The Law of Conservation of Mass, enunciated at the end of the 1743th century by the French scientist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1794-XNUMX), became famous for teaching that “in nature, nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”. Meaning that elements that make up everything around us are very stable - they are neither created nor destroyed spontaneously, but circulate in the environment. A carbon atom can spend millions of years buried like coal, before being burned in a plant and released into the atmosphere, where it remains for decades, to then be dissolved in the ocean and absorbed by an algae cell, which when dead releases it into the atmosphere, for new trajectories.
Life involves obtaining, using and discarding such essential elements. While an organism is alive, its chemical composition is continually changing as necessary elements are incorporated and waste products are released. When an organism dies, the atoms linked to biomolecules return to simpler molecules, in the atmosphere, water and soil, fueling new cycles. Based on the Law of Conservation of Mass, such cycles sustain balances refined by millions of years of trial and error, which guaranteed resilience and durability to nature, and to life itself on Earth.
The logic of the Law of Conservation of Mass applies everywhere, with serious implications for open and highly altered systems, such as cities, that import food, fuel, water, etc. and export manufactured products. Cities are sources of large amounts of solid waste, CO2 and other pollutants released into the atmosphere, as well as waste released into rivers and aquatic ecosystems. They usually operate according to the logic of “extract, use and discard”, which has become common in almost all industrial economies, which, in order to primarily meet human demands, end up impacting the integrity and functioning of ecosystems.
Like cities, agriculture is at the heart of this problem, as it is an open system, dependent on natural resources. Highly productive agricultural systems are essential to feed the growing human population, but they suffer from the defect of having many inputs (energy, fertilizers, water, pesticides, etc.) and outputs (products and waste) that usually exceed the amount of material naturally circulating in the "ecosystem" occupied by agriculture, which can lead to serious imbalances. Furthermore, water, energy and nutrients are increasingly limiting, which is also forcing the reinvention of these systems.
The Circular Economy has become a promising way to overcome such imbalances. Restorative and regenerative by design, this new economy involves production and consumption models that prioritize sharing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling materials for as long as possible, extending their life cycle and reducing losses and waste to a minimum.
Circular agriculture models seek intelligent alignment with the Law of Conservation of Mass, reducing dependence on external inputs to a minimum, allowing the closure of nutrient cycles and reducing waste discharges and emissions into the environment, recovering critical balances lost with the conventional economy.
Agriculture tends to gain great prominence in the Circular Economy because it is naturally friendly to regenerative practices – such as crop rotation, direct planting without soil disturbance, natural control of pests and diseases and mixed or integrated systems – with crops, livestock and forests managed in synergy, in the same space, throughout the year. Biomass from agriculture can now be transformed to reduce dependence on external resources and pollutants. Bio-based inputs and raw materials are produced from it, such as bioenergy, biofertilizers, biodefenses, bioadditives, bioactive compounds, etc.
When evaluating the monumental production of biomass in tropical agricultural areas, it is not inconsistent to anticipate the farms of the future incorporating refineries, side by side with crops and livestock, to transform this resource. The emergence of biorefineries linked to agricultural properties would allow the economic use of large volumes of biomass that are currently discarded, reducing dependence on external resources and, moreover, contributing to the decarbonization of the energy, chemical and materials industries, which can gradually free themselves from their dependence. of petroleum with raw materials derived from agriculture.
The fact is that circularity emerges as a viable path to overcoming the many dangers associated with the reckless use of resources critical to life on earth, which, once used, often cannot be transformed back to their initial components.
Although it is possible to recycle a concrete block, it is very difficult to turn it back into water, sand, gravel and cement. A simple example that helps to reflect on many processes enshrined in the dominant economic paradigm, which demands quick results and instant gratification, often subverting natural laws, producing waste and pollution that put the health of the planet at risk and, ultimately, viability itself. of society.
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The definition of a method that makes it possible to distinguish between these two sources of variation in soybean crop productivity is of great use to producers and consultants, as it makes it possible to define the strategies to be adopted to minimize losses.
