In fact, he was the one to plant the first seeds in the farmland.

For Biernbaum, a co-founder of the farm, it’s difficult to look at the farm without a sense of nostalgia for where he once was.

The horticulture professor was a part of the original team who established the farm in 2002.

The farm regularly sells its products to main dining halls on campus, including Brody Square, Heritage Commons at Landon, The Vista at Shaw and The Gallery between Snyder and Phillips halls. They also work with MSU food stores, like the Eat at State On-The-Go food truck and Kellogg Center. 

The farm’s success as a producer was met with a nearly complete food cycle, but the massive amounts of food waste produced by MSU dining halls left the cycle inconsistent.

A composting system was introduced at the farm in 2010, which changed the system just enough to make the farm a full-fledged resource stream.

Teaching the future leaders of environmental impact about the importance of a closed, consistent food cycle has become their major focus, Biernbaum said. 

Composting

Every system has a starting point. For the farm’s composting system, it starts in dining hall kitchen prep.

While the farm’s primary concentration is raising the produce used in the MSU dining halls and sold on the market, composting education also has gained traction in recent years.

Starting in fall 2011, the farm began to receive several tons of pre-consumed food from the Brody Square to help jump start the composting.

That level of production increase could become daunting for a medium-sized farm, but Biernbaum said the larger production was met with equal hard work.

“At different scales you need different solutions or different options,” Biernbaum said.

He said when they measured the scraps from Brody Square for the first time three years ago, there was about 100,000 pounds, or 50 tons, of pre-consumer kitchen scraps.

The kitchen scraps were measured and accumulated over the course of one year.

Composting has gone from a virtually unknown movement to a common resource throughout the past few years, especially on MSU’s campus.

Both the Student Organic Farm and MSU Surplus Store have their own composting systems. The Student Organic Farm composts pre-consumer food while the MSU Surplus store composts post-consumer food. 

Pre-consumed food consists of the food that is thrown away during kitchen preparation or before it reaches the consumer, such as pineapple tops, rotten potatoes and melon rinds.

The post-consumed food is different because it goes through the consumer part of the cycle, so the uneaten pieces are then composted.

“Part of the concept for us is turning it more from a waste stream into a resource stream, that aspect of how to use the materials in the end and creating quality compost,” said Brooke Comer, a horticulture doctoral student and research assistant at the farm.

The process

Proceed with caution when walking past the hot composting pile on the farm.

The stench from the compost juices is nearly unbearable, particularly when the pile is rotated to mix old material with the new.

The hot composting, which breaks down food completely naturally with its own heat, takes care of certain processes before it even reaches worm composting.

Worm composting, known as vermicomposting, is exactly what it sounds like — worms break down the food material, scraps and produce cultivated soil.

The only worm type used in the farm’s composting are the red wiggler worms that came from Biernbaum’s own home, the manure piles from his horses.

The worms reproduced throughout the years, growing in numbers, to get to their current population in the compost.

After the worms work their way through the material, the soil is eventually ready to be used.

The finished soil product is sent out and sold through the MSU Surplus Store and Recycling Center as well as used for the future produce.

It is a fascinating process considering where the material first starts, Comer said. 

The MSU Surplus Store and Recycling Center has a different approach to the same system.

Pre-consumed food is taken care of on the farm, but steps for composting post-consumer material such as apple cores, banana peels and paper towel are starting to be taken.

The Surplus Store began their own compost pile and hopes to one day have a bigger audience of post-consumer material through progression.

One of the largest student locations on campus, the Main Library, is now a partner with the store through a pilot program, according to Cayden Bunnell, their compost manager.

As a partner, the Main Library supplies its own post-consumer food material to the store for it to be composted.

“We see compostable material as one of the last great obstacles to having zero waste on campus,” Bunnell said 

From local to global impact

MSU’s agricultural roots have a significant effect on environmental innovation and risk.

“We are the original land-grant university in the nation, and I think we need to remember that and continue moving forward with that in mind as school that was originally built to teach people how to raise their own food,” Stawara said. 

Broadening student experiences and research within agriculture develops their hands-on work that can help promote organic farming on a larger scale.

It is an investment into the research done at the farm and could eventually be a part of every dining hall’s agenda, Biernbaum said. 

Each year as the composting program evolves and grows, it becomes easier to incorporate other participants in the cycle. For instance, the other dining halls that are not yet a part of the system.

“It’s positive that students want to know where their food is coming from. We’re putting the care back into it,” said Carla Iansiti,  the sustainability manager for Residential and Hospitality Services. . 

Eating clean is not just a trend, but is gaining enough attention to create larger, global impact.

MSU is small within its food system and composting, but it’s growing every day, Biernbaum said. 

“How does social change come about? It’s basically one person at a time,” Biernbaum said.