Re: [compost_tea] Re: 131 degrees Farenheit heated compost for 3 days

From: CHARLES BARKER <chuckiebtoo_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 06:43:54 -0800 (PST)

Hi Elaine and everyone:
 
Reference The Dallas Morning News, today March 9, Metropolitan (Section B), page 1:
 
"Dallas residents may mark bagfuls of lawn clippings with special tags costing $1.50 each, then place them curbside for normal trash service." No tag, no pickup.
 
Until the public is sufficiently outraged, educated, insulted, and/or fed up with governmental inaction regarding the very real environmental consequences of make-do, temporary "solutions" to these problems, nothing will be resolved.
 
Perhaps, if the tags cost $15.00 each, the public would vent to their congressmen enough displeasure to force governments at all levels into action.
 
Charles Barker
 


soilfoodweb_at_aol.com wrote:
Hi Paul at Trading Post -

Could you please get the composting program of the USDA in Beltsville, MD to understand your point? Pat Milner is the lead on this program, and in my opnion, she's using scare tactics to try to drum up a continued reason for her program to exist in DC.

We all need to understand why scare tactics are being used, however. Bureaucrats needs to be convinced of a need to continue funding the compost program. If there's no pressing "need" - such as a public health scare - for a program, the Feds will shut it down.

The compost program is VERY needed in the USDA, but in order to keep it funded, there has to be public hysteria, and a crying concern about it. So, you can see where the problem lies.

Compost tea is the way to exit having to use toxic chemicals in farming, landscaping, etc. Compost is needed in it's production. So, we finally have a public that when hysteria is foisted on them, is going to be irate, call their bureaucrats, and push funding of the program. Finally, there's public concern about compost.

Instead of using hysteria, could it be possible to justify the program by making it clear that we need to understand compost, and why SOMETIMES pathogens are present even if compost has been properly composted? Ah, but you know our government - does calm, sane reason work in an atmosphere of having to cut public funding?

The points that I understand that the USDA (read Pat Milner since she is the leader of the program in Beltsville, as far as I'm aware) is pushing is that the pathogens in compost can re-grow. My attitude is, no, the pathogens aren't regrowing if you have proper sets of diverse, aerobic organisms in the compost.

If the compost was made improperly, such as it got too hot, and lost the good guys, or the good guys were never there in the starting materials, then the compost isn't really properly made compost.

Another possibility is that the compost that is apparently re-growing pathogens was actually contaminated by another source after the compost was finished. This was the situation with the compost in Nevada example that Milner likes to use. The compost pile is about 100 yards downwind of a dairy waste lagoon and manure pile. The wind BLOWS in Nevada, you know.

But the USDA program isn't willing to investigate these possible explanations. That's what I think is really wrong with the USDA compost program. An un-willingness to figure out what is really going on, and a desire to use scare tactics to justify the continuing existence of the compost program in USDA.

But you can see the rock and the hard place. If public hysteria isn't fostered, the program loses funding. Sigh.

I would appreciate advice on how to make sure funding of the USDA program continues, so the USDA folks can calm down and get back to productive work, at the same time as convincing bureaucrats that this is a real concern, so they will see fit to continue funding work on compost, WITHOUT having to use compost tea as a scape goat to push the work that needs to be done.

IDEAS?

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
http://www.soilfoodweb.com


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Received on Tue Mar 09 2004 - 10:44:48 EST

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