Top: Ribbon-cutting for the Compost Education Hub at the Agricultural History Farm Park. Image courtesy of Montgomery County, MD Council

A ribbon-cutting was held for a Compost Education Hub (CEH) at the Agricultural History Farm Park in Montgomery County, Maryland in October. The CEH is the first county site dedicated to training both residents and farmers about food scrap composting, and demonstrating how to recycle nutrients to create high-quality compost for local use, notes the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), which contributed materials for a new rodent-resistant 3-bin composting system, as well as composting tools, technical assistance, and training resources. The composting system includes an active aeration system, made up of three 0.6 horsepower bouncy house blower fans powered by a 400-watt solar system blowing air into a series of PVC pipes. The CEH provides a venue for hands-on training and technical assistance to local gardeners, farmers, and farm service providers to support existing composting initiatives and spur new ones. “Montgomery County, one of the most diverse counties in one of the largest metro areas of the country, is possibly the first county in the country to prioritize a diverse and distributed plan for addressing food waste, one that includes community and on-farm composting,” explains Brenda Platt, director of ILSR’s Composting for Community initiative. “The CEH aims to contribute to actualizing this plan by spurring a distributed composting network in the county that prominently features farms and gardens. The goal is to establish on-site composting of wasted food where food is grown in order to increase growers’ access to high-quality compost, improve soil quality and carbon sequestration, while reducing reliance on fertilizers, and emissions related to hauling.”