Queensland horticulturalist Steven Grist wages war on waste
A former military man is waging a war on waste in agriculture.
THERE should be a national waste policy review and a national recycling program for agricultural and food waste.
That’s the view of leading Queensland horticulturalist Steven Grist, who sees this as a way of combating the waste generated from agriculture and food production, which, while “difficult to quantify”, has been estimated at about one trillion tonnes annually.
Steven, who runs Cairns Microgreens and Exotics from his 8.5ha property on the Clohesy River on the Atherton Tablelands, recently completed a Nuffield scholarship and his report, “The Circular Economy, Biocycles within Agriculture — closed-loop farming using waste streams”, was released last week.
STEVEN GRIST
ATHERTON TABLELANDS
FORMER Australian Army intelligence worker
RUNS Cairns Microgreens and Exotics from his 8.5ha property
SUPPLIES a range of micro-herbs and other specialty greens and edible flowers
RECENTLY completed a Nuffield scholarship looking at food waste
Steven said the report highlighted solutions that could be integrated into farming systems “with relatively little technical know-how and infrastructure”.
He said by turning organic waste into a source of added value, farms could move towards a triple bottom line in operations and build more resilience “in an uncertain future”.
Steven said his passion for sustainable agriculture began while he was working within the intelligence community of the Australian Army based in Canberra.
“During that time I read many reports on geopolitical situations, highlighting water and food crises, regional tensions and displacement through climate change,” he said.
This acted as a trigger for change and he undertook studies in regenerative agriculture with a strong focus on permaculture — the development of ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient.
GREEN DREAM
OVER the next years he applied to his own backyard the techniques he learned, volunteered at a community garden and shared his knowledge with friends and family.
In 2011, Steven and his wife, Amanda, bought the Atherton Tablelands property and met with several neighbours, “some of whom had large acreage and were making out a living selling pumpkins, melons and citrus to middlemen, only to see their product to be sold at 10 times that on the supermarket shelves”.
He said the system was neither sustainable nor fair and he desired to be a part of the solution, increasing his knowledge of regenerative farming practices and taking a keen interest in nutrient density.
The answer, he said, was right under his nose.
He founded Cairns Microgreens and Exotics, which now supplies North Queensland with a range of micro-herbs and other specialty greens and edible flowers that are generally used as garnishes in restaurants and cafes.
Steven said the business had grown well and had now expanded into exotic mushrooms and undertaken research and development with other nutrient-dense specialty products.
WASTE NOT
STEVEN said he was a passionate advocate for eating local, supporting farmers and food waste minimisation.
With his direct contact with chefs, he receives a lot of feedback on consumer sentiment “and it is all trending towards local food production, waste minimisation and sustainability”.
He said a number of chefs had expressed interest in Cairns Microgreens and Exotics taking on their green waste “as there are no economical green recycling solutions currently available for them”.
“Six months ago we took on waste coffee grounds and it is now utilised on-farm, forming 30 per cent of our substrate for mushroom production,” Steven said in his Nuffield report.
“We are now commencing a pilot project recycling food waste through a black soldier fly larvae bioreactor, with the intention of procuring a protein feedstock and high value nutrient substrate.”
KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON WINNING
Steven said current agriculture and consumer models were both very linear, and wasteful.
“The ‘take, make and dispose’ economic model currently relies on plentiful, cheap and easily accessible materials and energy,” he said.
“There are multiple models out there that include biomimicry and regenerative agriculture techniques.”
In introducing his findings, Steven said although circular economic fundamentals remained in their infancy, they were “just a macro-based system of the micro/small scale subsistence farming that has taken place for centuries”.
He called on farmers to adopt waste system integration to on-farm nutrient cycling centres and said the Government needed to develop policies to allow subsidised and low-interest loans to establish nutrient-cycling waste management infrastructure.
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