Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Innovations in Resource Loss Reduction, Recovery, and Reuse (InnR3) for Sustainable Food Systems

美国是世界上效率最高的食品生产国（总价值为5600亿美元）和最大的食品出口国（2017年为1400亿美元）。由于人口增长和经济发展，保守预测，到2050年，美国食品工业至少需要增长70%，才能满足全球97亿人口的需求。这被认为是一个巨大的挑战，需要革命性的技术进步，以实现可持续的粮食生产增长，同时避免对环境的负面影响。一个关键的挑战是，用于粮食生产的日益有限的资源中有很大一部分丢失了。这些损失通过各种形式发生，包括生物废物、食品加工和乙醇精炼的副产品、食品废物、肥料径流以及城市和农业废水。这些损失造成了许多相互关联的问题，包括资源短缺（例如，清洁水、土壤养分）、环境污染（例如，墨西哥湾的养分水平过高）和高能耗（例如，用于处理生物废物），从而造成了国家和全球危机。此外，气候变异性的增加可能导致养分通量的更大变异性，并加剧这些相互关联的问题。尽管政府和民间机构几十年来一直在努力，但整个系统的趋势仍在恶化。目前的做法是支离破碎的，并没有提供社会准备采用的有效解决方案。这项工程研究中心（ERC）计划拨款旨在开展活动，解决资源安全和环境可持续性革命，从而有可能扭转这些趋势。伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校及其合作伙伴普林斯顿大学、密歇根大学、伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校和弗吉尼亚州立大学提出了一项资源减少、回收和再利用创新（InnR3） ERC，以产生一个整体的、新颖的解决方案，解决相互关联的问题。这项ERC计划拨款的目标不是针对单一问题的特定技术，而是针对由协调的技术组合和区域特定政策组成的聚合解决方案，以解决由营养损失引起的一系列问题。该项目的目标是制定一个坚实的工作计划和一支合格的团队，以扩大整个粮食生产（主要在农村地区）和消费（主要在城市地区）循环中相互关联的问题的技术组合，跨越田地、农场、工业、小流域和大流域的空间尺度。通过一系列讲习班和虚拟会议，该规划项目将确定系统级集成和采用的基本知识差距、技术创新障碍和体制障碍。这些活动还将有助于通过有战略组织的工作组讨论确定所需的其他伙伴。该规划项目将致力于为实现InnR3创建一个新的、多元化的研究、教育和实践领导者队伍，并创建一个以学生为中心的跨学科学习框架。除了对墨西哥湾和五大湖退化的国家关注之外，该ERC还针对食品生产者和消费者行为、公众健康、环境可持续性、经济增长和繁荣以及地区稳定等方面的社会影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The United States is the most efficient producer (total value of $560 billion) and top exporter ($140 billion in 2017) of food in the world. Due to population growth and economic development, it is conservatively predicted that the U.S. food industry will need to grow by at least 70% by the year 2050 to meet the needs of global population reaching 9.7 billion. This is considered a grand challenge that requires revolutionary technological advances in order to achieve sustainable food production growth while avoiding negative environmental impact. A key challenge is that a significant fraction of increasingly limited resources used for food production is lost. These losses occur through a variety of forms including bio-wastes, co-products from food processing and ethanol refining, food wastes, fertilizer runoff, and municipal and agricultural wastewaters. These losses are causing national and global crises by contributing to many interconnected problems including resource scarcity (e.g., clean water, soil nutrients), environmental pollution (e.g., excess levels of nutrients in the Gulf of Mexico), and high energy consumption (e.g., for treating bio-waste). Further, increasing climate variability may induce greater variability in nutrient fluxes and exacerbate these interconnected problems. Despite decades of efforts by the government and private agencies, the system-wide trend continues to worsen. The present practices are fragmented and do not provide an effective solution that society is ready to adopt. This Engineering Research Center (ERC) planning grant aims to develop activities that will address resource security and environmental sustainability revolution that will potentially turn these trends.University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and partners Princeton University, University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Virginia State University propose an Innovation in Resource loss Reduction, Recovery and Reuse (InnR3) ERC to generate a holistic, novel solution that will resolve the interconnected problems. Instead of focusing on a particular technology for a single problem, this ERC planning grant targets a convergent solution composed of a coordinated portfolio of technologies coupled with region specific policies to resolve a system of problems caused by nutrient loss. The project targets a solid work plan and a qualified team to expand the technology portfolio of interconnected problems in the entire food production (primarily in rural areas) and consumption (primarily in urban areas) cycle across spatial scales from field, farm, industry, small watersheds and large basins. Through a series of workshops and virtual meetings, this planning project will identify fundamental knowledge gaps, technology innovation barriers and institutional barriers for system level integration and adoption. These activities will also serve to identify additional needed partners through strategically organized working group discussions. This planning project will work to create a new, diverse workforce of research, education, and practice leaders for realizing InnR3 and create an interdisciplinary student-centered learning framework. Beyond the national concerns regarding degradation of the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, this ERC targets societal impacts in terms of behaviors of food producers and consumers, health of the public, environmental sustainability, economic growth and prosperity, and regional stability.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.