Aerobic Waste Digestion for Waste Disposal and Production of Food and Biofuels. by LA Plant Genetics

This is a great idea that permaculture practitioners have experimented with and use various aspects of in their practices. An organic/biodynamic farmer in Costa Rica utilizes the method you describe and has realized greater productivity of the soil and higher crop yields. My farmer friend, Bolívar Ureña Rojas, wrote this manual (in Spanish) which describes a variety of recipes, applications and benefits of biodynamic agriculture: La Agricultura Orgánica https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7PbzAzkdGjNclUxLW9FTVZHVjQ/view?usp=sharing

Large-scale farmers could benefit from your proposal.

Hope you develop your proposal further!

I did misunderstand. Without a working example to provide description of process it's difficult to grasp what this practice looks like. You state that "This technology already exists as a fully functional method of waste processing that does not involve a composting step.  The aerobic digester can be set up and planted with the first crop within a few minutes" and "biofuel crops grown using this system avoid taking agricultural land away from food crops while taking advantage of the fact that all substrates which are not acceptable for food production are acceptable for producing biofuels" - but later in the proposal you state "There really isn't any literature at present on this technology.  It is an entirely new field of study" - there must be documentation of aerobic digestion which you can point us to to help us understand the proposal.

I'd also like to see documentation of what plants uptake from waste that has gone through the aerobic digestion process.

How can you describe the process to help us form an image of the system?

Great concept, and it seems like it *should* be a viable solution to use today! Hope we can see more and more systems deployed.

A few minor things in your proposal that I would be interested in seeing more detail on:
In one instance you say "so it is probably a less expensive method of waste disposal than current methods." I think when you're trying to advocate for any plan of action, you need to have dug deeper into the costs of such a proposal, so that you don't have to use qualifying words like "probably". If you're pitching a solution, you should be able to give concrete details, such as "our solution would reduce CO2 emissions by 10%, while simultaneously reducing food costs by 5%", for example.

You also mention that the biggest thing holding these technologies back from seeing widespread use today is regulations. I'd be interested in knowing what regulations specifically are preventing these technologies from being deployed. Federal? State? Local? (of course, I'm sure it's some combination of these, but it would be good to know what some of the major regulatory agencies are that could affect these technologies' deployment).

You mention that different waste streams are more suitable than others for food production using aerobic digestors, and that food waste is a natural first step. What other types of waste streams would also be good candidates for this technology?

One interesting possibility to consider would be trying to first deploy these aerobic digestors with places like breweries and wineries. These facilities always have a large amount of organic waste material (spent grain, pomace, wastewater, etc.) that they have to figure out what to do with. In many cases, they have to pay extra to another company to properly dispose of this waste (because they can't just send it to the municipal landfill or dump into the municipal wastewater system), or pay extra to the municipal services provider. Additionally, many customers of breweries and wineries -- especially the smaller, boutique type ones -- tend to also be very environmentally- and socially-conscious, and might see a company employing these aerobic digestors in an even more positive light. These wineries or breweries could use the recycled waste either for their own barley, hops, or grape production, or contract with neighboring farmers that are growing food crops. If you follow this example, I think there would be other food production and processing companies that could see a benefit to their own bottom line from using these technologies.

Is there any intellectual property (patent) protection on this technology, or any possibility of obtaining such?

I think one of your biggest next steps needs to be putting hard numbers to this technology. For a system that can process x tons of waste per time period, how much money needs to be spent up front, and how much money needs to be spent on an ongoing basis? Additionally, if you could run some rough numbers on how much food could be produced in a given time period by the system and at what cost, it would be helpful to people considering deploying such technologies. Having more concrete figures for these two things will be critical in seeing this technology deployed.