Published July 2010

All food we take home from the supermarket is a product of a plant, growing in soil, somewhere in the world.
What we eat, whether that’s fruit, vegetables, dairy, meat, or any of the more processed foods is made up of nutrients that originated from soil.

Harvesting crops is like mining nutrients, as they are trucked away from that local area in the form of harvested grain/meat/vegetables etc. Soils can only hold a limited amount nutrient to supply crops / pasture at a time. So farmers need to replace these nutrients.
In modern, large scale agriculture this is largely done through applications of fertiliser that is either manufactured (like Urea) or mined from deposits (Phosphorus).

Once food (containing these nutrients) reaches our homes it is heads in one of three directions:

• The first is into our bodies where many of these nutrients are absorbed so we have energy to grow, repair, and maintain our bodies.
• What our bodies don’t use ends up in the sewerage system. Currently, local effluent treatment removes carbon and some nitrogen, with remaining nitrogen and phosphorus (to name just a couple of nutrients) discharged into the Cudgegong River at 3ML/day (ex Mudgee) which ends up out to sea at Adelaide.
• The third direction nutrient heads is into the bin as scraps or out-of-date food items in our fridge or pantry. In many households / restaurants, these scraps end up in landfill.

Now it would be nice for some of these nutrients ended up back in the soil from whence they came.

With regards to effluent – there are safe and no-fuss domestic systems that can keep these nutrients in your very own garden, but I’ll write about this in another article.

With regards to scraps, whether you’re on a farm, own a restaurant / cafe, have a large family or you’re in a flat on your own, there is a way to recycle your food waste back into fertiliser for the soil.

At the field days, site L8, there will be demonstrations on large and small scale worm farms and composting that can do amazing things with what you don’t eat.