28
Almond Facts
SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2015
AGRICULTURAL COUNCIL OF CALIFORNIA
Agricultural
Council of California
EMILY ROONEY,
President
Ag Council Achieves Improvements
to CalRecycle Composting Regulation
Since last fall, Ag Council staff and other agricultural
groups have worked with the California Department
of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) to
address issues within a proposed regulation that could
have required some farmers and agricultural companies
to comply with certain composting regulations, even if
composting was not part of their business. CalRecycle
originally cast too wide a net by regulating the methods
agriculture has developed for the disposal or reuse of some
of our byproducts, simply because agricultural byproducts
are organic matter.
On August 31, the Department Director Scott Smithline
approved the final draft of the proposed regulation called
the Composting Material, Transfer/Processing Regulation
(also known as the composting regulation).
The composting regulation now includes several changes
requested by the agricultural community. Ag Council
considers the changes recently made to the proposed
regulation a positive improvement given where the
regulation began. The regulation was overly broad,
and Ag Council worked on behalf of
Blue Diamond
and
our members to lessen the regulatory burden, provide
greater flexibility, and obtain exclusions where possible.
Highlighted below are three key areas where Ag Council
and our agricultural partners worked to improve the
regulation.
Licensed Feed
Manufacturers Exclusion
CalReycle was initially proposing to regulate piles of
dried nut hulls and shells as compost due to the wrong
determination that stored animal feed fit the regulatory
definition of a “compostable material” without regard
to the actual use of that product. The proposed
regulation now clearly says that “licensed” animal feed
manufacturers are excluded from the compost regulation.
For example, if a facility is licensed by CDFA’s Feed
Inspection Program, then that facility is excluded from
additional oversight.
Definition of
“Agricultural Material”
Changes to this definition were needed because
CalRecycle was originally planning on regulating
typical farming practices under the new composting
regulation. Comments to CalRecycle from Ag Council
and others resulted in an amendment to the definition
to include material produced during nut hulling, shelling
and processing. This change is key because the specific
inclusion of our byproducts in the new definition allows
a huller, sheller or processor to return similar amounts of
sticks, leaves or organic matter derived from an orchard
back to orchards for spreading without the additional
regulation.
Definition of “Agricultural
By-Product Material”
At first, CalRecycle was proposing a very complicated
regulatory process for the land applications of agricultural
processing byproducts that was unrealistic. We were
concerned that some farmers and ranchers might want
to apply compostable materials more than once a year
in varying amounts that fit their operational needs for
soil fertility and weed suppression. To alleviate concerns
regarding duplicative and unnecessary regulations, Ag
Council and others were successful in making sure that
organic matter, leaves, stems, nut hulls and shells were
included in the agricultural byproduct definition. This
inclusion will allow more flexibility for growers and
processors that do not participate in the feed regulation.
