I want to thank Tom Gilbert of Highfields Center for Composting for providing some corrections and clarifications to the original story, which I am adding as quotes in the appropriate passages.

Imagine you are a Vermont vegetable farmer.  You engage in “best agricultural practices,” manage nutrients responsibly and stay abreast of current thought on sustainable farming.  Now you want to move toward fertilizing your entire farm with compost from locally contributed food waste rather than chemicals.  ‘Sounds like you’re the kind of farmer who will get all kinds of support in his endeavors; but, as Franklin County farmer Richard Hudak recently found out, that isn’t necessarily the case.  

Having been approached by a group of Bellows Free Academy students to host a composting project that would utilize food-scraps collected by the group, Richard enlisted the aid of Highfields Center for Composting who enthusiastically signed-on.  I spoke with Highfields tech expert, Tom Gilbert, who explained what happened next.  The project obtained a permit from the Northwest Solid Waste District, and the Agency for Natural Resources (ANR) signed-off on it in February. Looking to dot his “i’s” and cross his “t’s” Richard decided to just run the whole thing by the Vermont Department of Agriculture as a final measure; and that is what unsealed a can of worms.

Apparently no one had approached the Dept. of Ag for a decision on composting before.

This is true of many farm operators composting agricultural materials, however in the past Highfields and other compost technical service providers have sought the Agency of Agriculture’s opinion on the agricultural status of various on-farm food scrap composting operations as part of our due diligence and we have been told that if the finished compost is principally for farm use, it is a legitimate agricultural activity.  With changes in Agency staff and legal council, apparently their internal opinion on this issue has changed.  In fact, we have worked with and helped permit on-farm composters who compost food scraps that have received cost-share funding from the Agency of Agriculture to build the composting sites.  The Agency’s own funds have helped to build facilities they are now determining are not agricultural.

 

People just…do it.  Richard might have had the same impulse, but he has suffered some harassment from neighboring property owners for standing in the way of a Walmart development that is proposed three-tenths of a mile from his farm.  He didn’t want to run into problems further down the road so he did the responsible thing and asked the Dept. of Ag to agree that composting represents an “accepted agricultural practice,” which, under Vermont law, would mean that it wasn’t subject to zoning regulation.

You can probably see where this is heading.  After reviewing the state guidelines, the Department of Ag returned the opinion that composting did not come under the heading of “accepted agricultural practices.”  It simply isn’t even mentioned.  

Incredible as it may seem, there is provision in the law for collecting cow manure from neighboring farms to spread on fields, so that practice is not subject to zoning regulation;

There is nothing in the AAPs to suggest composting food scraps is explicitly subject to zoning or not agricultural.  This is not a question of what the rules should say (though in the future they should certainly include these activities in an explicit manner), since the existing language adequately covers this practice.  This is a matter of interpretation, an interpretation that has changed at the Agency of Agriculture.  Compost is an agricultural product when made for and used on a farm.  The source of the material should not matter, unless it is potentially hazardous or inherently contrary to sustaining healthy soils. This scenario is seen in other farming practices.  For instance, if a vegetable grower would like to fabricate their own potting mix for starting seeds, an farming practice that no one contends with, they must import 50-100% of the materials they use, no of which (like blood meal) are more inherently agricultural in nature than food materials.  They must then take these materials and go through a fabricating process to produce the potting soil they will use.

however, at least in theory, composting of food scraps is!  This discrepancy obviously reflects the strong dairy bias that has traditionally dominated Vermont farming; but it is completely out-of-step with contemporary thought that has elevated sustainability issues and recognizes the greater nutritional efficiency of crop farming over animal farming.

From my conversations with Richard and Tom, I learned that 4% of global emissions are from nitrogen, a principle component of chemical fertilizers.  I also learned that, if all food waste in Vermont was composted, it would yield sufficient nutrients for 20,000 acres of farmland!

I spoke with Jim Leyland of the Department of Agriculture and he could offer no explanation for the omission of composting from Sec. 3.2 of the Vermont law defining “Acceptable Agricultural Practices.”  It appears to have been simply overlooked.

Not many specific practices are detailed explicitly in the AAPs.  In fact, the AAP definitions of acceptable practices only include 118 words – in no way possibly conveying all of the possible activities on a farm.  As a result much interpretation is required to render an opinion on how a wide variety of practices might fall within the definitions.  Composting food scraps can easily be included in interpretations of the existing language – this is a choice on behalf of the Agency, their hands are not tied.

Recognizing the value of sustaining Vermont’s agricultural heritage,  the law specifically states that towns cannot establish rules that will limit accepted agricultural practices.  So a housing development cannot spring-up next door to an existing farm and raise objections to the smell of manure. However, until the legislature moves to specify composting as an “accepted agricultural practice,”  any farmer who chooses to employ this environmentally responsible practice, is potentially liable for censure by local zoning.   You might well be asking what town in its right mind would challenge such a practice, but anyone whose ever scrapped with the power elite in their little town can tell you what potential for abuse lies in the hands of it’s zoning board.

Memo to the Legislature: please fix this, tout suite, before anyone else falls down the rabbit hole!