In an exclusive interview, Hemant Chaudhary, Global Director of Circular360 and Founding Director of the Circular Economy Alliance Australia, argues that circularity in agriculture has shifted from ideological aspiration to economic inevitability as the global cost of waste collapses. He stresses that real circularity begins with prevention by design rather than waste management, with the greatest value today emerging from upstream system redesign, microbial intelligence, data-driven nutrient optimisation, and integrated water–energy–biomass loops.

Chaudhary envisions a decade in which farms function as multi-output biofactories, FPOs evolve into shared infrastructure hubs, cities serve as nutrient mines, and interoperable data networks make waste visible—and therefore removable—from the system. He maintains that India can become a global lighthouse for circular agriculture by treating biomass as a national asset, decentralising circular technologies, and empowering FPOs to bridge traditional ecological wisdom with modern digital precision.

Agriculture is often described as humanity’s first circular system, yet today it is among the world’s most linear and waste-heavy industries. From your vantage point across Australia, India, and global markets, what structural inflection point has made circularity economically inevitable rather than ideologically aspirational? Is it regulation, investor pressure, supply-chain shifts, or climate risk ?

The real inflection point is that the economics of waste have collapsed. For decades, agriculture could afford to treat waste as an externality—bury it, burn it, or ignore it—without any direct financial consequence. That era is over.

Today, every tonne of inefficiency creates a financial penalty, whether through escalating input costs, soil degradation, climate volatility, or the growing scrutiny of regulators and global buyers. The second major shift is that technology has finally aligned with economic logic. When IoT devices, spatial data, and AI-driven nutrient models can quantify waste at the level of litres, kilowatts, and kilograms, inefficiency stops being invisible. You cannot manage what you cannot measure, and for the first time in history, farmers and institutions can measure waste precisely.

But it is equally important to recognise that circularity is not a rigid framework. The practices that were circular fifty years ago—extended fallow periods, labour-intensive composting, and traditional nutrient cycling—came from a low-consumption society. These practices sustained smaller populations, but they cannot be replicated blindly in an era where global consumption has grown exponentially.

Australia has crossed 14 tonnes of material footprint per capita, and consumption patterns in India are rising sharply as well. In the past, low consumption made circularity organic; today, circularity requires intelligence, design, and efficiency. A nostalgic view of the past cannot feed a world of 1.4 billion Indians or a planet approaching ten billion. Famines were common in the so-called circular past. Today, if a food shortage emerges, modern systems allow us to respond in days, not years—that resilience comes from scale, technology, and real-time data.

Circularity today is not about returning to old practices; it is about combining biological wisdom with digital precision. Without scale and efficiency, circularity collapses under the weight of modern demand. That, in essence, is the structural shift: circularity has moved from the realm of ideology to the realm of necessity, powered by a convergence of economics, technology, and climate reality.

The circular economy debate in agriculture is often reduced to composting, biomass utilisation, or waste-to-wealth narratives. What part of this conversation do most countries—and even experts—get fundamentally wrong? Where is the real value creation happening in 2025 ?

The greatest misconception is that circularity begins with waste. In reality, true circularity begins much earlier—it begins with prevention by design. It begins with reducing consumption, extending the life of materials, and removing inefficiencies long before they generate waste. Years ago in Australia, we ran a program called “Cleaner Industries”. The government invested about AUD 2 million to help companies modernise their systems, adopt cleaner technologies, and cut inefficiencies at the source. Three years later, the cumulative economic gains exceeded AUD 66 million. That value did not come from recycling or biomass. It came from avoiding waste before it occurred. That lesson applies directly to agriculture.

A truly circular farm does not start with compost pits; it starts with rethinking crop cycles, irrigation patterns, packaging choices, post-harvest processes, and energy use. The world tends to assume circularity is about downstream activities, but the greatest value lies upstream—in better design, better intelligence, and better behaviour. Innovation is not only about new machinery; it is primarily about mindset. In Australia, a company brews beer from surplus bread. It is not a technological breakthrough; it is a conceptual breakthrough. Circularity thrives where imagination thrives.

Today, enormous value is emerging from redesigned materials, microbial innovations, soil biology, data systems, and integrated resource models. But the largest value by far is in systemic redesign—connecting water, nutrients, biomass, and energy into a single, interdependent loop. Most countries underestimate this because system redesign requires cooperation between policymakers, markets, financiers, and communities. It is complex, but it is where the real transformation occurs. Circularity is not a machine; it is a way of thinking—and the most circular resource any economy can cultivate is its own intelligence.

Circular360 works with governments, multinational corporations, and agri-businesses. What closed-loop architecture do you believe agriculture will adopt over the next decade? Will farms become biofactories, will FPOs become resource hubs, and will cities become nutrient mines? What does “smart circularity” look like operationally ?

Smart circularity is surprisingly simple when you break it down to its fundamentals: minimise resource consumption, maximise the efficiency of whatever resources are used, and ensure that every output—whether water, nutrient, biomass, or energy—reenters the value chain rather than leaving the system. If these three principles are applied consistently, a new agricultural architecture emerges almost automatically.

Farms will evolve into multi-output biofactories that produce food, energy, bio-materials, and soil carbon simultaneously. A modern farm will integrate solar pumps, microbial inputs, biogas digesters, composting systems, and nutrient-recovery processes into a cohesive loop. Farmer Producer Organisations will no longer remain mere aggregators; they will serve as circularity hubs providing shared access to IoT tools, composting units, shredders, microbial bioreactors, and carbon measurement systems. This shared infrastructure will democratise access to circular technologies, especially for smallholders.

Cities, too, will become nutrient mines. Urban food waste, green waste, brewery residue, and treated wastewater will increasingly flow back to farms, closing the rural-urban nutrient loop that industrialisation had broken. And underlying all of this will be interoperable data networks—sensor feeds, supply-chain platforms, irrigation models, and carbon accounting systems that communicate seamlessly. When data flows, waste becomes visible, and when waste becomes visible, circularity becomes operational. Smart circularity is not complicated; it is simply clarity applied at scale.

There is a belief that carbon markets will financially power regenerative and circular agriculture. Is this alignment realistic? Or is the world overestimating carbon as a revenue model? How should countries redesign carbon protocols so circular practices—from microbial inputs to nutrient cycling—are properly valued ?

Carbon markets are important, but the world must avoid treating them as a magic revenue engine. Today, most carbon protocols reward sequestration—planting trees, storing carbon in soil. But circularity is fundamentally about efficiency, and efficiency is yet to be adequately rewarded. Every litre of water saved, every kilogram of fertiliser replaced by a microbial solution, every tonne of residue prevented from burning—these are enormous carbon wins. Yet the current methodologies barely recognise them.

For carbon markets to genuinely support circular agriculture, the methodologies must evolve to recognise avoided emissions, resource efficiency, nutrient cycling, biomass utilisation, microbial inputs, and zero-waste design. Countries like India should not think of carbon as an isolated credit; they should think of it as an incentive for systemic efficiency. A strong incentive framework, rooted in accurate measurement and realistic baselines, will encourage farmers to adopt circular practices voluntarily. Carbon should be part of the income, not the entire income. Ultimately, carbon is not just about greenhouse gases; it is a reflection of how intelligently a nation manages its resources.

Climate extremes are already reshaping global agricultural competitiveness. Do you see circular economy principles influencing national strategies—from India and Australia to Africa and LATAM? Can circularity eventually become a factor in trade negotiations and future FTAs ?

Circularity will absolutely become a competitiveness metric. When a country reduces ten tonnes of waste, it simultaneously reduces the equivalent emissions, resource drain, and ecological risk. These reductions will increasingly appear in sustainability-linked trade requirements, import standards, and international negotiations. But the challenge is that the world is currently too carbon-centric in its thinking.

Carbon is important, but biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and ecosystem collapse are even more dangerous. A nation cannot destroy its soils, lose its pollinators, and erode its natural capital while claiming circularity through carbon offsets. That is a dangerous illusion.

Circularity, when understood correctly, becomes a holistic economic model—not a carbon ledger. Countries that take this systems view will build resilience into their agriculture, protect their ecological capital, and strengthen their export competitiveness. Those that chase carbon credits without addressing ecosystem health will eventually find themselves economically and ecologically vulnerable. The nations that treat circularity as a strategic capability—not just a sustainability metric—will lead the next generation of global trade.

India produces some of the world’s largest volumes of agricultural residues and biomass. What one policy, one technology, and one institutional reform could make India a global lighthouse for circular agriculture?

India’s opportunity lies in treating biomass as a national resource rather than an inconvenient by-product. A comprehensive biomass-circularity framework—supported by clear markets, incentives, and residue-management pathways—can transform both soil health and rural incomes. The technological shift must be decentralised rather than centralised. India needs thousands of village-level biogas units, microbial consortia production hubs, composting systems, shredders, and nutrient-recovery units placed close to farms, rather than a handful of large facilities far from the farm gate.

Institutionally, the most transformative reform would be empowering Farmer Producer Organisations to manage shared circular infrastructure. FPOs must become engines of circularity, providing farmers with access to data systems, IoT tools, carbon quantification, composting assets, and biomass logistics. If India can rebuild the biological loop that existed decades ago—when all crop residues returned to the soil—it will become a global model of circular agriculture. In a world struggling with soil carbon loss, India’s ability to close its nutrient and biomass loops could become its most strategic advantage.

— Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com)