The Vermont Food System Plan Issue Brief on Compost describes the condition of Vermont's compost industry and the recommendations for improvement. While progress is being made in diverting food scraps from the landfill, most Vermont composting operations have the potential to increase the volume they handle, but are competing against other diversion methods with less benefit to agricultural producers and/or the environment.

While there are bottlenecks and gaps around contamination, regulation, consumer understanding and funding, there are opportunities to achieve an organics management system that mitigates waste and creates and distributes resources from organic materials. Composting creates jobs and new businesses, diversifies the rural economic base, and provides a mechanism to pursue other goals within the farm and food sectors. Read the brief for details and recommendations.

Join us to dive into the Farm to Plate Agriculture and Food System Strategic Plan 2021-2030. After this workshop, you will understand how Plan relates to your community or professional work, and how you and your community can use it to advance that work. The Plan can help you with background research, strategic decisions, grant applications, and building impactful relationships across Vermont. The Plan was created with input from hundreds of food system businesses, organizations, and individuals, and provides a roadmap for collective action to strengthen our agricultural economy, increase environmental sustainability of our farm and food sector, and expand access to healthy local food for all Vermonters. The workshop is open to all but designed especially for local community food and farm advocates. Choose the workshop time that works for your schedule! We can’t wait to share the Plan with you.

Everyone eats – and everyone generates food scraps. With efforts to “close the loop” by composting these important organic materials to return the nutrients to our food system, we are learning to appreciate them as the valuable resource they are. Check out the new Food Scrap Art Statewide Challenge for Senior Citizens and Young People to flex your creativity and have some fun with your food! The Composting Association of Vermont will be sharing photo submissions on their website and through social media; all submissions will be showcased during the 2022 Vermont Organics Recycling Summit, and submissions received by November 2021 will be considered for the 2022 Food Scrap Calendar.

From homestead to statewide, Lisa Ransom and Scott Baughman close the loop for Vermont’s food systems.

“How can we live in Vermont and not be able to find compost?” That question, posed by Lisa Ransom around the dinner table one evening in 2008 was, in hindsight, the start of Grow Compost. Lisa and her husband, Scott Baughman, had purchased 38 acres in Moretown, Vermont intending to start a small homestead farm, but found the soil was lacking in important nutrients they needed to grow the fruits and vegetables they imagined.

“At the same time,” said Ransom, “we could see that everything we needed to amend the soil was within a 20-mile radius of our home.” There was a dairy farm, a lumber mill, and a handful of restaurants and grocery stores generating food scraps, yet there was no mechanism for collecting those nutrient-rich leftovers and returning them to the soil.

“We needed good compost,” said Ransom, “and we also wanted to model for our children how to use and reuse the resources around them. We had the land, the passion, and the skills—and the resources were all around us.”

The Con Hogan Award for Creative, Entrepreneurial, Community Leadership recognizes Con and his life’s work by encouraging and rewarding leaders who:

Vermont Food System News is published by the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund

Jake Claro, Farm to Plate Director

Sarah Danly, Farm to Plate Network Manager

Lydia Pitkin, Office Manager & Program Coordinator

Kelly Nottermann, Communications Director

Ellen Kahler, Executive Director