Practical Roadmap to Precision Agriculture Considering Circular Economy Constraints

The sustainable agriculture enterprises of the 21st century take into account the interplay between Industry 4.0 (14.0) technology and the principles of circular economy (CE). While the principles of CE have indeed brought more attention to environmental difficulties than economic ones, its present stage has also given rise to social concerns. At the macro-level, it is essential to establish limitations on the design, operation, and control of forthcoming manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain systems in order to uphold considerations of economic, environmental, and social factors. At the micro-level, people and communities must engage in acts such as refusing and rethinking, rather than relying only on changes in corporate principles, in order to address behaviors, preferences, and related factors. Both levels of responsibility contribute to the advancement of a cohesive industry and society towards a new 14.0-CE mandate that is closely linked with sustainable development considerations. This work discusses how 14.0 technologies may serve as a basis for so-called precision agriculture (PA), and hence how they might be used to further CE efforts in the agricultural sector. The objectives of this study are as follows: (a) to examine the mutually beneficial relationship between PA and CE; (b) to investigate the understanding of the potential benefits of PA technologies in the context of the regenerate, share, optimize, loop, virtualized, and exchange (ReSOLVE) models; (c) to propose an outlook roadmap for future research that integrates principles of PA and CE, drawing on theories of green supply chain management.