We are faced with meeting the agricultural demands of a growing population estimated to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050 on soils depleted of essential nutrients, with declining yields and a projected reduction in future rainfall in key agricultural regions. A circular economy between agriculture and organic waste streams can recycle essential resources for farming through the recovery of water, biomass, and nutrients from sanitation waste solids, effluents, and livestock manure at scale. This offers benefits to agroecological practices in farming by reducing the reliance on chemical fertiliser inputs with multiple benefits that improve soil health, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming, and reduce water pollution in drainage from fields. However, there are potential risks and challenges associated with this solution and these need to be fully understood to enable resource recovery to operate in a safe and sustainable manner in the long term. Firstly, the gastrointestinal tracts of humans and animals are a source of pathogens to the environment and agriculture food chain. So, reusing these wastes could potentially spread these pathogens to the food crops we consume. Secondly, manure and sewage are sources of veterinary and medical chemicals to the environment; these compounds can enhance a microbe's ability to resist treatment drugs, such as antibiotics. This ability to resist treatment drugs can spread to other microbes important for plant, animal, and human diseases. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health crisis that is predicted to cause 10 million deaths per year by 2050. Currently, livestock and the environment are recognised as reservoirs of antimicrobial resistant microbes and implicated in the dissemination of these AMR microbes. Science-based methods to assess the environmental, livestock and human health risks of combined exposure to antimicrobial selective compounds and AMR microbes are therefore central to fully realising the potential benefits of a sanitation-agriculture circular economy. Models, analytical tools, and quantitative assessment methods to understand, measure and assess the impacts of agricultural exposure routes urgently warrant scientific attention. Through understanding the safety risks recycling waste streams pose, new interventions can be devised to minimise these risks, making resource recycling a viable mechanism to increase soil and farm productivity. Working with water utility companies and the National Pig Centre, we will investigate how water and farm waste can be recycled to be used in agriculture. Using laboratory models, we will identify where pathogens and chemicals aggregate along the different waste streams, thus identify where interventions need to be made. Using this information, we will define a risk assessment analysis to tackle pathogen and chemical buildup. We propose to build on the 'one-health, one environment' approach to AMR by acknowledging the connectivity between humans, animals and the environment. This project will support the development of a UK sanitation-circular economy and build a UK-led innovation network with global reach. The overall aim of the project is to build a community of educational, industry, farming, and government colleagues to increase the capacity of the UK to address global pollution challenges associated with adopting a circular economy to support agricultural production. A circular economy approach is essential in meeting global agricultural needs, especially enhancing the role that farming can play in climate control and our need to move towards Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal will pave the way in achieving this goal whilst minimising the impact of utilising waste materials on the environment and animal and human health.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a multifaceted, wicked problem. Evolution of resistant microbes can arise anywhere along agrifood chains, leading to diseases that cannot be treated by currently used medicines. Human, animal, plant and environmental health are interconnected; actions such as antimicrobial use (AMU) in one sector, may influence AMR arising in another. National and global movements of people, animals and goods therefore creates a web of factors that influence AMR, necessitating systems-based approaches to effectively tackle problems. AMR transcends disciplinary boundaries, requiring collaboration amongst human and veterinary healthcare professionals, researchers from multiple disciplines, policymakers, regulators and the agriculture sector. The benefit of the AMAST (AMr in Agrifood Systems Transdisciplinary) Network is that it brings together, for the first time, actors from diverse backgrounds across agrifood systems to co-develop solutions to AMR challenges through collaboration, dialogue and action. Our aims are to CREATE a transdisciplinary community that bridges the range of research expertise, working together and directly with industry and policymakers, to collectively consider complex configurations in agrifood systems. We will HARNESS the collective strength of experience and expertise of our members to fully understand the challenges and opportunities to mitigate AMR in agrifood including across production systems, such as crop, livestock and aquaculture. From this understanding, and the collaborative resolve established amongst the AMAST membership, we will PREPAREnew systems-level frameworks for transdisciplinary research and partnership that acknowledge the dynamic interactions between actors within those agrifood systems. These frameworks will be used to guide understanding on (new) interventions on AMU and other AMR-promoting practices, that will lead to reductions in AMR in targeted agrifood subsystems, whilst minimising unintended consequences in others to achieve holistically beneficial outcomes. AMAST has been initiated by researcher coalition and partners from across the United Kingdom, representing agrifood-related trade and farming associations, agrifood research and innovation institutes, business development consultants, food-sector networks, government-led AMR surveillance initiatives, and other AMR-focussed networks. The formation and progression of AMAST will be guided by an expert panel, sharing their perspectives on AMR and connections related to infectious disease, aquaculture, livestock, food systems, food safety and transdisciplinary research partnering approaches. Core activities encompassed in 11 objectives at the outset of AMAST will be driven by meaningful engagement between industry, policy and academic researchers in a series of directed-events to understand varying perspectives, expertise and accompanying evidence on current food production processes that exacerbate AMR; and the challenges of moving away from current practices to mitigate AMR without compromising yield, quality and welfare. These events will include stakeholder interviews, workshops, and horizon-scanning activities, knowledge synthesis and authentically focused knowledge-exchange outputs such as perspective ('white') papers. These activities will inform subsequent programming to be developed within AMAST, including use of AMAST Flexible Funds supporting collaborative activities such as targeted researcher and industry short-term-scientific-missions, an AMAST Fellowship training that is authentic to AMR challenges, and further knowledge synthesis activities. Visibility of AMAST outputs and capacity building within and outside the network will occur using a tailored communication strategy and creative multimedia.