Reducing the impact of agriculture requires nothing less than a complete systematic change from our primarily linear economy to a circular one. Lucent Bio’s technologies support the transition to a circular and sustainable agri-food sector. Transitioning the agri-food sector into a circular model is an intricate and multifaceted challenge. It requires innovations in technology, products, practices, business, and sociocultural attitudes. Global climate action policy and plans such as the European Union’s Green Deal and Canada’s Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy have developed aggressive targets that aim for net-zero emissions by 2050. These targets will have to be met at the same time as food security needs to be increased for a growing population. And producing more food needs to be done with an ever-decreasing environmental impact.

A circular economy is a robust way to reach climate action targets because it has a smaller environmental impact while providing the agri-food sector with resiliency and greater profits. But how does this method become mainstream? Recommended strategies include understanding and utilizing our planet’s natural technology, an approach that has roots in past farming techniques but is being amplified through innovation and modern technologies. Specifically, by using natural and renewable materials, circular agriculture and food systems could also prevent, recover, or repurpose waste.

Lucent Bio’s flagship technology—Soileos®—supports this strategy using biomimicry, which is an approach to innovation where sustainable solutions emulate natural systems. Lucent Bio is taking steps to achieve sustainable, circular management of resources by focusing on healthy soils, leveraging demand power, collaborating with farmers, and taking a holistic systems level approach to the supply chain. Lucent has developed a clean manufacturing process that upcycles agriculture and food processing cellulose-rich co-products into a sustainable source of crop nutrients. Soileos®, a plant-based bioactivated fertilizer, has been formulated to be stable in the soil, to increase nutrient bioavailability, and to minimize negative environmental impacts from fertilizer use such as groundwater pollution. Soileos® is positioned to replace less effective and polluting fertilizers with non-polluting, sustainable alternatives that increase yields; improve crop nutrient density and flavor; improve soil health; and increase soil carbon levels.