Composting

I'm having a lot of fun with this game, however am struggling right now with the latest update, specifically with the composting feature. I've noticed that it requires a lot of resources and time to produce significant levels of compost; at least enough which is required to provide food. Am I missing something? Is it easier to simply trade, steal or scavenge fertilizer in the early game.

A single bed requires 1 Fertilizer to grow vegetables; but the composter produces 0.02 to 0.05 fertilizer per cycle; meaning it would require 20-50 cycles to gain 1 fertilizer? Is this intended?

I am enjoying composting - I agree it seems to take a lot of stuff to produce fertilizer but coming up with ways to do it is interesting.
In my current play-through I have a crew of 9 and three composters supplying fourteen growbeds that produces enough food and some spare.
I have had to buy some fertiiser once, and I have taken to buying fibre and body parts to compost, which I never did before - also I now kill pirates specifically to compost them, which is kind of satisfying.......

It would be good if there were a way to turn soft scrap into fibres.

Also, I noticed that you can deconstruct alien 'objects' to get biomass.

I sent in a bug report yesterday on this same subject. It appears the values are set incorrectly because as it currently stands, you would need many composters to give you a significant amount of fertilizer. I find also the grow beds(I have 12 large currently and 3 composters) produce alot of bio matter. Ive come to enjoy the new eject feature. There is something very funny watching 100+ bio matter get ejected from my ship and go right in front of a slaver faction ship. Ive wondered if the values are correct, then composting every item at same time would yield fertilizer quicker?

I've found the composters to be massive energy hogs.  I have to build multiple of them to deal with the heaps of biomatter my farm ship produces.  I thought this ship would just sip power from solar panels, but between water collectors and composters, it draws power like an industry section.  And how much energy should it take to spin a barrel and pump in oxygen?  I mean really?

It is very cool to throw in alien and human meat.  I don't have to make my crew eat the stuff.

On a separate note, CO2 Producers are a trap.  My crew produces sufficient CO2 by breathing.  In my last game I was running out of Carbon, and I'm pretty sure it was because the CO2 Producer was competing with Gas Scrubbers.

Edit:

A single bed requires 1 Fertilizer to grow vegetables; but the composter produces 0.02 to 0.05 fertilizer per cycle; meaning it would require 20-50 cycles to gain 1 fertilizer? Is this intended?

As I understand it, a grow cycle of anything consumes 0.7 Water and 0.1 Fertilizer, and all except Artificial Meat produces 1 Bio Matter.
Then the composter turns 1 Bio Matter into 0.1 Water and 0.02 Fertilizer.
So we need roughly 5 Bio Matter to sustain 1 grow cycle, but each grow cycle only makes 1 Bio Matter.  Maybe the rest comes from Toilets and pirate corpses?
I would prefer that the Fertilizer sector of food production be close to self-sustaining.  You're supposed to be able to do this with organic gardening.  My Raw Chemicals are in too much demand to fill in this deficit.
Perhaps Grow Beds could grow cover crops like clover and beans that make extra Fertilizer.

I must say I do not like how fertilizer is implemented. I would prefer fertilizer to provide a "boost" to grow bed output, but still be able to produce food without it.

Seems I was wrong about the composter's energy consumption. It draws 3 for a second or two when someone adds something in, but is otherwise <1 all the time. It's the water collectors that consume so much: 5 when they collect water, and in a farm room they are active at all times picking up all that transpiration.

I must say I do not like how fertilizer is implemented. I would prefer fertilizer to provide a "boost" to grow bed output, but still be able to produce food without it.

In a garden you don't have to fertilize because rain already fertilize  it a little and local life bring the rest. In a grow bed you may not have to do it at first because you probably bought fertilized culture substract but it will soon been consumed and will need to be fertilized regularly. Being able to produce food with only water seems in no way realistic.

Fertilizer is best created with the Chemical Refinery, Composter is just a support for the loop.

The chemical refinery definitely works. Thanks!