FARMING: CHANGING HOW WE THINK ABOUT FOOD WASTE “There is no such place as away,” Zach Brooks, the owner and master planner behind the Arizona Worm Farm stated as he gave a tour of his farm. ARTICLE BY AMBER MORIN - PHOTOS BY CARMEN MCCONNEL
S
o often people throw food waste away, but don’t very often think about where “away” actually is. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimates that food waste is about 30 percent of the available food supply. That’s 133 billion pounds worth approximately $161 billion. On a local level that equates to 300 pounds per year per person, or PG. 26 :: FALL 2019
almost 1 pound per day, that contributes to Arizona landfills according to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. With these facts and figures on your mind, when was the last time you threw food away? Maybe at breakfast? Did some lunch meat spoil in your refrigerator? Did those bananas on your counter go bad? More importantly, how do you combat this problem in a realistic, sustainable manner?
My visit to the Arizona Worm Farm provided some much-needed options to help repurpose food waste and stop throwing sending food to that “away place” also known as a landfill! The entire farm is based on the goal of sustainability and the hope is that by 2023 the farm will be producing food, shelter, and entertainment for ten families on ten acres using only sunshine, rainwater, and other’s garbage. Like all other farms, the beginning of the process starts with reproduction. In this case, worm reproduction or the breeding bins. In an unassuming box car transformed to an insulated 70-degree reproduction area, breeding bins are stacked from floor to ceiling. Each bin has 500 to 600 breeding worms, which produce a cocoon per week, and 4 babies per cocoon. The process takes about 3 weeks and the cocoons are screened prior to hatching. Throughout this process the breeding stock worms are fed emulsified food waste, which is the first way in which the Arizona Worm Farm repurposes disposed food. The second step in the process is the grow out bins. For those of us in large livestock production, it would be like a feed yard. All the cocoons are placed in grow out bins each Wednesday and hatched about 30,000 to 40,000 baby worms outside. The infant worms don’t require the cool temperatures that the breeding stock requires, but the heat does still affect them. It is visibly obvious that they are much more sluggish than their much older counterparts kept inside the temperature-controlled building. Again, these baby worms are fed a mixture of food waste before being moved to the third step in the process, cultivating castings. The juvenile worms are moved to what are known as worm wedges. The worm wedges are composed of pre-composted food waste and about 10,000 worms. Continued on Page 32...
