Circular economy: A development strategy for achieving sustainability in the Newfoundland and Labrador agrifood system

The “circular economy”(CE) has recently evolved from an environmental imperative into an economic and industrial strategy for achieving sustainability of business organizations by strengthening their resilience and resource security within planetary boundaries. A CE is based on the 3R principles of reducing, recycling, and reusing materials and energy. While literature is rich in CE success stories from the business and commercial world, from the building industry to city management, the CE literature on agriculture and agrifood systems is scarce. The aim of this paper is to propose the CE practice as a business model and a development strategy for achieving sustainability at the regional level in the Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) agri-food system. The research method involved a comparative literature review of 10 successful CE case studies from Canada and around the world, and primary data collection from a sample of Western Newfoundland (WN) dairy and livestock farms concerning their circular practices and the feasibility of establishing a community anaerobic digester (AD) system in Western Newfoundland. The paper develops a conceptual CE framework for implementation of CE principles and practices in the provincial agrifood system challenged by two unsustainability issues: lack of organic waste management and food insecurity. The analysis of the proposed CE framework, built around a community AD facility, shows that the NL agrifood system can become sustainable, as circularity is being built in the farms’ relations, and new products from waste can contribute to meeting the energy and dairy products needs for the nearby connected farms, for a tourist lodge, for a proposed secondary dairy processing plant and for the nearby towns. Besides, these farms will be able to recover crop nutrients, i.e., organic compost, by producing the digestate from using waste food and agricultural residues (from the farms and off the farms). Although the energy policy is regulated by the provincial government, increasing government incentives in this sector could be an effective strategy to overcome the sustainability challenges for the provincial agri-food sector.