With $60,000 fellowship, Moorhead farmer aims to find solutions to food waste

CHRIS FARRELL: Let's go to Noreen Thomas. Noreen and her husband Lee have been organic farmers in Moorhead since 1997. And, you know, organic farming, that could be challenging work. But now Noreen is taking on another challenge, as if one isn't enough. She is trying to turn food waste into fertilizer. Now that may sound like composting, but there's a twist. And Noreen is on the line now to talk about it. And welcome to Minnesota Now.

NOREEN THOMAS: Thank you, Chris. Good morning to you.

CHRIS FARRELL: Good morning to you. So I have to ask you, you and your husband have been organic farmers since 1997. But as I understand it, your husband's family has an even much longer history when it comes to farming.

NOREEN THOMAS: They do. In fact, it's a sixth generation farm right in Northwest Minnesota or just north of Moorhead.

CHRIS FARRELL: So I have to ask you, what do you love about farming? Of course, I'm making the assumption in that question that you love farming.

NOREEN THOMAS: I think it's the land. I think it's taking care of the land and really providing nutrient dense food is really where I land. So when you have food that really tastes flavorful and tastes like it comes from the land that we farm on. And it [AUDIO OUT] Chris.

CHRIS FARRELL: Yeah, well, I was up on Lake Vermilion over the weekend. And we were picking strawberries. And, boy, when you pick them right off the vine or whatever they're on, they really taste good. So tell us about your new project. I mean, how did this come about?

NOREEN THOMAS: Well, it came about-- I applied to be a fellow through the Initiators Fellowship Foundation and got the fellowship to actually take a really deep dive into recycling different food wastes and different wastes into two different projects. One to be a biodigester, where you put food waste into it and it kind of gurgles and burps and provides fertilizer. And right now the farmers are really experiencing high levels of anxiety really due to lack of fertilizer.

CHRIS FARRELL: Yeah.

NOREEN THOMAS: So it's one way. I'm working with the company actually in the valley. So we'll be at 40 tons of food waste a year here shortly, which is just fabulous. It provides electricity for the office, provides fertilizer for the farm.

And I'm kind of figuring out a lot of the application actually. The other is to compost. We'll be at 140,000 tons by this time next year.

CHRIS FARRELL: That much?

NOREEN THOMAS: That much, and that's just--

CHRIS FARRELL: That sounds like a lot.

NOREEN THOMAS: It is. It's a lot of work actually too. But keeping that out of the landfill and keeping all those nutrients back into the land is just fabulous. Because, otherwise, we're just throwing it-- for instance, pumpkins. Clay County, we've been recycling pumpkins from the county for six years now. We're at 166 tons of pumpkins, just pumpkins, that the whole county works together on.

And they come out to our farm. That's probably about 10 semi loads full of pumpkins alone that just we've been able to keep them out of the landfill. So that whole project to see the community pride and to see how everyone would work together really sparked an interest in me.

CHRIS FARRELL: So, I mean, I can hear the, I can hear the pride in your voice, and not only your pride, but your interest. So why is sustainability so important to you?

NOREEN THOMAS: I think it's for a couple of reasons. Back to that nutrient dense foods is that when we deplete the land, we really have to look at what we're drawing from that land and putting it back into the land for the next generation to make sure that is there and available for good food. Because when you have good food, you have good health, you have good environment.

And it really is, we have to attribute ourselves to the first six inches of soil actually in the land. So it's a big interest of mine, always has been. I think it kind of got renewed when you started to see the cause and effect. I mean, the first semi load of semis came out and I thought, oh, oh my gosh, or the first dump, you know, of the pumpkins, I thought, "Oh my gosh."

But they're mainly water. But then when we did discovery into, what is in there? We found all sorts of things that helped with plant disease, helped with nutrients that we were actually importing into the land that is right there that pumpkins can draw up.

So it really started this whole interest. And there's a whole interest into, OK, what kind of microbes can we add to a compost pile to make it so it doesn't smell as much. Well, we're getting really close. And it's just the more you learn, the more you know you don't know.

CHRIS FARRELL: So there's this term that's out there. Anyone who's involved in sustainability cares about sustainability, this term zero waste. So is your farm close to being a zero waste place?

NOREEN THOMAS: We are very close to being at that. And what's kind of fun is we're able to help other farms. For instance, when we're cleaning the grains and maybe there are some that are cracked or it's not food grade, we have a lot of people that are interested in homesteading right now or they raise chickens or they have pigs or what have you.

Then they come on farm and get that scratch grains. So we're able to help that farmer launch, the other farmers launch that maybe they have 10 acres or five acres. By working together, you can just see the results able to help them at affordable level.

CHRIS FARRELL: So you mentioned working together. What about the broader community and getting-- I don't know-- the broader community, engaged understanding this?

NOREEN THOMAS: Oh, I think they're very interested. Because all of us, you know, that landfill is on some of the richest land in the world here in the Red River Valley. So we all have to pay taxes if they have to expand that. So if we can use that, it's an interest to persons everyone. It's a connector because everyone loves good food. Plus everyone is really worried about nutrient dense food as well. So even though we may not agree on other topics, people are very interested in this.

CHRIS FARRELL: So you're in the early stages with the fellowship. So what are your next stages? Where are you sort of where you are now? So what's your next step?

NOREEN THOMAS: Next step is actually looking at the microbes. I really like what some of the European countries are doing with adding different microbes to make sure that you keep that nitrogen in place in that compost pile, making sure that you really don't have an odor problem. We're just on the cusp of that. And there's so much work to be done. And it's very exciting because people, like for instance, I work with a brewery here locally. And they have some of the lactobacillus that they're making sour beers with, which, if you add to the pile, add a whole new component that we don't even know yet.

CHRIS FARRELL: Ah, and so I can look at beer with even greater appreciation than I do already.

NOREEN THOMAS: Yes, and it's kind of a closed group too because one of the-- closed loop, I should say. So one of the businesses we're working with will actually use it on some of our grains. And I think that there's some fungicide-- a natural fungicide, not a chemical-derived-- that is very good for the grains. So we'll provide the grains back to that business to serve in their cafeteria. So it's kind of they're helping us, we're helping them. And it's just a really great partnership and relationship.

CHRIS FARRELL: Well, I just love this, the connections, the knowledge, the learning, I think this is absolutely wonderful. So thank you for taking your time to talk to us about it.

NOREEN THOMAS: Well, thank you. You have to come out to the farm some time and see us.

CHRIS FARRELL: I would love to, absolutely. Noreen Thomas is a Moorhead area farmer and a fellow with the Initiative Foundation, which is based in Little Falls.