Use of circular economy concepts to assist urban and peri-urban agricultural activities can be a great pathway to promote the agro ecological approach. Thirsty and hungry cities are acting as consumption hubs and facing an imminent challenge in managing both solid and liquid urban waste streams. Urban waste is rich in major and micro nutrients and in addition can provide organic matter to the soil. This has a huge potential to allow reuse in agriculture where the health concerns are addressed. Transporting the waste derived agricultural inputs to rural agricultural areas is not always practical and economical because bulky nature of the products will consume more space while rocketing the transport cost which at the end of the day is not attractive to rural farmers as a result of the associated high price tags. There is huge potential for promoting urban and peri-urban agricultural resource recovery from urban waste streams while confirming agro ecological concepts. This will be win-win situation for farmers and city councils who are seeking nutrients and want to sustainably dispose their waste respectively.
Additional benefits are shorter value chains, transport distances and carbon foot prints resulting in a reduced number of actors along the supply chain, reasonable prices, reduced food waste and losses, high quality fresh products to the consumers, etc. The City region food system concept can be used to promote the agro ecological approach hand in hand with converting a challenge to an opportunity.
Sudarshana Fernando