The Market Is Open

Thermophilic People & Systems

Good Morning! The market is open and ready for another week.

It’s official. Summer has arrived with her ninety-degree weather. On Friday and Saturday we reached 90 degrees, the air was sultry, and the sky smiled a bright, wide cloud-toothed grin. The rising heat brings promises of melons and other goodness refined by fire. Are you a thermophilic creature? For those who love (philic ) the heat (thermo), summer offers countless forays into the sun-washed landscape. However, I am reminded of a different thermophilic creature that is resident under our toes.

Thanks to the billions of microbes in our sentient soil, the earth processes surface-dwellers’ waste and converts it into fertile soil. Thermophilic bacteria are those responsible for heating up piles of compost as trash is refined by microbial fire. Without these microbes, the earth would continue to pile up with refuse. Unfortunately, our modern waste systems with its towers of trash disconnect the ecological loop between trash to microbe to soil. American society throws away too much food.

But guess what? A new business in Little Rock wants to help reconnect this loop. The Urban Food Loop, founded by Read Admire, launched new services to Little Rock residents last week. The news release explains how residents can sign up for weekly pick-up of food waste. Here is an excerpt from their news release :

The Urban Food Loop’s i-Compost! Service will recover local food waste by offering Little Rock residents a home composting bin in exchange for a monthly fee. Residents toss food scraps and leftovers into their i-Compost! bin weekly. The Urban Food Loop team will exchange full bins with clean ones and compost the food waste.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Americans are throwing away the equivalent of $168 billion each year by wasting 40% of food produced for human consumption. That translates to 34 million tons or 680 billion pounds of food wasted annually in the U.S. Every pound of food waste results in 3.8 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, and less than 3% of national food waste is recovered or composted.

In response these issues, the United Nations General Assembly recently declared 2015 the International Year of Soils. The IYS aims to be a platform for raising awareness of the importance of soils for food security and essential eco-system functions. Chris Hiryak, founder of the Southern Center for Agroecology and director of Little Rock Urban Farming believes that, “Access to high quality mature compost (stable humus) is key to the successful development of our food system.” Food waste is a valuable natural resource perfect for making stable humus.

By participating in The Urban Food Loop’s i-Comoost! Service, customers earn compost, which can be requested for drop off at their home gardens or donated, to community partners like Little Rock Urban Farming or The Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance Gleaning Garden. Last year the Gleaning Garden grew and harvested over 8,000 lbs. of fresh local produce at Western Hills Park, all of which was donated to local food pantries in efforts to fight local food insecurity.

For $31 a month, The Urban Food Loop will pick up your food waste every week, compost it, and you can either donate it to local food producers, or you can receive the compost for your own soil-based projects!! You can directly sign-up for their services online. Check it out here: http://www.theurbanfoodloop.com/compost-services/

May your week be filled with thermophilic productivity.

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager