Members of the National Farmers Union are spearheading a move to change the way composting is done in Eastern Ontario.
The NFU, along with the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, hosted a roundtable recently at the CORCAN composting operation in Joyceville. A number of people took part in the discussions, including farmers, area politicians, and staff, from both the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Corrections Canada.
"There’s no agenda for composting in Eastern Ontario," said Bruce Dodds, provincial organizer for the NFU. "Composting is not even on the radar."
Dodds said he approached various well-known farm organizations ahead of the meeting to find out if they were doing anything interesting in the area of composting. He says he was disappointed in the lack of response. But Dodds, along with many others, who attended the meeting, are hoping to change the composting landscape.
They were given a lot of encouragement by a leading expert in composting from Pennsylvania. Larry Breech was in Canada on other business but he took time out to address the gathering at Pittsburgh Minimum Security Institution. "All compost is not created equal," said Breech, a sheep farmer who has been "teaching good composting" since 1992.
Breech told the meeting that if composting isn’t done properly, it could become "phytotoxic," meaning it will actually kill plants rather than feed them. In some cases, he said, "it’s not even fair to call some of this compost."
Good compost, said Breech, is made up of the right amounts of carbon - hay, straw, cardboard, and nitrogen - manure and household organics, and soil, inoculant and lime. It also must have a minimum of 50 per cent moisture content. Breech told the small gathering that in the long run, composting is less expensive for farmers than daily spreading or other common storage and spreading methods.
During his visit to Canada Breech addressed a group in Chatham, Ontario. He talked to them about the benefits of setting up a good composting system. "It has to be a partnership," he told both the people in Chatham and those assembled in the CORCAN boardroom. "We did a presentation (in Chatham) and we talked about urban agriculture."
Breech said he often gets mixed reactions when he mentions the term "urban agriculture." He said he’s trying to get the point across that good composting can only be achieved if urban and rural people make a decision to work together.
"We see that this is such an important message to get out - make this connection," said Breech. "Connect the rural populace with the urban populace."
In a nutshell, the system Breech is promoting involves organic materials in urban centres being trucked to rural farm settings where it can be properly recycled into compost. What many municipalities are currently doing, said Breech, is taking their organic materials to landfill sites. He called it a dangerous practice. "When you take this stuff to the landfill it’s not going to stay there. It leaches out and it kills people."
Breech talked about the short-term benefits for cities like Kingston in having all
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their waste dumped in landfill sites. He said there’s an "economic incentive" because an increasing number of municipalities are lowering tipping fees. But, said Breech, the long-term cost of allowing wet organic materials to sit for long periods of time, is high. Leaching from landfill sites pollutes the groundwater, he said, and that will ultimately have a serious effect on public health.
There were a couple of reasons why the meeting was held at CORCAN’s composting operation. Several years ago the facility was set up to do exactly what Breech and others were talking about - take organic waste from as many sources as possible and turn it into useable compost.
Pilot projects were up and running and the program seemed to be doing well. But during amalgamation when Kingston merged with its surrounding townships, projects which involved the delivery of urban organic waste to the CORCAN site, got lost in the shuffle. They’ve never been revived.
There was a feeling among those who took part in the meeting, and they included Kingston politicians, that discussions between the Pittsburgh farm and the city have to start up again. Dodds said the process should involve everybody, including politicians, CORCAN officials and farmers. "We want to develop practice workshops, demonstrations sites and draw in government interest.
"The key is to get some farms together with CORCAN and we need to listen to the farmers themselves."
The CORCAN site is also appealing for another reason. As Dodds and his colleagues pointed out, the facility uses a row composter, a piece of machinery developed by a Mennonite farmer in Southwestern Ontario named Edwin Sittler. "It’s a farm machine you draw behind the tractor," Dodds explained. "It can build a triangular row, virtually any length.
"The composter turns the compost so the micro-organisms that do the work can do what they have to do. And it turns the compost evenly so the structure of the pile is maintained," said Dodds.
Dodds described the composter as being "relatively inexpensive," with a cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $12,000 to $15,000. "In agriculture when you look at the cost of anything, it’s big," said Dodds. "We see this as being a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment."
Dodds said the Sittler composter is an intrinsic part of the movement to change attitudes about composting. He said another meeting at CORCAN is being organized for the end of August. The first effort will be to pull together "a regional council." Dodds said the council will look to people like Edwin Sittler and Larry Breech for guidance in helping them establish a new approach to composting in Eastern Ontario.
From the Archives:
News, August 2001
