Organics Recycling in University Curriculums: A Growing Trend

In this eleventh episode, we speak with Director of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at Cal Poly University, Hunter Francis, and Adjunct Professor at University of Illinois Springfield, Wynne Coplea, about the state of organics recycling, composting, and anaerobic digestion education in North America, and about the advantages of introducing composting into University curriculums.

Thank you to ecovio^® from BASF for making this episode possible.

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EM: So Hunter, as director of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at Cal Poly – can you tell us a little bit about the situation at Cal Poly regarding composting and training?

HF: Yeah, we have a large agricultural college; it’s the second largest campus in California. We have about six thousand acres here in San Luis Obispo, and an additional three thousand acres in Santa Cruz County. And so…and we have one of the country’s largest agricultural colleges, which means we have a lot of animal units; we have quite a bit of beef cattle, we have a large dairy and we have chickens and horses and so. And because of that we have a lot of manure, and we have developed a compost operation that handles all of our manure and our green waste, and so it’s a good site to do all our trainings in composting, because we have all of the equipment, and so on.

EM: That’s excellent. And your course is taking place very soon isn’t it? When is it starting?

HF: The 24^th. It’s the whole week: march 24^th through 28^th.

EM: Right, okay. And have you been running this training very long?

HF: Well, it’s the second time that we’ve offered it. So, this is a week-long professional development compost training, and as I said, this is the second time we’ll be offering it. We did a week training two years ago in 2012, and it looks like at this point it’ll be an offering that we do every two years or so.

EM: And is your target audience the industry people that are actually working at composting operations?

HF: Yes, or agriculturalists. We have a lot of vineyards in our area, and we have…we are pretty rural, so you’re correct: the target is more people working in industry or in agriculture, or waste management, who are looking for skills either to improve their composting knowledge, or to start new facilities, so. We do have a couple student volunteers who help with it, but as it stands we do not have a composting course in the normal curriculum. So that’s something we’re hoping to develop. The one course that’s in the process of being initiated is a compost and soil-testing course, which is going to be offered through the Soil Science Department, that would focus more on the laboratory techniques for testing compost.

So, that’s exciting. We do have a pretty strong soils department, and as you can imagine, soils is a good way to connect with a lot of the processes involved in compost. And my understanding is that that’s probably about as close as you can get to actual, you know, established academic degree programs that would be focused on composting would be some of the soil science programs around the country. Because as far as I know, no one’s offering a degree in composting per-se.

EM: Right. Well, that’s great though that Cal Poly is starting to bring composting education to the fore in various ways, that’s very promising. And a question to both now: who do you are the key groups that need composting education today?

WC: I believe each sector in our culture and our economy does have a need for some form of composting education. But at this time, the particularly important target audiences for composting education in my mind, would be ag professionals and growers, the agricultural community; some of the more traditional farmers have maintained a form of composting, many of them certainly still do land application of manure and animal bedding, and things like that, but not a lot of them do actual blending and composting and use the compost. With the upsurge of interest in local foods, organic growing, specialty foods and so forth – they’re a prime target audience. As well as, I think, local government officials, because that’s where the policy rubber meets the road. And local government officials can do an awful lot, just with their own contracts for services, their own direct services that they provide.

The third prime group I think would be current waste management professionals. Absolutely, I think those are our target audiences right now. But really, the answer could be everyone; anyone.

HF: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that was well put. I think on the state level too, in terms of policy makers, there should be more education. Particularly when it comes to aligning some of the overall goals of these different agencies. In California we definitely struggle from the fact that there are a number of environmental regulatory agencies sometimes that don’t…it almost seems as if the policies are not well aligned. So, you know, here the big challenge is the fact that the air quality boards are creating restrictions in terms of monitoring VOC’s, and so forth, that are making permitting of composting facilities difficult in some areas, so at the policy level I think there’s some need for education as well.

EM: Excellent points. And like with Cal Poly, we see more and more universities including organics recycling and composting as part of their curriculums and daily activities as well. Can I ask you both, then, for your clear take on widely including organics recycling in university curriculums especially, possibly even as a stand-alone course. Is it a good idea?

HF: Yeah, I think it would be. I think it would tie into student interests, especially, you know, there is a fairly strong contingent of students who are interested in environmental studies and in recycling, and so on, and…. The other thing that I was thinking about is the fact that a lot of academia across the country, and probably across the world, is paying a lot of lip service to this idea of interdisciplinary studies, and breaking down silos, and, you know, having offerings across departments – and composting is really ideal for that type of education because it draws on a lot of the different disciplines; so everything from soils, to environment, to biology, agronomy, engineering, even marketing, or energy use. It can all be tied into these types of curriculums. So, I think it offers a lot of potential for meeting that student demand and for, you know, engaging the different disciplines. And it also could be a response to a lot of overall social goals too, which is namely to get organics out of the waste stream.

EM: Wynne, do you want to weigh-in on that?

WC: I definitely think that there is a need, and it would be welcomed for colleges and universities to begin to create and teach, and keep on-going formal curriculum built around composting. At this point, I would agree there’s not a lot of formal curriculum and/or even stand-alone certificates or degree programs out there. The non-formal education community has actually done a better job of pulling together the players. And it was already noted that extension is one of key players – certainly here in Illinois, UOI has a strong extension presence and they have a good composting instructional setup and resources online. And there are places like Cornell’s Waste Management Institute that has done a lot of research; I believe that that institute is set up more for research and hands-on involvement for the students in research.

EM: They have a composting site as well, and the campus also has a lot of sustainability and recycling initiatives going on too around the campus. So, you know, that’s really great – they’re at the forefront of sustainability education as well at the moment.

WC: Oh yes, uh-huh.

HF: Yeah.

WC: University of Georgia also has some research going on in vermicomposting at one point, as does SIU Carbondale here in Southern Illinois – they have a major vermicomposting program; they utilise…they grind all of the food scraps from the cafeterias on campus, feed it to worms in an – at least – thousand square foot building, and then take the vermicastings and utilise that on campus. So, it’s a hands-on opportunity for the student workers to be involved, and to learn about it. It’s also that some of the professors there are conducting research and involving students –

EM: Yeah, and another example off the top of my head as well would be the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, which does a lot of work with renewable energy – they’ve installed a biogas facility at the university, that’s totally run by the students and provides great training for anaerobic digestion and biogas production – so there’s that as well.

But as you say, there doesn’t seem to be a formal, stand-alone university course or curriculum based around compost – how far away do you think we are from Universities offering these kinds of courses?

WC: There is a change on the horizon, and groups like Compostory.org are helping to usher in that change. I do believe universities and colleges are waking up to the value of multi-disciplinary approaches. The students want it. Hands-on experience is so valuable, along with the research aspect and the higher-order thinking and writing skills. The hands-on stuff and service goes right along with it. And industry, I think, is arriving at the same point as education is, where we see a need for some change, and more collaboration.

EM: And you’re developing a curriculum for Kankakee Community College as well. I was wondering what role do community colleges play in composting education today in the US?

WC: Community colleges have served more-or-less as the “in-between” the universities and industry and trade associations that are providing very specific, very targeted short-term training, you know, for a specific topic. Community colleges can help take that and put that within a context of industry, but also giving academic credit, which then can be build upon for these further certifications, degrees, and so forth. I think that all three levels need to begin to work more closely together, and it is beginning to happen.

The National Recycling Coalition, along with RONA (the former recycling organisation of north America) – in which there are many movers and shakers out there in California, Hunter – put together three years ago a national committee for sustainable resource management learning standards; and from a variety of sectors: business people, processors, academic folks, non-profits…this committee agreed and put together twenty-five standards for learning, which any state recycling organisation, trade association, or college, really, could or should be using if they want to formalise and teach some standardised sustainable resource management – it’s not just recycling coordination anymore.

And they’re brand new, I mean literally hot off the presses. They just were announced and, kind of, finalised late in 2012. There are several state recycling organisations that are considering implementing them, or being more-or-less, quote-on-quote certified to teach sustainable resource management. And again, I’m Vice President of IRA here in Illinois, I am chair of the Certification Committee here; we have a hope and desire of taking these two classes: one is currently being taught through Kankakee Community College online, completely online. The second course will be available this summer. And then the students in that course will be offered the opportunity to test for certification to become a nationally certified sustainable resource manager through IRA – through the Illinois Recycling Association – because we’re using these new learning standards.

Now, I’m kind of putting the cart before the horse because we haven’t formally been accepted yet, but I’m pretty sure we will be. We’re excited about it, we’d like to see it grow and again, in my mind, this collaboration – academically, but also with industry driven, up-to-date, cutting-edge information on best management practices, on current best technology…. That stuff comes from industry, you know? And where industry can collaborate and advise, and – whatever – help provide and create this kind of curriculum, there you will have very valuable curriculum.

EM: Yeah. That’s really great points there, actually. And what would be the outcomes, then, of having such widespread composting education do you think?

WC: The ultimate outcomes? I guess the ideal would be that composting begins to be accepted as an integral part of a sustainability curriculum, as well as any sustainability goals at any local government or community program, any organisation program. That there would be a greater number of jobs specific to composting in the economy as a result of professionalising it academically and, you know, through the trade associations.

And just that…you know, there’s going to be more of a cultural buzz as time goes on. There’s definitely a paradigm shift, a sea change occurring. There is a greater push for sustainable practices that capture and manage natural processes, as part of every day business and as part of our learning and education. So, I just see…including composting education and training at any level – formal or non-formal – that’s the way we’re moving.

EM: Yeah, definitely. And last question now – Wynne, you’re involved in course development – what needs to be done, and what types of support is needed in order to develop such a curriculum?

WC: Well, federal dollars, grant dollars, private foundation dollars; to help a college or a professional trade association…you know, it takes time. I mean, a college course – a university course – the general rule of thumb is that it takes twenty-five weeks full-time to develop a new course from scratch. Two courses – you’re talking a full year just to develop two new courses, and that would include researching all the existing stuff that’s out there right now. That’s a chunk of someone’s time. So that’s valuable, you know? And the knowledge of how to pool all those resources together, and…. So anyway, what’s needed is support for the college or the trade association to be able to do that.

HF: Yeah, and that’s actually how we got our compost training that we’re doing here next week. Originally the first year’s offering was funded by a grant from the USDA SARE program – which is the US Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education – they funded the first training in 2012. And then, this current training, we have also received some funding from a local charitable foundation, the Miossi Foundation, so…

WC: Yeah. So there are often grants available through federal agencies, through colleges, to help with something like that. Honestly, unless trade associations have a 501 C3 designation, I doubt that they would, many of them would be eligible for a lot of the larger foundation grants. But small grants, even, can help. So, getting a little bit of funding together to begin with is a key start.

But beyond: assuming you have somebody that’s going to drive the bus and dedicate a significant amount of time to it, then begin researching. You would have to begin researching the curriculum that’s already out there, the industry and trade association-type trainings that’s already out there. I already researched – I don’t believe there are learning standards out there, but that would be a great thing to begin to pull together. You know: what would be the learning outcomes of such a training. I.D. the proponents in your area: those that are interested for environmental reasons, as well as those who are interested because it could be a value-added operation for their existing business. Fill in the blanks; bring them to the table and fill in the blanks. Decide what training is already available, where we need to go, and then fill in the blanks in-between; what the students should know, and how to get it to them.

And I’m a firm believer, as Hunter is, that a blend of formal resources and some classroom learning, with the science behind it…. Compost is perfectly suited for STEM: for science, technology, engineering and math – all of those skills can easily be applied when studying and/or implementing composting. So: bring everybody to the table, come up with a good product, with very specifically identified learning outcomes…someone is going to pick it up somewhere along the line. That would be my advice.

EM: It’s great advice. And that’s all we have time for today now, so I want to thank you both for coming on the show to talk to us.

WC & HF: Thank you.

EM: Okay all the best now, bye!

Madagascar: Soil Fertility on a Shoestring Budget

This episode corresponds to Lesson 1 of our online course.

In this seventh episode, we talk to Master Composter Peter Ash about how he successfully  tackled deforestation and soil erosion in a small village in Madagascar, with hardly any funds or manpower. Peter demonstrates how understanding natural systems and using nature to our advantage can dramatically improve the health of the environment.

Thank you to BiobiN for making this episode possible.

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TRANSCRIPT:

EM: So Peter you just came back from a two-month trip to Madagascar. How did that come about?

PA: I was hired a year ago when I was in France and I was teaching some gardening and composting classes, and…. So anyway, I was approached by this Frenchman and he told me about…that he has this, not much financial backing but a small NGO in France and they were doing work in Madagascar; in kind of the north-west area of Madagascar, the dryer side of the island, in a fairly remote area. Very poor: no running water, no electricity. And they’d basically built a small village where they had a school for little children. And then they also had some high-school students that were coming from further away, and they were trying to gain some food security, and they were just having a lot of difficulty.

EM: Right, and they sent you there to help them out. What were the main troubles they were having?

PA: So, what I’d discovered was: first of all, that side of the island had been deforested probably two hundred years or more ago. The cattle are a very import part of their diet, and a very important part of their culture, and so what they were doing was that they were burning the range right before the rainy season to burn off all the weedy vines, and the small weedy palm trees…. They’re burning it all off to create new grasses for the cattle. Well anyway, so I get there and I see this deforestation, I see this slash-and-burn, and terrible soil erosion – so I immediately saw, okay, we got to deal with erosion control, we got to deal with soil fertility, and we need to capture the water.

EM: Right. And regarding food: you told me that they were trying to grow rice, and I imagine that was quite a problem?

PA: Yeah, the property – there was no really low-level land for rice farming. Rice farming has to be done – when you’re dry farming it you need to have flat land and you need to be down in the low valleys, in the natural run-off areas, and we didn’t have any terrain like that at this village. We were on kind of a sandstone bluff, and then it would drop down to what would turn into a streambed when it rained, and then we had another hill going up the other side. So – and very few trees – a few palm trees here and there, a few mango trees here and there…you know, mostly everything had been burned off in the past.

EM: Right, and how were they for water generally then?

PA: Basically, when I got to the village they had two wells – hand-dug wells – and it was, they were very shallow. And they had planted some trees, maybe a year at the most earlier, and they were having to hand-water the trees to keep them alive during the dry season. And in one day of watering, they could take the well all the way to the bottom.

EM: That’s quite a dire situation.

PA: Yeah…

EM: Can you list, then, the key things you decided to do to help?

PA: Right…I knew we had to do some earthworks to capture the water, and replanting trees to help hold water in the soil, digging berms and swales to help hold the water and recharge the water table…and then soil fertility.

EM: Right, and there were some big challenges when it came to improving soil fertility, wasn’t there?

PA: Yeah, so I’ll tell you what – here’s what happened was…it turned out that the students that were there – the high-school students that I was supposed to be teaching compost to – were mainly not available. Initially we did make a couple compost piles and…but it was too labour intensive. So, what we found was we had…we had about twenty-head of cattle and a couple goats. Some were owned by the village itself but most of them were owned by neighbours, but they were penned on our property.

And, you know, one taboo I discovered was that we could do no, like, compost toilets or humanure composting. That was completely taboo, but to work with the cow dung and the cattle manure – that was not a problem. And they didn’t know anything about using it. And so here was this cattle pen – quite a bit of manure had built-up in it, and I discovered that we had a nearby sawmill that had mountains of wood shavings and sawdust that was a waste, and they didn’t know what to do with it. So we could get that for free, just by sending some men in an ox-cart over and…. And then there was another nearby village where they grew a lot of sugarcane and they had some low ground and some flat ground, and so there was all this sugarcane waste.

So what we decided was that: due to lack of labour and equipment, that we would just spread the woodchips and saw dust and the sugarcane waste in the cattle pen, and then allow the cattle to just trod on it for a month or so – three weeks to a month – and then we just scrape it all out and use it as mulch. And we could turn it into the soil for kitchen gardens…and so on. And so, we let that be one of the major key components for our soil fertility program, rather than manually making compost and having to turn it, and adding more water and so on.

And then, on top of using the cattle to make compost for us, a lot of people have pigs as well and most of the animals just run free and the range is open-range for everyone to use. But then, we built what we call a pig tractor, which is like a portable pigpen. So we had the pig tractor with just three little piglets in it. Of course, the pigs are being fed, but we also just threw a lot of organic material inside  – the same wood shavings and the sugarcane mulch, and then weeds from the garden, we’d just throw it in there – if they pigs didn’t eat it, no problem: they would just basically compost it for us.

And then, when we first built the pig tractor – right next to it, just about the same size, we planted some cover crop. So as soon as the cover crop began to flower…all these nitrogen-fixing plants have, you know, captured atmospheric nitrogen, fixed it on their root systems. So as soon as it flowers, that’s basically when the plant stops growing and starts fruiting. And that’s when it uses that nitrogen. So if you cut it at that point, then all the nitrogen – these little nodules that are fixed in the soil on its root system – remain in the soil. So then what we did was we just moved the pig tractor over and set it on top of that cover crop and the pigs just devoured it in no time. But then, they’d left all that nitrogen in the soil already.

EM: Amazing, that’s a very effective way of getting around the problem of not being able to compost!

PA: Yes, indeed it is. And then, you know, as far as the reforestation: we looked around and we searched out local trees and seedlings…like, they have some moringa, which you can plant just from a cutting, and then there was a couple other trees – some of the acacia, that the leaf can be used as fodder. And, you know, of course the acacia will also provide shade and it’s a nitrogen-fixing tree – the same as the moringa. So, we planted trees on the swales, on the berms, using the swales to capture the water to water them.

So a lot of what we did around our tree plantings was…some woodier plants and trees which were more or less weeds to us – they weren’t fodder for animals, they weren’t nitrogen-fixers, they weren’t food for humans – so those trees, we didn’t cut them down completely but we coppiced them heavily so that we could chop off the branches, lay it out as mulch on the ground, and then allow the tree to grow back out so we could come back and coppice again. And as the trees that we planted grew up larger, we kept creating a larger mulched area around the tree to hold water, to create soil, to create the environment for the microbiology to be active….

And then we started our own nursery from seeds. And I’d brought a bunch of seeds with me, various seeds of fruit trees and nitrogen-fixing trees that would work in Madagascar. And then, because we had access to bamboo – some big stems, you know: bamboo that was several inches wide at the base – and so we cut tubes that were, you know, open at both ends and we used that. We put good soil inside, and then we planted tree seeds in those, so when the seeds spouted, then the roots could only drop straight down, it couldn’t spread out. And then as soon as the seed was up about four inches or so, then we took the whole bamboo tube and we planted the seedling in the tube, in the berms. So that as the swale would soak up water, you know, the root would just drop right down through the bottom of the bamboo and get a really good, deep start. And so before I left, we planted probable sixty – sixty or eighty trees that we’d started in these bamboo tubes. Basically, we had to use just what nature was offering us. Like, we couldn’t even buy, like, plastic pots, we couldn’t even buy, like, a plastic tube, you know, to start a seed in. So the bamboo worked great like that, you know, in a years time or two years time, you know, with most of the bamboo in the soil, it’s going to rot and just be fungal food for the root system, which is great.

EM: Right, so it’s all about using nature to your advantage then?

PA: Yeah, absolutely you know, and we’re really looking at, you know…. Any permaculture design is going to begin with just getting a good assessment, you know, and talking with the people – asking them what do they want. You know, “what is it that you want?” you know? And they needed more food, they needed more fresh water, and so that’s what we concentrated on.

And then, you know, anything you plant – if you can get some compost into the soil, if you can get any kind of organic material into the soil…because we know that in natural systems, plants don’t need fertiliser, they don’t need pesticides if the system is healthy. And with a basic understanding of how plants function, and, you know, the relationship of the microbiology in the soil…when we have a basic understanding of that, we realise that early-successional plants have a very highly bacterial-dominated soil food-web because early-successional plants are annual plants – they’re soft, green tissue plants. And what decomposes soft green tissue is bacteria.

And then when we get to the end of plant-succession, when we get to old growth forests and, you know, hundreds of year old trees or thousands of year old trees – we see that we have a very fungal dominated soil food-web. And so, if you’re growing trees, then you need more fungi in the soil, and if you’re growing perennial plants – you know, shrubs and things – then you need that balance of bacteria and fungi.

And so, that’s what we were trying to teach our local farmers and the villagers there, was that: around our trees we got to get a lot of woody material and mulch, and just keep mulching. Nature mulches herself, you know, she’s dropping leaves, she’s dropping fruit…. Man, you know, when we understand that – we can build compost piles and make humus in a very short period of time. But actively composting was something we just didn’t have the equipment and the manpower for – so just, laying on layer upon layer upon layer of mulch…

EM: Yeah, and it’s absolutely amazing what you got done there in such a short time.

PA: You know, I was actually really amazed by how much we accomplished in a two-month period with myself and a couple volunteers and then, on average, ten labourors. You know, we established a tree nursery, we dug some key berms and swales, and then only then, you know, when the heavy rains came consistently and the swales remained full, that then when they reached a high level, they could run off slowly into the natural drainage system.

What we didn’t have time for on my first trip was to really work the stream bed itself with constructing gabions to slow water down and not just run right off to the rivers, and then out to the ocean. So, we feel that, you know, we should be able to have that stream running year-round in seven years, with proper earthworks.

EM: That’s incredible. And how did the locals react to all of this?

PA: Well, I think they were very excited. Especially I think some of the older men were very excited about what they were learning, and what we were doing because in two month’s time you can start to see the changes. And, you know, when they saw that “my gosh, we’re holding some water here. This water would have just run away but now it’s still sitting here two days after that last rain!” You know…

EM: Yeah, yeah. Well it must be very exciting to see it all working out.

PA: Yeah, yeah. So, I’m looking forward to going back, you know, maybe at the end of the rainy season, or like halfway through into the dry season to see what more we can do with just mulching and….

EM: Great stuff Peter, you’ll have to keep us informed about how you’re getting on!

PA: Certainly.