Microbe-Focused Composting: Wins, Challenges, and Where We Are Now

The movement toward microbe-focused composting is growing, and so are the people doing the work. Across different climates, business models, and landscapes, composters are building biologically rich amendments, refining their methods, and learning in real time what it takes to make this work. In this live webinar, Compost Academy students and teachers will come together to share where they are now — what is going well, what has been difficult, and what they have learned through the process of building compost systems rooted in biology. In this webinar, you’ll hear… How Kourtnii Brown, director of California’s CACC group, is helping reshape laws across the state to support more small-scale community composters and reduce barriers for professional community composting. How John Allen, founder of the Soil Sponge Collective, launched a new composting lot on a regenerative orange orchard in Southern California and is working to bring biologically rich compost to growers across California. How Chad Dewtie, director of Inoculum Biosolutions in Nova Scotia, is producing inoculum-grade biological compost to help restore soil fertility across farms and landscapes in Canada. How Megan Weeber of Eastside Soil Solutions is growing a professional soil consultation and education business while producing inoculum-grade biological compost in the Yakima Valley Washington. How Keisha and Casey of Catalyst Bioamendments and Compost Academy helped support Kourtnii, John, Megan, and Chad in moving their composting visions forward. Whether you are already composting or just beginning to explore microbe-focused methods, this webinar offers a chance to hear directly from people in the field about the real process of doing this work — the progress, the struggles, and the momentum that comes from staying with it.