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The benefits of on-farm composting, as well as the value of informing the public, are reflected in projects funded by the Department of Food and Agriculture.
IN RECENT years, there has been a notable increase in applications for onfarm composting in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture (DFA) presently recognizes over 100 farms in the state composting organics that have originated off the farm. Considerably more farms compost only materials that the farm itself has generated. Operations that accept off farm residuals collectively receive more than 300,000 cubic yards of compostable materials annually, over half of which are leaves, grass trimmings, and wood residues. Around 40 municipalities in Massachusetts now rely on farm sites to compost their leaves.
One reason for this upsurge in composting activity is that DFA has actively supported agricultural composting for 10 years. It is our policy that composting within agriculture should be viewed as a farming activity, and that agricultural agencies can become more involved with the farming community to identify opportunities to apply composting for economic and environmental improvements in farm operations. Additionally, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has banned landscape materials from disposal facilities since 1991, and is encouraging composting of other appropriate organic materials including vegetative processing residues, food scraps, and miscellaneous paper residues. These statewide policies and a straightforward regulatory framework have encouraged farmers to participate in receiving significant amounts of materials for composting. DFA also believes that farms composting materials from nonfarm sources should be given adequate information to compost responsibly and effectively.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS
Compost operations must consider materials qualities and handling, process management, land uses and site constraints, community relations, regulations, marketing, equipment needs and so forth. To help address some of these potentially problematic issues, over the past five years DFA has funded numerous composting demonstration projects. Massachusetts agriculture encompasses extremely diverse enterprises including large nurseries, cranberry bogs, dairy and equine operations, fruit and vegetable farms, as well as specialized niche livestock and biotechnology affiliated agricultural facilities. With that broad a potential audience, these grants had the opportunity to target aspects of agricultural composting that had not previously been addressed, such as technology demonstrations for specialized materials, educational efforts within schools, and surveys on composting and organics...