The article “India’s Agricultural Circular Economy” explores how the agricultural sector in India is taking a dynamic path towards becoming a circular economy, whereby agricultural waste can be viewed as a commodity rather than a liability. The article assesses the scale of crop residues, food waste, and livestock co-products, evaluates state-based programs, such as GOBARdhan and the Crop Residue Management initiative, and demonstrates how biomass, biochar, and organic fertilisers can contribute to environmental sustainability, rural development, and the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
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Key highlights
- India’s Agricultural Circular Economy
- Agricultural Wastes: Magnitude and Origin
- State Initiatives that Derive Circular Agriculture
- Transforming Agricultural Waste into Resources
- Correlation between Circular Agriculture and SDGs
- SDG 2: Zero Hunger and Sustainable Agriculture
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India’s agriculture sector is gradually shifting toward a circular economy model, with the goal of transforming 350 million tonnes of annual agricultural waste into economic value, generating around 10 million jobs, and building a $2 trillion market by 2050. Food and nutrition security in India is still greatly dependent on agriculture; however, agricultural activities yield large amounts of waste during the growing, harvesting, and processing stages of the food commodities. The poor management of residues, manure, and food waste has a negative impact on environmental degradation; increases greenhouse gases, and reduces the health of soils. The paradigm of the circular economy is a ground-breaking framework that reinvents the concept of waste as a resource and encompasses the recovery, re-use, and recyclability into agrarian systems. India is implementing sustainable practices such as GOBARdhan, Crop Residue Management and Agriculture Infrastructure Fund to meet economic growth with ecological sustainability to increase resiliency, resource efficiency and inclusive rural development.
Agricultural Wastes: Magnitude and Origin
The agricultural landscape in India produces bountiful amounts of agricultural waste that have been estimated to amount to around 350 million tonnes per year (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy). This production includes crop residues, animal manure, food processing by-products and domestic food waste. Current management practices are inadequate, which is why they lead to air pollution, soil degradation, and greenhouse gas emission and stress the critical necessity of sustainable interventions.
Crop Residues and Stubble
Open-field combustion (such as of straw, stalks and stubble) has become a common method of preparing the field using the residue left behind after harvesting. Even though the practice leaves less input in terms of labour, it depletes soil nutrients and produces pollutants. The mitigation procedures, which are mulching, composting and turning the residues into biomass energy, are increasingly being promoted to reduce the adverse impact on the environment and were heightened to boost soil fertility.
Animal Manure and Carcasses
The livestock industry in India is large in scale, generating a high amount of dung and bedding waste. The method of mitigating the spread of zoonotic diseases is ensuring that manure is suitably used to create biogas and organic fertilisers, with safe disposal of carcasses. The FAO Carcass Management Guidelines (2023) highlight the importance of the need to have infrastructure and technical capacity to support the disposal in an environmentally sound manner.
Post-Harvest Agricultural Losses
There are quantitative and qualitative losses in storage, transportation and processing. According to the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, grains, fruits and vegetables suffer major losses during post-harvest in India, thus limiting incomes received by farmers and availability of food. Improved supply-chain management can be used to reduce these losses.
Food Waste
Globally, 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted annually, of which 1.05 billion tonnes was recorded in 2022, 60 percent of which include households (UN SDGs). Household and retail food waste makes a significant percentage of the emissions in India. Avoidable solutions, such as innovative technologies like engineered biochar, are viable to provide solutions in the reuse of waste into products that improve or sequester carbon in soil.
State Initiatives that Derive Circular Agriculture
The Government of India has implemented a complex approach, which seeks to incorporate the concepts of the circular economy in the agricultural sector. The government aims to transform the agricultural residues and food waste that are mainly discarded into energy, organic inputs, and infrastructure-based opportunities through a series of policy initiatives to reconcile ecological sustainability with economic growth.
GOBARdhan Scheme
Galvanising Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan (GOBARdhan) programme is a programme which involves the utilisation of cattle dung, crop residues and food waste in biogas and organic manure production. There were 979 biogas plants serving 51.4% of the districts. The private investment and adoption have been encouraged by policy incentives such as the introduction of carbon credit trading and tax relief for CBG blended fuels.
Crop Residue Management (CRM)
The Crop Residue Management program aims at reducing stubble burning through in-situ management of residues into soil and ex-situ management of composting and bioenergy. Between 2018-19 and 2025-26, INR 3,926 crores was released, which allowed opening more than 42000 Custom Hiring Centres and providing 3.24 lakh machines (Ministry of Agriculture).
Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF)
Introduced in 2020-21, the AIF credits post-harvest infrastructure with long-term credit. As of 2025, INR 66,300 crores was sanctioned to 1.13 lakh projects, which had mobilised INR 1.07 lakh crore of investments. The projects include warehouses, cold storage and organic input facilities, hence fortifying value chains, thus minimising post-harvest losses.
Fund Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF)
The AHIDF caters to dairy and meat processing, feed production, and waste-to-wealth ventures and has a corpus of INR 15,000 crore. Intergovernmental cooperatives under this program use livestock as a source of income and enhance the use of the manure-based fertilisers and bio-gas within the livestock systems (DAHD).
Transforming Agricultural Waste into Resources
Agricultural waste materials and food waste, when well utilized can be processed into resources that will help in energy production, soil fertility and rural livelihood. The framework of the circular economy in India is focused on this conversion as one of the aspects of sustainable development.
Energy Potential Agricultural Biomass
In India, the annual production of agricultural waste is about 350mm tonnes, which has the potential to yield approximately 18,000 MW of energy (Ministries of New and Renewable Energy). Biomass-derived energy not only decreases the reliance on fossil fuels, but it is also able to provide decentralised energy solutions to the rural population, thus improving energy security.
Engineering Agricultural Waste into Biochar
Biochar is generated as a result of biomass that has undergone the process of pyrolysis at low oxygen levels, enhancing the fertility of soils and the level of water retained in soils. Created biochar has even greater nutrient efficiency and carbon sequestration. Recent research emphasises its ability to eliminate environmental pollutants as well as economic support to counter climate change (ICAR).
Converting Agricultural Waste into Fertilisers
When the residues are turned into fertilisers in the form of compost and biogas slurry, nutrient-enriched organic fertilisers are obtained. These inputs would decrease the use of chemical fertilisers, make the soil healthy and encourage sustainable farming methods. Simple biogas is suggested (ICAR guidelines) to enrich the soil with specific crops such as maize, palm, rice, etc.
Livelihood Opportunities in Circular Agriculture
The infrastructure investment programmes, in the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, have established jobs within agricultural processing, storage and waste-to-resource businesses mobilisation. INR 1.07 lakh crore have been invested in this infrastructure (Ministry of Agriculture). These efforts will develop inclusive development and rural entrepreneurship.
Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana
The Pradhan Mantri Dhan Dhanya Krishi Yojana (PMDDKY) is a major initiative introduced in the 2025–26 Budget targeting 100 low-productivity districts. The scheme seeks to strengthen irrigation, storage, and access to credit by integrating 36 agricultural programmes across 11 ministries. Backed by an annual allocation of ₹24,000 crore for six years, it aims to enhance productivity and raise the incomes of nearly 17 million farmers.
Correlation between Circular Agriculture and SDGs
The shift to circularity in the Indian agricultural system is gradually acknowledged as a feasible channel of achieving the global sustainability goals. With waste redefined as a resource, it will contribute to food security, climate resilience, and inclusive rural development, thus contributing in the same direction to the realisation of the objectives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
SDG 2: Zero Hunger and Sustainable Agriculture
Composting, biomass recycling, and biochar use in Indian agriculture can contribute heavily to better soil fertility and reduce the dependency on chemical inputs. This SDG indicator 2.4.1 emphasises the importance of sustainable agricultural systems; efforts made to promote crop residue management and use of biogas slurry in India tangibly strengthen this segment of the SDG, as it can multiply productivity and sustainability.
Tackling Global Food Waste by Circular Agriculture
The amount of food waste in the world in 2022 was 1.05 billion tonnes, of which 60 percent was due to domestic food wastage (United Nations). To address this issue, circular agricultural practices enable the transformation of food waste into biochar and organic fertilizers, which reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and improve soil quality.
Inclusive Rural Development through Circular Agriculture
Government initiatives like GOBARdhan, Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, and so on, not only control waste but also spur employment and entrepreneurship. It is estimated that in 2050, the circular economy of India will reach a market value of USD 2 trillion, as well as generate about 10 million jobs (National Planning Institute).
Conclusion
The quest by India in the attainment of circular agriculture is used to explain how environmental stewardship and economic development may complement each other. The conversion of agro-residues, manure, and food wastes to energy, fertilizers, and livelihood means entrenching sustainability in the agricultural systems of the country. The possibilities of waste-to-wealth approaches in improving soil health, water security, and rural resilience can be exemplified in flagship programs such as GOBARdhan, Crop Residue Management, and Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, as this reflects how national priorities are fulfilled through meeting global Sustainable Development Goals.