Maryland Farmer Workshop to Serve as Part of National Replicable Model

The Inaugural Composting Education Hub Workshop

On December 7, the first hands-on food waste composting workshop of the new Montgomery County Master Composter Training Program was held at the Agricultural History Farm Park’s Composting Education Hub (CEH) in Derwood, MD. This program is being designed as a replicable model with two tracks, one for farmers and one for gardeners. 

Hosted by ILSR and Montgomery County Office of Agriculture, and led by Thomas Fazio, Compost Manager at ECO City Farms, the December workshop focused on the fundamentals of food scrap composting for small to medium farms and featured the CEH’s solar-powered Aerated Static Pile 3-bin composting system. Participants included farmers from across Montgomery County, representatives from the Maryland Department of the Environment, the University of Maryland, and food systems and zero waste initiatives. 

The 3-hour in-person workshop covered best management practices for food waste composting, the basics of on-farm composting, system siting, design, and management, as well as troubleshooting. For the hands-on portion, participants built a pile in the CEH’s solar-powered ASP 3-bin system, incorporating food waste provided by Manna Food Center (a local food bank, distribution center, and nutrition education space) and practiced bulk density measurements. In order to provide a baseline knowledge of composting principles and make the most of the in-person time, participants were provided access to part of ILSR’s Community Composting 101 Online Certificate Course upon registration.

The Benefits of Composting in Maryland

Montgomery County, Maryland is estimated to throw away 97,000 tons of wasted food every year, representing an enormous waste of resources, nutrients, and potential economic value. At the same time, the County has identified backyards, gardens, and farms as promising venues to expand local composting capacity and assist in diverting food from disposal. 

Composting recycles nutrients and organic matter to create a product that can be used to improve soil quality to support local food production. On farms, composting can help to manage farm residuals, manures, and animal mortalities, but food scraps from off-site can be used to improve composting recipes. Composting at gardens and on farms can facilitate access to high-quality compost, which when added to soil has the following benefits:

• Greater infiltration of water, reducing susceptibility to floods and droughts and losses to erosion
• Enhanced ability to store nutrients for plant use, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers
• Decreased likelihood of plant disease and pest issues, increasing crop yields 
• Potential for additional sources of income to farms via tipping fees and compost sales (depending on local rules). 

A Replicable Training Model

The Composting Education Hub (CEH) is the first County site dedicated to providing hands-on training to both gardeners and farmers about food scrap composting, and demonstrating how to recycle nutrients to create high-quality compost for local use. The CEH was built in 2023 by a partnership between ILSR, the Montgomery County Office of Agriculture, University of Maryland Extension, Montgomery County Master Gardeners, and ECO City Farms. 

Along with the CEH site development, the two-track Master Composter Training Program is being developed to support the CEH and to provide training and demonstrate food scrap composting applicable across multiple landscapes, rural to urban. The farmer track includes a hands-on workshop for farmers who want to begin or improve composting on their farms. The gardener track is a composting train-the-trainer program for backyard and community garden composters, to create a pool of trained volunteers that can support composting initiatives such as the CEH and share their composting know-how with the public. 

The Montgomery County Master Composter Training Program will serve as a pilot for a replicable model for other counties in Maryland and beyond, providing a template for Extension Services or similar entities to provide hands-on training on best management practices for food scrap composting. In Spring 2025, the first training for the gardener track will occur and will include multiple days of pile building and maintenance, as well as (virtual and in-person) classroom education sessions. 

The goals of the CEH and the Master Composter Program are to:

• Support the creation of a distributed, on-farm and community garden composting network in Montgomery County, MD
• Spur new garden or on-farm composting initiatives; 
• Create a pool of trained volunteers to support the CEH, and other composting sites as they are developed; and
• Create connections with a variety of public and private partners.

If you’re interested in being kept in the loop about this program, please fill out this form.