Biomass

“ I especially recommend the works of William Albrecht, Weston Price, Sir Robert McCarrison, and Sir Albert Howard.
Making Humus
Before we ask how to compost, since nature is maximally efficient perhaps it would benefit us to first examine how nature goes about returning organic matter to the soil from whence it came. If we do nearly as well, we can be proud.
Where nature is allowed to operate without human intervention, each place develops a stable level of biomass that is inevitably the highest amount of organic life that site could support. ”

“ CELLULOSIC BIOFUEL— The term 'cellulosic biofuel' means renewable fuel derived from any cellulose, hemicellulose, or lignin that is derived from renewable biomass and that has lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, as determined by the Administrator, that are at least 60 percent less than the baseline lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. ”

“ Notwithstanding the preceding sentence, renewable fuel derived from co-processing biomass with a petroleum feedstock shall be advanced biofuel if it meets the requirements of subparagraph (B) , but is not biomass-based diesel. ”

“ All microorganisms, including nitrogen-fixing bacteria, build their bodies from the very same elements that plants use for growth. Where these mineral elements are abundant in soil, the entire soil body is more alive and carries much more biomass at all levels from bacteria through insects, plants, and even mammals. ”

“ Animal species can change ecosystems to suit them, but in the end they remain subject to the fact that biomass is limited, and to the fact that they must compete with other animal species for use of the biomass. ”

“ Even the most developed BAM ecosystems still have a relatively low biomass of about 150 tonnes of dry matter per hectare. However the turnover or productivity of organic matter is high—up to 15 tonnes/ha per year under favourable conditions. ”

“ With the foregoing causes in full action, and an adequate supply of moisture, whether from rains, dews, or artificial irrigation, the crop will draw largely from the atmosphere for the supply of its required organic constituents. Carbon will be furnished from its carbonic acid; nitrogen from its ammonia; hydrogen from its vapor, dews, and ammonia; and oxygen from air, water, and soil.
The use of all these materials, together with the selection of the best varieties of seed, will give the first three requisites of a wheat crop; large measure, heavy weight, and much flour. ”

“ In healthy, viable ecosystems, resources are constantly being recycled in a complexity of inter-related cycles. For instance nutrients in soil are taken up by plants, and the plants grow, die and decay to become part of the soil to nourish new plants. Within this process, the element nitrogen is taken up by plant roots as a vital nutrient and released again into the soil by the micro-organisms which are the agents of decay. These are two simple inter-related cycles in an ecosystem, but they are part of increasingly large resource-cycles, the largest of all being the Biosphere in which we live. ”

“ Land plants have the power, under the influence of light, of decomposing the carbon dioxide (carbonic-acid gas) of the air and fixing the carbon in their tissues, the 336 oxygen being liberated and rendered available for animal respiration. Carbon is thus concentrated, and when plant remains accumulate and are preserved beneath water in swamps, a slow change takes place and peat is formed. The essential conditions for the accumulation of vegetable matter have been present on the earth ever since a land flora existed, and coal-beds occur at many different horizons. ”

“ Nature seems to be in an unexpectedly economical mood in the soil, and all compounds which can be oxidised with liberation of energy seem to have corresponding organisms capable of utilising them. Even phenol, benzene, hydrogen, and marsh gas can all be oxidised and utilised as energy sources by some of the soil population.
Even with this remarkable power the soil population has insufficient energy to satisfy all its possibilities; our present knowledge indicates that energy supply is, in this country at any rate, the factor limiting the numbers of the population. ”

“ Experiment soon showed that carbon was undoubtedly taken from the air, and that its source was the carbon dioxide poured into the air by fires and by the breathing of animals. It soon became obvious too that plants obtain from the soil water and inorganic salts containing phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, calcium, and so on; but for a long time the source of the plants’ supply of nitrogen was not definitely decided. Four-fifths of the air was known to be nitrogen. The soil was known to contain a small percentage of that element, which however amounts to four or five tons per acre. ”

“ When the soil contains decomposing organic matter, such as roots, leaves, stalks, the gas carbon dioxid is formed, which, when dissolved in water, forms a solution of great solvent power. Water passing through well-cultivated soils containing much humus leaches out very much more material than pure water could do. A study of the composition of the drainage waters from soils and the waters of the great rivers shows that immense quantities of soluble soil constituents are taken out of the soil in countries of abundant rainfall. ”

“ Just as in a compost heap, within days bacteria and fungi can multiply to match any food supply. But to construct their bodies these microorganisms need the same nutrients that plants need to grow—nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, etc. There are never enough of these nutrients in high C/N organic matter to match the needs of soil bacteria, especially never enough nitrogen, so soil microorganisms uptake these nutrients from the soil's reserves while they "bloom" and rapidly consume all the new carbon presented to them. ”

“ Living plants (in reference to green plants) utilise the sun’s energy in the manufacture of their complex food materials from comparatively simple chemical compounds. These latter compounds are carbon dioxide, derived from the air through the agency of leaves, and a weak solution of various chemical compounds in water, derived by means of the roots from the soil, and carried up through the plant to the leaves, where the elaboration into the complex compounds to be utilised by the plants as food takes place. ”

“ The vast quantities of carbon dioxide afterwards sealed up in limestones and carbonaceous beds must also have still floated in the atmosphere and must have supplied abundance of the carbon, which constitutes the largest ingredient in vegetable tissues. Under these circumstances the whole world must have resembled a damp, warm greenhouse, and plants loving such an atmosphere could have grown luxuriantly. In these circumstances the lower forms of aquatic vegetation and those that love damp, warm air and wet soil would have been at home. ”

“ Our own observations have shown that heating soils to dryness at a temperature of 110° C. greatly increases the freedom with which plant food may be recovered from them by the solvent power of water, and the same heating doubtless improves the physical and biological conditions of the soil as well. Nitrogen combined as ammonia, and phosphorus, potash and lime are all carried with the smoke or soot, mechanically in the draft and arrested upon the inner walls of the kangs or filter into the porous brick with the smoke, and thus add plant food directly to the soil. ”

“ Very nearly one-half, by weight, of our common crops, when perfectly dry, consists of carbon. The substance which supplies this element to plants is the gas, carbonic acid. Plants derive this gas mostly from the atmosphere, absorbing it by means of their leaves. But the free atmosphere, at only a little space above the soil, contains on the average but 1/2500 of its bulk of this gas, whereas plants flourish in air containing a larger quantity, and, in fact, their other wants being supplied, they grow better as the quantity is increased to 1/12 the bulk of the air. ”

“ Plants when decomposing on the surface of the ground give off their carbon to the atmosphere in the shape of carbon dioxid gas leaving only the strictly inorganic or mineral matter behind. When, however, they are protected from the oxidizing influence of the air, by water or by other plant growth, decomposition is greatly retarded, and a large portion of the carbonaceous and volatile matters is retained, and by this means together with pressure from the overlying mass, the material becomes slowly converted into coal. ”

“ It is not destroyed; it remains intact, but is useless to the organism. One cannot have an indefinite chain of organisms living on each other’s excretory products; there was a certain quantity of energy in the food eaten by the first, and no more than this quantity can be got out whether one organism obtains the whole or whether others share it.
The outside value for the amount of energy fixed in the soil is obtainable by combustion of the soil in a calorimeter, but much of this is not available to the soil organisms. ”

“ The growth of forests, and the produce of meadows, demonstrate that an inexhaustible quantity of carbon is furnished for vegetation by the carbonic acid of the atmosphere.
We obtain from an equal surface of forest, or meadow-land, where the necessary mineral elements of the soil are present in a suitable state, and to which no carbonaceous matter whatever is furnished in manures, an amount of carbon, in the shape of wood and hay, quite equal, and oftimes more than is produced by our fields, in grain, roots, and straw, upon which abundance of manure has been heaped. ”

“ The biggest constituent of the dry matter of bacteria is therefore carbon. In the soil, bacteria find an abundance of [40] organic matter from which they may derive their carbon supply. A special case, however, is furnished by the nitrifying organisms, certain sulphur oxidising bacteria, and others that derive their carbon from the CO2 of the soil atmosphere. The sources from which these special groups obtain the necessary energy to accomplish this, we have already considered.
(3) Assimilation of Nitrogen Compounds. ”

“ Making compost is also a "personal good." For a few hours a year, composting gets you outside with a manure fork in your hand, working up a sweat. You intentionally participate in a natural cycle: the endless rotation of carbon from air to organic matter in the form of plants, to animals, and finally all of it back into soil. You can observe the miraculous increase in plant and soil health that happens when you intensify and enrich that cycle of carbon on land under your control. ”

“ Here, then, is another great source of wealth in Nature for which we are dependent upon bacteria. While, of course, water and pressure were very essential factors in the deposition of coal, it was a peculiar kind of fermentation occurring in the vegetation that brought about the chemical changes in it which resulted in its transformation into coal. The vegetation of the carboniferous age was dependent upon the nitrogen fixed by the bacteria, and to these organisms also do we owe the fact that this vegetation was stored for us in the rocks. ”

“ Be this as it may, it seems certain that by scrupulous return to the soil of all that comes out of it the resources of Nature are made increasingly available for the benefit of man.
When organic matter is mixed with water, a process of putrefaction and fermentation is started, and the organic matter, instead of undergoing oxidation, is reduced, and among the commoner products of this process are ammonia with sulphuretted hydrogen and marsh-gas, which are both combustible. ”

“ These comparatively simple compounds from which the plants elaborate their nourishment are the raw food materials, and that they must always be available for plant growth, is evident when one considers the vast areas of vegetation that cover, with the exception of desert regions, the surface of the earth. Under moist climatic conditions it has been calculated that some 500 tons of carbon dioxide and 1,000,000 tons of water, having the raw food materials in solution, are used annually by one square mile of dense forest. ”

“ But this is very far from being the case, for the respiration of animals, the combustion of fuel, and many other processes, are annually converting a large quantity of these matters into carbonic acid; and if there were no other source of carbon but the humus of the soil, the amount of vegetable life would gradually diminish, and at length become entirely extinct. ”

“ It is probable that nitrogen might be supplied to plants, through the medium of the atmosphere in an artificial manner, by placing within any structure, a portion of some of the volatile salts of ammonia, which latter being given off, would at once supply the demands of vegetation. Carbon might be applied, by the use of charcoal; and it is worthy of experiment how far the combustion of charcoal, in plant structures, by accelerating the formation of carbonic acid gas, may have a beneficial influence on vegetation. ”

“ Every diminution of the volume of the pores, whether secured by pressure of the soil or by an increase in the moisture thereof, is followed by a decrease in the volume of diffused gas. The giving up of the carbon dioxid present in the soil atmosphere to the upper atmosphere by the method of diffusion is therefore the less the finer the soil is, the more compressed the soil particles are, and the larger the water capacity of the sample and vice versa. ”

“ Carbon in the soil renders it warmer, because it darkens its color. Black surfaces absorb more heat than light ones, and a black coat, when worn in the sun, is warmer than one of a lighter color. By mixing carbon with the soil, we darken its color, and render it capable of absorbing a greater amount of heat from the sun's rays.
It will be recollected that, when vegetable matter decomposes in the soil, it produces certain gases (carbonic acid, etc.) , which either escape into the atmosphere, or are retained in the soil for the use of plants. ”