Composting & Regenerative Farms
This is a topic that has irked me ever since returning to New York City from the west coast.
For some reason, composting is just a regular part of the waste removal system in California and most of the west. But as someone that grew up and has lived on the East Coast (DC, Boston, NYC) most of my life, composting seems foreign and confusing.
In a perfect system, guided by nature and the natural cycles of the Earth, nothing is wasted. “Waste is a design flaw.” According to designer Stella McCartney after all.
Food scraps and leftovers, in a natural cycle, get returned back to the soil, enriching and adding nourishment back into the new food that will grow out of it.
But for some reason, our overly commercialized system doesn’t account for this. Too many liabilities for restaurants and businesses I suppose, that our waste management system won’t take it on. This results in a food system that is broken. Our soil is void of the nutrients that once nourished it with plentiful nutritional value, while all the food scraps that could be enriching it spoil in landfills. Artificial fertilizers and pesticides and chemical agents are added to our soil to grow our food instead of just doing what nature originally intended.
The natural cycle of the food system is broken, which is why supporting local farms that abide by your aligned values, particularly Regenerative Farming and personal efforts towards Composting are super important.
Here are some resources I have found helpful:
I love this helpful guide by the 1 Hotels:
If you live in the NYC area, you can keep food scraps in your freezer like I do, and then drop off to GrowNYC to help nourish the soils in the city:
Also love this interactive map that Russell at Lily CBD just came out with to search local farms:
Lily CBD Local Farms & CSA List
Great resource to search Regenerative Farms:
Connecting Farms to Consumers:
Backyard Composter Bins:
And a great excerpt from the Urban Monk’s Regenerative Farming 101:
Farming practices that are considered regenerative include:
Composting
Cover cropping and green manure use
Seasonal crop rotations
Integrated livestock practices (like having ruminants strategically graze pastures in order to build up soil)
Less tilling of the soil (which releases carbon)
Complete absence of chemical fertilizers (which kills microbes, bacteria, and fungi in the soil that help to trap carbon)
By turning to these practices, we accomplish a few goals.
We lock more and more carbon into the soil. You see, when plants pull sugar from the carbon in the atmosphere during photosynthesis, they do it to feed the microbes in the soil surrounding their roots. The microbes eat the carbon, and convert it to more easily storable materials.
We also increase the nutritional value of the food we’re eating (which has been declining, as some studies have found), and by diversifying the crops planted in our massive fields, we reintroduce some of the original ecosystem to the land.
And, as is an increasing concern in the age of extreme weather events and climate change, regenerative agriculture strengthens the soil and prevents it from eroding, which preserves habitats, ecosystems, carbon sequestration, and helps to protect against powerful storms.
If you’re attempting to vote with your dollar here, look for these labels:
REGENERATIVE ORGANIC CERTIFIED
REAL ORGANIC PROJECT
USDA CERTIFIED ORGANIC
LAND TO MARKET
SOIL CARBON INITIATIVE
These labels account for various initiatives – the second two focus less on the “organic” outcome of the harvest, and more on the practices used in animal, soil, and water infiltration care. The first three focus on both regenerative practices and organic outcome, with the first certification being considered the gold standard of regenerative farming.
