The 250 chickens at Berlin’s Perfect Circle Farm know when it’s chow time. The sound of the bucket loader engine signals that farm co-owner Buzz Ferver is about to dump a heap of compostables into their enclosure. Somehow, none of the birds get buried in the cascade of apple cores, potatoes and deli meats mixed with wood chips and cow manure. Last Thursday the birds pecked over the pile in a feeding frenzy so intense that it was hard to see the ground beneath them.
Multiple mounds of organic matter inside and outside the chicken house suggest Ferver knows how to convert refuse into nutrient-rich dirt. “They’re scratching, digging, preparing soil, shitting all over the grass,” he explained. “They’re creating more fertility in their location.” Ferver moves the pooping-poultry operation from field to field, as needed, to make the soil on his land more productive.
A growing number of farms are adopting this practice — in perfect sync with Act 148, Vermont’s universal recycling and composting law, which requires that the state stop sending compostable organic materials such as food scraps to landfills by 2022.
“Our collection is up 200 percent just this year, and it was up 200 percent last year,” said Lisa Ransom, owner of Grow Compost. The central Vermont company removes up to 80 tons of food scraps a week from restaurants, supermarkets, resorts and other producers of edible waste and drops it off at Perfect Circle, a half dozen other farms and commercial composting operations. “It’s exponentially growing,” she said.
What’s baffling to Ferver, Ransom and others in the state’s tight-knit food waste economy is why the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets is making on-farm composting more difficult. Earlier this year, officials decided that importing food scraps from sites off the farm doesn’t meet the formal definition of “farming” under the regulations that govern agricultural operations in Vermont.
The state’s action, spurred by complaints from neighbors concerned about pests and bad odors, means Ferver will need a solid waste permit in order to keep importing food scraps onto the farm. That permit falls under the purview of the state Agency of Natural Resources and subjects Ferver and other farmers to more rigorous regulations. The rules require them to construct permanent pads where the compost is dumped, for example, and to strictly monitor the temperatures of their compost piles.
“Here we are trying to solve the problem of food scraps in the landfill by having a regenerative process, and they’re going to make it hard,” Ferver said. “It seems the opposite of what ought to be happening.”
Sitting at his kitchen table, Ferver fumed as he flipped through a pile of documents that illustrate what he sees as the illogic of the state’s position. He grabbed a printout of the official definition of farming, which includes “raising, feeding, or management of livestock, poultry, fish, or bees.”
Bringing food scraps onto the farm to feed chickens would seem to fit, Ferver reasoned. He didn’t believe it was a risk when he spent thousands of dollars to set up his feeding and composting system. A November 2007 memo from Cathy Jamieson, chief of ANR’s solid waste management division, backed him up. It clearly stated, “ANR does not regulate food waste that is fed to animals.”
Agency of Agriculture chief of resource management Cary Giguere acknowledged that the state has allowed farmers to take in food scraps for years. He said many farms manage the organic material responsibly and don’t cause problems for neighbors, so the agency essentially looked the other way.
The ANR “has either deferred to us to regulate the farms when they were small enough not to cause an issue — and sort of allowed them to operate without a solid waste permit,” Giguere said.
What changed? In recent years, agriculture officials have received “more than a dozen” complaints from neighbors who said the introduction of food scraps brought bad smells, flies, and scavenger birds such as crows and seagulls. There wasn’t much the state could do to intervene.
“As the Agency of Ag, we have no mechanism for regulating solid waste. We have no authority over those things that neighbors would call a nuisance,” Giguere said. “The folks that are pissing off their neighbors, if you will, we need a mechanism to deal with it, and it’s jeopardizing the entire practice.”
In legal terms, Giguere said, farmers like Ferver aren’t feeding their chickens with food scraps, they’re “allowing chickens access to compost.” Leftovers don’t meet the legal definition of animal feed, which must follow specific food safety regulations.
“Wow, right? Esoteric,” Ferver said as he read through the Agency of Agriculture’s March 15 memo to ANR. “Man, they thought about this for a long time.”
Tom Gilbert, co-owner of Black Dirt Farm in Greensboro Bend, agreed.
“The whole thing is ridiculous that we have two different agencies that aren’t seeing the opportunity here,” he said.
Gilbert has been feeding food scraps to chickens for 20 years. Black Dirt Farm takes in 30 tons of food scraps a week, which it shares with one other ag enterprise. Gilbert has plans to grow his current flock of 400 laying hens to 2,000, all eating food that would otherwise go to waste. He views it as a move toward increased sustainability. But according to Gilbert, such innovation doesn’t conform to the Agency of Agriculture’s rigid focus on legal definitions and old-school farming methods.
“They’re having to fabricate a line of reasoning that doesn’t actually make any intellectual sense,” he said.
Speaking for the ANR, Jamieson said it had no choice: If food scraps aren’t considered part of farming, she said, “then it’s really discarded waste, and discarded waste is a solid waste and has to be managed.”
In an April 11 letter, less than a month after the Agency of Agriculture ruled that importing food scraps isn’t considered farming, Jamieson informed Vermont farmers that ANR does regulate food scraps on farms.
“I would not be pleased, either,” Giguere said of the farmers’ response to the agency’s new legal opinion. “We really don’t need to be interfering in those successful businesses” that manage food waste responsibly, he said. “We’re basically responding to nuisance complaints via the only regulatory mechanism we have for managing solid waste.”
Jamieson said her staff is hoping to work with farmers to identify and resolve any compliance issues instead of immediately imposing sanctions on farmers who aren’t following the solid waste rules.
“We’re willing to give them additional time to come through this process,” she said.
The farmers are taking a different approach. They met Tuesday with Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts to ask him to revise the agency’s interpretation of “farming” to include the importation of food scraps.
Grow Compost attended, too. “If it is making it more difficult for them,” Ransom said of the company’s farmer-clients, “then it’s making it more difficult for us.”
This article appears in Aug 15-20, 2018.
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Let freedom ring……
The man is clearly doing the right thing here. Food scraps to birds. Genius!!!!
Savory farmers helping with composting. Why such a big deal. Because of some seagulls….
Well I guess we should crack down on McDonald’s burger king and the entire waterfront of Burlington. One time a seagull pooped on me up there in burly.
This should be such a win win, but oh dear 12 people complained so it’s time to shut it down. What a waste.
ridiculous. this is exactly what we should be doing. State of Vermont needs to get with the program.
Another example of over-privileging those who complain, and under-appreciating closing the loops on a “perfect circle” of nutrient-cycling, benefitting so many, including Vermont’s farmers. If Vermont can tolerate manure pits and slurry-spreading, it can certainly tolerate compost piles managed by chickens,and visited by crows and seagulls.
Feeding food scraps to animals makes sense. It also makes sense that complaints would rise as the amount of food scraps diverted to farms rise. The Agency of Ag should take complaints and explain why this is an important part of our food system. We cannot have a working landscape without the smells and sounds associated with a working landscape.
This is mind boggling. Feeding food scraps to chickens, and making compost in the process is one of the simplest, most obvious win-wins for the environment and the economy. Converting a problem (food scraps being wasted) into jobs, food, and healthy soil to grow more food is not only common sense, but it is a partnership that human beings have had with chickens for millenia.
I understand that rules can get people twisted up and in a bind… but it is imperative for the officials to allow the farmers, restaurants, and community to continue functioning while they sort out these insane rules. There is no sense destroying what these good people have gotten going.
Farm to table…..table to farm! That should be their slogan! Seagulls, flies etc are an essential part of life in and around farms. Anyone growing up on a farm or working on a farm know this!
Where I grew up its the farmers who donated land for schools not the influx of people moving to the country because our towns are better living then the cities! ANR has no right in this niche farmers created years ago, and that are once again stepping up to help our towns and cities with our growing problem. I just hope Anson has the gumption to make a stand rather then pussy-footing around! Kudos to the farmers!
Try this video with Karl Hammer of Vermont Compost, feeding 600 chickens a day with no feed, just water and compost. He has been doing this for over 20 years!
https://youtu.be/IWChH9MHkHg
I’ve known Anson Tebbets for years. I can’t imagine what misguided advice led him to decide that importing food scraps feed farm animals isnt farming. Farms bring processed food waste onto farms day and and day out in the form of commercial animal feed. Taking food scraps from restaurants, supermarkets, a food bank, or the neighbor down the road is a sensible approach, one that farmers used for decades.
This is entirely consistent with the Legislature’s mandate that food scraps no longer go into landfills – restaurants must already comply.
Yes, some people complained. Yes, farming operations are often smelly. Yes, I’m not personally affected However, there are many entwined considerations. Vermont’s declining landfill space, the cost to farmers and to the planet of commercial feed which must be processed and transported to the chickens that produce the eggs we eat, and farming has become financially dicey, with farmers needing to produce more than just farm product to stay afloat. Throwing up roadblocks up which impair farmers ability to maintain financially viable operations is NOT in Vermont’s best interest. Then there is the insanity of ANR requiring that outside food scraps brought to a farm be put on a slab, versus the current practice of feeding the scraps directly to the chickens resulting in chickens incorporating food scraps and chicken manure directly into the soil.
Complaints should not result in an response across multiple Vermont government agencies to assuage such complaints. The response from the Ag Department should have been, “these things go along with farming, always have,” and “farmers like these are a vital part of our Vermont farming community AND are a vital part of Vermont’s efforts both to keep food scraps out of Vermont landfills and to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.”
Here’s how to contact the Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets, Anson Tebbetts – remember today state offices are closed. Anson Tebbetts is not from afar. He was born and raised on a farm in Cabot where he still lives. Phone: 828-2430, then 7 for the Commissioner’s Office, also 828-5667, also possible cell phone at (802) 324-9850; email at anson.tebbetts@vermont.gov;
snail mail at Anson Tebbets, Secretary
Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets
116 State Street
Montpelier, Vt 05620-2901
You may also want to contact Diane Bothfeld, a dairy farmer who hails from Cabot. Her current role is Director of Agricultural Development
Same snail mail address as for Anson Tebbets. Her email is: diane.bothfeld@vermont.gov; phone numbers: 828-5667 and possible cell phone, (802) 498-3337.
Alyson Eastman is the agency’s deputy secretary from the Rutland area, where she also grew up on a farm. Same snail mail address; email at Alyson.Eastman@vermont.gov. Phone numbers: 828-1619, possible cell phone, (802) 622-4131.