Generating solutions

Agriculture, food waste and waste management generate more CO2 than all the cars, trucks, trains and boats in Canada. To reduce food waste and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a new generation of entrepreneurs is banking on the circular economy to propel the agri-food sector into urban areas. Inspired by natural ecosystems, they are transforming locally recovered agri-food waste through mushroom cultivation, edible insect breeding and decentralized composting. In this way, they create win-win partnerships that generate climate-smart products. The microorganisms present in these agroecosystems influence the digestibility of agri-food co-products, the production of GHGs and the way in which the fertilizing materials generated improve soil and crop health. To better define the biological processes underlying the transformation of agri-food co-products, and to disseminate these new agricultural practices more widely, the project team will develop a unique integrated approach. It will use “omics” technologies to characterize the main microbial consortia present. It will monitor their interaction throughout the food overcycling chain. And it will develop bioconversion monitoring and optimization tools and models, multi-omics databases and microbial collections useful for the development of products, strains or microbial consortia. It is in a veritable urban living laboratory that a circular economy cluster will be consolidated, improving the connectivity and efficiency of agri-food production and alternative protein sources, while mitigating GHG emissions and food insecurity. This approach will also be scalable and transferable to rural areas. In the pilot community of Montreal, a five per cent detour of waste would eliminate approximately 450,000 tonnes of GHGs. On a Canada-wide scale, the transformation of a moderate amount of agri-food waste through decentralized composting (10 per cent), mushroom cultivation (five per cent) or insect farming (five per cent), would avoid 220,791 tonnes of CO2 emissions, and 202,000 tonnes of carbon could be sequestered in the soil by 2035. This would generate $71.9 million in carbon credits, $700,000 in revenue from product sales and 36,000 jobs.