James Gaffey is Co-Director of the Circular Bioeconomy Research Group (CIRCBIO) at Munster Technological University in Ireland. In this interview he discusses his newly adopted role as Project Coordinator for Rural BioReFarmeries, what prompted him to join this CBE JU-funded initiative, and why the use of grass as a bio-based material can transform the future of farming and the bioeconomy.
Hi James! You have an academic background in Environmental Science and Technology. What made you pursue a career path in this field?
Like many young people coming out of school, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do; I did have a passion for music and I played in different bands for a while, which gave me a bit of time to figure things out. I realised I was interested in the environment and sustainability, so that’s what eventually led me to study a BSc in Environmental Sciences at University of Galway.
For my postgraduate, I specialised in biorefining and bio-based technologies; this was in 2008, a very exciting time where many sustainable technologies were being investigated, so back then we were focusing on how to optimise them and improve them.
Also, at that time an early bio-based industry was starting to take shape. We knew we could produce lots of things, practically anything, from biomass, but a lot of the technologies weren’t really fully developed, and many of the possibilities weren’t explored in any real depth. So the potential was there, but how we could make it all work was still a big question that needed to be answered.
The excitement of having so many possibilities around research and innovation in biorefining, and being at the beginning of a journey shaping the bio-based economy led me to where I am today.
Flash forward to 17 years later, has that potential been met today? Has the future arrived, let’s say, or is there still a long way to go for biorefining technologies?
It’s definitely come a long way. The amount of bio-based products that are on our shelves now compared to 17 years ago is at a completely different level, and the fact that products are now identified as bio-based helps to build a lot more awareness among consumers.
However, scaling up still remains a challenge for a lot of bio-based sectors. Some companies have managed to grow and implement biorefining technologies into their operations, but it has been limited. At farm-level the integration of bio-based technologies to diversify value chains is still at quite an early stage, and there’s a risk that larger industries are the ones that benefit from these innovations and that farmers remain at the bottom of the chain.
That would not be good for farmers, and it would probably reduce the capacity of the bioeconomy to successfully scale, since the bioeconomy relies on biomass produced on farms (or other primary sectors), and farmers need to be fully integrated within these value chains.
Biorefineries are capital intensive and require long term production to be viable, this means security of biomass supply, and this, in most cases goes back to primary producers. So they need to be at the centre of these new value chains for this bioeconomy to be successful.
Do you think the bioeconomy in general has gone mainstream now?
Yes, I think it has to a degree, but there is still more to do. When I was studying, ‘bioeconomy’ wasn’t really a term, in research we would talk about bio-refining and it was so niche that very few knew what it meant. Now it’s a much bigger sector, consumers, producers and businesses are more aware of it, and many governments are actively supporting this.
The bioeconomy follows a natural progression, I would say. Historically, when we go through a big societal crisis, like food or energy shortages, it sparks a movement for innovation and people start looking for new solutions. Necessity is the mother of all inventions, as they say. So the idea of using plants to produce materials or as alternative food sources is not new, but the current societal crises around sustainability and resource efficiency has placed a new focus on how we can use plants to produce these materials and many more in a more sustainable and integrated way, and the ‘bioeconomy’ can be an umbrella term to capture all these shifts.
Implementing this requires the participation of researchers, farmers, industries, consumers and all members of society. This is why, specifically thinking about the work we’re doing in Rural BioReFarmeries, it’s going to be so important to bring all different kinds of people along on the journey with us.
You’ve recently embarked on a mission to lead Rural BioReFarmeries as a Project Coordinator. What does this role entail for you?
As a Project Coordinator, my job is to have an oversight of everything that’s happening in the project. We have 19 different partners, each with their own expertise, their own areas of research and activities they’re developing in the project. As there are so many of us involved, my job is to try, as much as possible, to make sure all the different components are gelling together.
We have a clear plan on what we want to achieve within Rural BioReFarmeries, and we also have expected results that we want to get out of this project — and more importantly, we want those results to have an impact.
Essentially, my main task is to make sure everything is working as it should to make sure we achieve the desired outcomes, find solutions to manage and mitigate potential risks, and ultimately have the results implemented by stakeholders in rural regions, which is the big focus of what we’re trying to do. So that’s my job as a project coordinator.
Which is no small job, really.
No, not with 19 partners, but at the same time we have a really great set of partners so that makes my job a bit easier. A lot easier!
This project will be exploring the use of grass to create bio-based products. But grass has been around for a very long time… why is it only being noticed now?
To understand that, we need to look at our current environmental and socio-economic context.
In most countries, grass has been traditionally used as a forage source for livestock — to feed farm animals. Cows, for example, would either graze directly on the grass or the silage is collected and fed to them; from that system we get meat, milk, butter… we get lots of different animal-derived products, but this activity can also generate quite a large chunk of emissions.
Now, because of climate change and other environmental or economic issues, many countries are experiencing challenges around traditional livestock production. What we’ve discovered over the years, however, is that we can also take grass and use it for alternative applications, like developing bio-based products and clean energy which can displace fossil materials and reduce our emissions. What’s interesting as well is that we’ve shown in recent years that we can actually share the protein in grass between different animals, allowing farmers to feed their cows with part of the green biorefinery fibre, while also unlocking additional protein to feed pigs, chickens or even humans.
This approach can help to build more sustainability and resilience within our livestock and food system, but also can add new revenue streams for farmers in Europe. So the need to deliver alternative, sustainable and profitable solutions for farmers and the wider sector is what’s making a project like Rural BioReFarmeries so relevant now.
Green grass biorefineries have the potential to advance sustainable farming in Europe, while bringing farmers to the forefront of new opportunities to drive the bioeconomy.
Why did you feel it was important for you to be a part of Rural BioReFarmeries?
We’ll be doing a lot of research that hasn’t really been done before, like characterising and testing new green feedstocks to understand their potential to develop bio-based materials, and I’m very excited about that.
Also, I think it’s the right time to take green biorefining technologies to a new level in Ireland, and in Rural BioReFarmeries we will be implementing, scaling and optimising Ireland’s first green biorefinery demonstration plant at Farm Zero C, so I’m looking forward to testing the model this with our partners and hopefully replicating it.
And I’m also looking forward to learning what farmers and consumers think about all this.
The project will finish in 2028. What is the main goal you hope to achieve by the end of this 4-year journey?
What I would really like to achieve, as a project, is to create a successful model that can be implemented and commercialised by different EU grassland regions. So I hope we can push the boundaries in terms of what we can produce from grasslands, and make it economically viable, which is the biggest limitation for a lot of the green biorefinery models that have been proposed so far.
If we break that barrier, that will be the most important outcome of Rural BioReFarmeries, and the replication potential can be enormous.
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