Roundtable on Circularity in Agriculture and Food Systems

India’s agricultural economy runs on a paradox. It is among the most resource-intensive systems in the country and among the least circular. It sustains close to half the workforce and nearly 16-18% of the GDP, yet loses an extraordinary share of its own output as residue burned in the field, food spoiled in transit, nutrients never returned to the soil. The opportunity is not to produce more, but to waste far less of what is already produced.

This is the opening session of Closing the Loop, a four-part dialogue series building towards a Circular Economy Roadmap for India. Using a value chain analysis of India’s agri-food system and original calculations of residue, nutrient and energy flows, the report finds that the barriers to circularity are rarely technical; the interventions are proven, several of them within India. What is missing is the economic architecture that would make the circular choice the rational one.

Key themes for discussion

• Resource efficiency and the regeneration of natural capital – soil, water and the nutrient loop, and what would make the circular input choice economically rational at the farm gate
• Residue to resource – building the agricultural bioeconomy, and how residue, manure and organic waste become priced commodities with stable buyers
• Saving what is grown – post-harvest losses, cold chain connectivity and farm-gate processing, and whose balance sheet carries the investment
• Tackling food waste and recovery – closing the biological loop at the consumption end, beginning with a waste stream India does not yet measure
• From ambition to architecture – what must move in the next five years, across price signals, standards, measurement and coordination

Report on “Circularity in Agriculture and Food Systems” was released.

The complete report can be downloaded from https://competitiveness.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Report_Circularity_in_AgriFoodSystems_Designed_Final.pdf