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Composting and Food Safety
58 Plays4 months ago
In this episode of Produce Bites, we explore the role of composting on the farm and the food safety considerations every grower should know. This episode features Morgan Anderson, Produce Safety Technician with the Ottawa Conservation District, and Eliza Hensel, Compost Systems Educator with Michigan State University Extension. They discuss their composting processes, the importance of validation and recordkeeping, best practices for handling and storing compost, and more.
Additional Resources:
On-farm compost production and Right to Farm - Eliza Hensel
Tips for composting in the summertime - Eliza Hensel
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast & Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Agri-Food Safety Produce Bites Podcast, where we discuss all things produce safety and dive into the rules and regulations surrounding the Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Rule. Hi everyone, my name is Morgan Anderson. I'm a produce safety technician, which means that I offer free, voluntary, and confidential service with on-farm produce safety in West Michigan. I'm housed in the Ottawa Conservation District in Grand Haven along the Lakeshore, so I'm really grateful.
00:00:29
Speaker
And today I'm talking with Eliza. So Eliza, if you want to introduce yourself quick. Yeah. Hey, my name is Eliza Hensel. I work for Michigan State University Extension as their compost systems educator. I'm based here in East Lansing on campus, but I've got statewide responsibilities. So I do programming all over Michigan.
Eliza Hensel's Compost Journey
00:00:45
Speaker
Nice. And before we hop into it, do you want to just explain a little bit about your role? Because I think it's a new role, correct? Yeah, it is a new role. I started last October in the fall of 2023. And it's a little bit both of working with the campus to improve our composting that's happening here on campus in East Lansing, as well as doing compost outreach for community members, farmers, backyard composters all across the state.
00:01:10
Speaker
That's fun. It'll be exciting to see how it molds over time. How did you get into composting? How did you learn about it? Yeah. Well, my dad taught me when I was growing up, we had a pile in the backyard, but I really honed my skills during my time at Eckerd College. I went there for my undergrad and I worked on the campus student farm there and really found my passion for composting really on a larger community scale there. And then after that, I worked for this company called the Urban Harvest, which is a great small urban ag business in St. Petersburg, Florida.
00:01:40
Speaker
And my boss, Elise Pickett, really taught me more about vermicomposting, compost tea, and how to use the finished product in your garden. I moved up to Michigan here last year and found this job online and I was just kind of like the holy grail for me of what I wanted to do with my life and building up to everything I'd done so far with Eckerd and now being able to share all those experiences and kind of create my own resources for other people.
Composting Techniques & Challenges
00:02:05
Speaker
So it's pretty fun.
00:02:06
Speaker
Nice. It sounds like you've seen a pretty holistic, I guess, view of composting so far, which is nice. Have you ever seen composting with manure or on a livestock scale? I know you mentioned community and urban ag. Yeah, I bet. Part of what we would do at the farm where I was in college was we'd had 20
00:02:28
Speaker
25 bins at a time, each one holding like 50 gallons of food waste per day. So it was a pretty like, I'd say small scale industrial. Um, it was still all being done by hand, but there was a really large volume of compost being generated there. That process was really like a build a pile all at once and let it go through its cycle, which became my favorite way of doing it because it allowed you to really track and monitor.
00:02:57
Speaker
your product and your temperatures and your turning and all that. But aside from that scale, you know, now I'm branching out a bit more into livestock, manure management planning, getting a little bit more into the Michigan farmers. I am still a bit new to the state of Michigan, so
00:03:13
Speaker
that's kind of part of my learning curve of this new job here is just sort of getting to know what do farmers need in the state, you know, and what resources exist out there. So it's, you know, the same fundamental process, whether it's a small pile or a big pile, but just adapting that knowledge to the crowd that I'm teaching is sort of the charm of the job and spinning content to a different crowd depending on what they need.
00:03:38
Speaker
I'm also curious, what does validation, what does a validated compost mean or look like to you? To me, I'd say that validation is having data to back up your product. So for me, that means tracking my temperatures, tracking my turning, food input or waste input, whatever it is that you're composting, water.
00:04:02
Speaker
I definitely recommend to people that you buy a composting thermometer and track your daily temperature changes. If you do, then you're going to know just the right moment to turn, watching those temperatures rise, peak, and start to fall.
00:04:15
Speaker
And when it falls and you start to turn it again and it kicks up that whole process again, reintroducing oxygen. So being able to track your temperatures if it was one thing, that way you know that if you've got meat or dairy products in there, if you're doing a larger pile or something a little bit more volatile, you can guarantee that those pathogens have been killed off.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of getting to know your pile per se, because it's a living thing. So getting to know how it lives is important. And I would say going like, so the produce safety rule, it also uses temperature as the method to reduce pathogens. And if you leave it a pile static, so you're not turning it, it's got to reach a minimum of 131 degrees Fahrenheit for at least three days with a curing stage. And then if you're turning it, it's 131 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 days at a minimum.
00:05:06
Speaker
with also a minimum five turnings with a curing afterwards.
Advanced Composting Practices
00:05:11
Speaker
It's so important to be able to know what's going on in your pile and really just once you understand the science of a compost and then you can kind of, you know, put your hand into the process and make sure that it gets to all the stages that it aims to. Yeah. I'm curious, could you explain what you think curing is? Because I think sometimes it takes on different meanings to different folks.
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, when I say curing, I mean, once all of your food is no longer visible, your compost looks like what you would consider to be a finished product, but it might have been fresh off of that last stage. And you want to give it at least three or four weeks to just sit and kind of cool down and let all those microbes settle and sort of just come back to a more neutral zone of
00:05:56
Speaker
the pH and the heat and the microbial activity and all of that, just sort of let that calm down before you apply it to your crops. If you put on a really fresh hot compost that you might not see food in your pile, but it might still be too hot or just too active for your crops, it can actually hurt your plants if you apply it directly onto them too soon after composting.
00:06:19
Speaker
So giving it that time to sort of rest, kind of like, you know, you grill a steak and you want to let it sit on your cutting board for a bit before you go quick. Good analogy. Yeah. Patience, patience, patience. Yes. Patience virtue and composting.
00:06:31
Speaker
I would say another aspect is with the patients is the record keeping. So for the produce safety rule under FSMA, there has to be records, especially for the amount of times they're turning it and the time when you're turning it. But also a record of whoever's turning that pile has proper training so they know what tools have to be used, where the compost pile is, and then also washing their hands after turning that stuff. One helpful thing in regards to just keeping good data
00:07:01
Speaker
What I used to do in a community program I ran was used Google spreadsheets and made like a little independent Excel sheet for each compost pile that I was managing. And then I created a QR code linking to that sheet online. And I printed those out and laminated them, hung them on the outside of the bins. That way, every time I went up to the bin, I had that visual reminder to scan my QR code, log into the data sheet and put in the date, the temperature,
00:07:28
Speaker
Did I add anything, water it, turn it, whatever. And that way it's just out there. You don't have to have a piece of paper to keep track of. It's pretty streamlined. It really did help. And at the end of it, then you can see the life cycle of your pile. And it really helps you understand how to curate a better product when you see, okay, this went into that pile and it took X amount of weeks to finish versus the other one.
00:07:50
Speaker
I think that'd be fun to do personally. Like I saw a video on Instagram the other day where someone put a pair of underwear in a compost pile to see how long it would take to degrade. So apparently it was like a compostable, biodejustable underwear or something like that. So yeah, that's kind of fun that you really tracked it like that. So you could really see what's going on in there.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it kind of came out of necessity. It was once again at that college program. I have a lot of stories out of that time in my life. I had a lot of fun down there in Florida, but we had so many volunteers coming in and out of that farm. And so we just needed to find a streamlined way to make it easy for everyone to participate in taking the data and making sure that everyone understood there's something happening here that's intentional. You can't just
00:08:37
Speaker
you know, dump a fresh bucket into this bin if it's halfway through its process. What can we do for free? Well, we can use Google spreadsheets and get a QR code and print them out. And they still use that system today. So I guess it works pretty well for them. Yeah, no, that's great.
00:08:54
Speaker
And that kind of leads into my next point about just ways to handle and store the compost. You sounded like it was very organized and whatnot and beautiful. But I would also say when produce safety roads, when we're talking about how to handle and store in compost, we're just thinking about is there potential for runoff and where is that runoff going?
Practical Tips for Storing Compost
00:09:13
Speaker
Is there any wind? So maybe perhaps covering your compost pile or making a berm around it is a good practice.
00:09:19
Speaker
thinking about once again foot traffic who's moving through it or like in your case you have people coming on farm who may not be the most aware of what's going on so having as much direction as possible to educate folks on what you need from them and then also thinking about like critter management which i think i'm gonna ask you here in a second and what are you putting in your pile is it attracting critters how are you managing those critters and
00:09:43
Speaker
monitoring for them as well especially for produce and because we don't want those critters going into fuel productions and pooping or munching on things so I'm curious do you have any tips and tricks of handling and storing compost as well? I'd say if you can get a tarp to cover your windrow once it's kind of done curing you know tarps are always
00:10:03
Speaker
pretty accessible and easy to use. Having some sort of three-walled storage system has been pretty useful for me in the past, that way at least it's only one point of entry. If you can just try and make sure that you're keeping it
00:10:20
Speaker
aerated and give it a turn, you know, those bugs and things usually don't like to be disturbed. I see a lot of problems happen with compost that's kind of almost finished and there's still a little bit of, you know, food product in there, but people forget to turn it or there's too much nitrogen in there, so making sure that you have your carbon and nitrogen balanced, that's a really big thing for just avoiding bugs as far as like pests go.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I feel like there's always that question of how do I bear-proof my compost?
00:10:53
Speaker
I don't have an answer for that yet. Yeah, they're smart. They're smart. Hard to beat. I'm not beat the Bears. Yeah. So it sounds like a common theme is that composting basically comes down to management, whether it's the turnings and the record keepings or even like tracking what's going on in your pile. What do you think are some top three management options you would recommend for someone who is just beginning to compost at either a small scale or also large scale as well?
00:11:22
Speaker
Oh gosh, I'd say tracking your temperatures, balancing your carbon and nitrogen ratio is arguably either the first most important or second most, and then just maintaining a turning schedule.
00:11:38
Speaker
If you do those things successfully, you'll avoid a lot of the problems that people face when they're composting. The carbon and nitrogen balance, the balance between your browns and your greens is what I'm referring to there.
00:11:53
Speaker
how much mulch or hay are you balancing out with the food waste that you're putting in. Same goes for manure. If you're composting manure, you know, you need to have a carbon to balance that out. And otherwise, it's pretty much just rotting manure. But if you're going to call that a compost, you need to have your ratios correct. You need to be actively aerating it, turning it. And that helps make sure that it's staying aerobic and not going anaerobic, which means without
Safety Standards & Regulations in Composting
00:12:20
Speaker
oxygen.
00:12:20
Speaker
keeping oxygen flowing throughout that pile, a little bit of airflow, tracking your temperatures, things like that. Those are all just going to keep that system healthy and balanced. It's kind of like a digestive system in a way. I like to think of your compost pile like your gut. It needs food, water. It needs some fiber. It needs those chunky pieces of carbon to break it up a little bit. And it needs to be monitored and taken care of.
00:12:48
Speaker
You know, if you put a bunch of food in a pile and you just let it sit there, it might just kind of rot and get stinky, not compost the same way if it was being fluffed up, turned, watered, all those things. So, yeah, tracking your temperatures, balancing your carbon and nitrogen ratio, and maintaining a good turning schedule. I'd say the big three things to keep in mind.
00:13:10
Speaker
I like that point that you brought up about manure because I think that's something I come across a lot is even myself because I grew up on a livestock farm is, you know, stacking or piling manure for a long time and you're like, oh yeah, it's compost. But there really wasn't any like management to it. Like you're saying like, oh, that's just rotten at that point. And in the produce safety role, that would be considered
00:13:31
Speaker
an untreated soil amendment because it's not a finished compost product. So if you're going to use raw manure on your fields, using it 90 days prior to harvest, if there's no contact with the soil surface for the edible portion, or 120 days if there is contact, according to the National Organic Standard, which is what the FDA produce safety rule default to in that case.
00:13:57
Speaker
yeah that's important point because I feel like that's something I've come across many times is like oh yeah we got compost it's it's a pile manure and it's like well it's not really that's considered a raw product so take some extra steps in that but that also comes down to what you mentioned of tracking things and I think another good point is having SOPs or standard operating procedures which is basically a written document writing down
00:14:24
Speaker
what you're composting, how you're doing it, who needs to do what, where the tools are located to do that, and of course record keeping, especially with compost. So I would definitely recommend to whoever is listening to go to the Michigan on Farm Produce Safety webpage under the resources tab. There's a whole composting section where we have videos about composting, turning, but also record keeping. I'm curious if you have any other resources you wanted to point people towards as well, Eliza.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, actually, I just put out an article through extensions news called right to farm coverage of on farm compost production. And this is a re publication of an older document through my mentor Charles Gould and Steve Mahoney, who works with the Michigan Department of Ag and Rural Development. And it kind of just outlines farmers rights as it relates to composting on your farm, and what you can and cannot do and
00:15:17
Speaker
accepting products off-farm versus if you're using your own compost on your site. So I like to just remind people it's always important to look up your local compost regulations and procedures because there is legislation revolving around composting in Michigan and it's a great product to use on your
MSU Extension Master Composter Course
00:15:34
Speaker
farm. It's an awesome thing to do, but it's important to make sure that you're staying within regulation and getting the permits if you need them, if that's what you're going to do.
00:15:42
Speaker
Right? Yeah, just reaching out, like you said, I think is really good. So reach out to us technicians, MSU Extension educators, the Agri-Food Safety website through MSU has a lot of good stuff as well. So yeah, is there anything you want to add, Eliza, before we head off? Yeah, I just want to bring a little attention to our Master Composter course. It's a free online course. So you can Google MSU Extension Master Composter, and it'll guide you through how to register and sign up.
00:16:10
Speaker
It takes you through the whole manual. There's guided videos and quizzes to take you along. And then as well, you can take the certification exam after for a small fee if you'd like to, totally optional. And also I'll be facilitating one of these master composter certification classes through the River Raisin Watershed Council this July.
00:16:31
Speaker
It's going to be a two week long experience, so folks can come in for a couple of hours the first time. I'll go through all the topics to introduce them, explain some of the more complex ideas. And then during that week in between the first and the second session, they'll take the online class.
00:16:47
Speaker
And then the next week we'll go through pile building demonstration and kind of gives people time to study the chapters, go home, take the exam, but gives people a chance to sort of facilitate some in-person learning as well as some asynchronous stuff. So if you're interested in signing up for that, keep in touch with the River Raisin Watershed Council. And there's probably going to be more of those coming this fall as well on campus. Nice.
00:17:10
Speaker
Well, thank you, Eliza, for joining me today. And it was nice chatting with you again. I appreciate having your time. Yeah, so much. Thank you so much for having me.
Podcast Conclusion
00:17:17
Speaker
This is great. Links to anything referenced in this episode are provided in our show notes, which can be accessed on the website at c-a-n-r dot m-s-u dot e-d-u slash agri-food underscore safety. Thank you to everyone for listening. And don't forget to tune in next month for another episode of our Produce Bites podcast.