Sustainable Gardeners and Farmers

Thanks Eric, you're right that if the waste is fully fermented then you'll get mostly co2 and not methane. I couldn't find any papers on your bokashi research site that examined whether people add enough of your product to overwhelm the native anaerobic bacteria and prevent methane. I'd guess people would try to save time and money by using less of your stuff and mixing it less. I couldn't find any papers at all on that site looking at methane generation or mass balances for bokashi. All the papers appear to be promotional, from bokashi conferences, rather than regular peer-reviewed independent research. 

Great to hear that there is no intention to confuse bokashi with composting. Would it help then to remove the word composting from the title of this solution?

I can't imagine why anyone would want to put half-decomposed food into soil and try to grow plants on it. Why not add compost instead that we know is full of nutrients that plants can use immediately? I guess you know the biochemistry of fermentation, that the residues can be metabolised only with oxygen. There's not much oxygen underground so the bokashi residues would compete with plants roots for oxygen. The bokashi research seems to have nothing about this nor the effects on worm populations. Nor whether rats invade the buried food or whether the slushy residue is alcoholic due to the bokashi yeasts or what to do with the large liquid byproduct (also alcoholic? - compost wine, anyone?). 

With 'typical household methods of making compost' do you mean those anaerobic 'dalek' shaped food digestors that are also marketed with confusing suggestions of composting? Traditional aerobic composting creates only trace amounts of methane which are almost entirely metabolised into co2 by methanotrophs. Composting well is a doddle and can be entirely free of charge (see tips here, explaining how claims that composting makes methane are "hogwash" ). I'd love to see people helped just to learn composting rather than be led into a life of paying for alternatives that don't produce compost. 

All nations have ridiculously low levels of public knowledge about composting but maybe business-people like you can also see this as a huge market opportunity for the viral spread of simple basic information critical to our atmosphere, soils and food security?

The site that's linked to this solution sells bokashi supplies and has little extra info and no technical info about the mass balance. I don't consider any anaerobic method 'composting' as the anaerobic digestion ('pickling') process produces vastly less solid output and much more methane and liquid. It wouldn't be correct to say that bokashi avoids methane production, since all anaerobic digestion actually makes much more methane which has a very high global warming factor. The bokashi output is part-digested in sealed bins and when buried in soil will not compost either since there is still minimal access to air. Most of the mass will continue to anaerobically digest creating more methane and liquid that can only be used by plants if diluted (or if most of it drains away, hopefully not into groundwater). 

The bokashi mix will help since both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria benefit from a balance between nitrogenous and cellulosic (bran or other brown leafy/woody material). I can't imagine how the bacterial inoculations help at all since anaerobic bacteria will grow like mad wherever they find food and no air; they need no introductions or coaching. Traditional aerobic composting is not actually at all difficult to do and the far larger output of rich well-rotted compost is much nicer to store and to use. I would not add part-rotted 'composts' to my soil. I recommend that anaerobic methods are kept for biogas production. If you're going to make a lot of methane you might as well capture and use it as fuel.