Our Tale:
A Compost Love Story
Long ago… the tale of Farmer Pirates Compost began in 2012 by a group of urban farmers in Buffalo, NY on the search for compost. Read on to learn our history.
Our Mission
Farmer Pirates Compost is a Buffalo based worker-owned cooperative dedicated to diverting food scraps from landfills and transforming them into nutrient-rich compost. With our partners across WNY, we aim to build a sustainable community that manages food waste responsibly and empowers local growers to restore and replenish our soils.
The Farmer Pirates Compost Tale
Sick of trucking in low-quality compost from rural areas, Farmer Pirates Compost was unofficially started in 2012 by a group of urban farmers who had the need for high-quality compost to use on their farms in Buffalo.
It seemed crazy to bring compost in from outside of the city when there was so much organic material leaving the city every day that could instead be used to create a rich, nutrient dense, organic fertilizer the farmers so desperately needed.
With a bold idea and limited resources, we created a Kickstarter campaign and with community support, we started composting!
From humble beginnings using repurposed buckets from Wegmans, an old pickup truck, and simple flyers, we spread the word and began our residential program with just 20 members. Over the past decade we have refined our services, increased our efficiency and expanded our service area.
Farmer Pirates Compost Today:
A Worker Owned Cooperative
From our beginning mission of producing high quality compost using locally sourced material, we have since evolved with an ever expanding focus on reducing the amount of organic material (aka food scraps) entering the landfill.
By collecting and then diverting this material to our compost facility, we create a nutrient dense natural fertilizer that can be used to enrich the soil and reduce potent greenhouse gasses emitted from landfills, which provide benefits to our community as a whole.
We run multiple routes five days per week with a current fleet of three vehicles, soon to expand to five. Farmer Pirates also operates a four-acre composting facility in East Buffalo where we process all organic material we collect. Each Spring and Fall, we run a compost sales season when we make the finished compost produced available to local farmers and gardeners.
We are a passionate team who believe in what we do and are excited for the future! As a worker owned cooperative, we offer each employee the opportunity and a clear path to becoming a worker-owner in the business.
What is a worker-owned co-op?
Worker cooperatives are businesses that are owned and democratically controlled by the workers. Worker cooperatives are “values-driven” and place worker empowerment and community at the core of their business.
Workers collectively and democratically make key governance and management decisions: one person, one vote. Workers own financial shares in the company, and make decisions about how profits are distributed. Workers are empowered to make financial decisions for their personal and collective benefit as well as the company’s.
Farmer Pirates Compost currently runs a variety of food scrap collection services:
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Commercial Composting
service for 40+ businesses, schools, and organizations
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Residential Pickup
service to 5+ suburbs in greater Buffalo
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Municipal Compost
in three areas, including the City of Buffalo’s ScrapIt! Curbside program serving 2,000 households
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Neighborhood Drop Off
service for residents, with 10 different compost drop-off locations available throughout the region
Did You Know?
In 2024, we collected and composted 1,417,011 pounds of food scraps to make approximately 700 yards of finished compost to feed local farms and gardens!
Becoming Farmer Pirates
People ask us all the time: “How did you get the name Farmer Pirates Compost?”
Farmer Pirates was born out of a farming cooperative by the same name, Farmer Pirates Cooperative in 2012. Although we have grown and evolved since the beginning and we are no longer cooperative members and farmers, we still hold to the same values which can be articulated by this quote from farmer, author, and painter Lynn Miller, the founder of the renowned Small Farmer's Journal and author of Farmer Pirates and Dancing Cows:
“As farmers and homesteaders, we’re growing for ourselves, we’re creating for ourselves, we raise our own chickens for our own eggs, and we’ll do it outside of existing institutions. If that makes us pirates, then so be it.”
Learn More About Us
Our Crew
We think our crew is pretty cool. Find out why!
We’re Hiring
Wish to join the crew? Check to see if we have an opening.