economy in the Food System

“…Pagotto et al [35] note in their analysis of resource potential and efficiency in the Australian agri-food sector that the inherent complexity of increasing cross-sectoral efficiency and recycling requires sound policies and an environmental-oriented approach, as well as stakeholder engagement in all sectors of the supply chain. Localized food systems are one area of interest within the circular economy.…”