Report on Circularity in Agriculture and Food Systems

India produces more food than almost any economy on earth and loses more of it than almost any economy can afford. Agriculture sustains 46 per cent of the workforce on holdings averaging 1.08 hectares, and the decisions taken about inputs, infrastructure and residue over the next decade will settle whether that system keeps extracting from its own resource base or begins to restore it. This report treats that as a value chain question rather than a waste question. Circularity in agriculture also differs from circularity elsewhere. In agriculture, circularity it is a restoration problem. The processes that return nutrients to soil, build organic matter from residue and fix nitrogen through microbial communities are not technologies awaiting invention; they are ancient cycles the industrial model has displaced. The resource being depleted is not a finite mineral stock but a living system whose degradation compounds. Reading the sector node by node, from input supply through farm production, post-harvest handling, processing, distribution, retail and consumption, shows where value is created and where it exits without recovery.

Download Report