We Advocate for Composting

OHOC’s 2025 Top Advocacy Priority: Composting is Agriculture

Help the Ohio Organics Council get composting explicitly named as a form of agriculture in the Ohio Revised Code.

Tell the Agriculture Committee Chair that Compost IS Agriculture

Read the Compost is Agriculture model language

We want to reclaim as much organic material from landfilling in Ohio as possible.

Just like any other farmer who cultivates living things, composters cultivate billions of micro- and macro-organisms, who do the real work of making compost. We believe that composters should enjoy the same rights and privileges as the rest of the agriculture industry.

“Composting” and “compost operations” are completely left out of Ohio legal definitions of agriculture, excluding them from the same privileges and protections as the rest of the agriculture industry. Without these same protections, composters are vulnerable to local jurisdictions taking a “not in my backyard” stance, making it much more difficult or impossible to open and maintain compost operations.

The exclusion of composting from the definition of agriculture impacts us all.

It forces Ohio to continue landfilling most of our valuable organic material, permanently locking up land in waste sites. Our farmers, foresters and gardeners remain dependent on synthetic fertilizers due to the lack of availability of compost while soils continue to degrade without the return of organic matter onto our lands. Our communities can’t achieve diversion goals.