EDIBLE INFLUENCER
MAGIC SOIL Local effort turns today’s scraps into tomorrow’s food BY TAMI CHU PHOTOS BY VIKTOR BUDNIK
Camila Guzman, 30, is bringing sexy back—to compost. In 2017, then a student at California State University, Channel Islands, she became convinced that small-scale community garden and compost projects could change the world. “My first experience composting felt like the earth reached and pulled me into her deepest, darkest sweet secrets,” Guzman shared in a Facebook post. “It seemed like magic.” Her graduation project, “Compost Saves the World,” ignited a passion that would eventually lead her to create a small business collecting food scraps and turning what might have been waste into food for the soil. “After graduating, I continued sharing compost updates on social media, and LA Compost Executive Director Michael Martinez reached out to me, which then sparked the fire for me to begin making composting accessible for the entire Ventura community.” In April 2019, Guzman showed up to a farmers’ market with several five-gallon buckets and a sign that read “ASK ME ABOUT COMPOST.” “From there, people started to approach me with questions, comments, even stories of their own compost experiences,” she says. EdibleVenturaCounty.com
The stage was set and the Queen of Compost was born. Now, Guzman regularly collects food scraps at the Downtown Ventura Farmer’s Market and is offering compost services to small businesses like Harvest Café, Channel Islands Juice Co. and Purnamaya Ayurveda Sound Healing Center. “In our first year [2019], we helped the community divert more than 2,500 pounds of food waste from going to the landfill,” she says. While one of her goals is to eventually be able to regularly distribute ready-made compost, it is still too early in the process to give much back just yet. “It takes anywhere from three months to a year to convert food into nutrient-rich humus under optimal conditions,” she explains. So far, when there has been compost to share, she has donated it to local school and community gardens and the Ojai Center for Regenerative Agriculture (CRA), a nonprofit dedicated to educating and promoting regenerative techniques and practices for healthy soils. Guzman also acts as compost coordinator for the CRA, helping to organize the Ojai bike-powered community compost program. “The CRA makes aerated compost tea, which has the potential to spring 2020 35
