Composting is the natural way to avoid a fast-food fertilizer plant diet

Compost is typically used as a fertilizer by most farmers, and it is, indeed, a powerful fertilizer. As such, it is VERY dangerous to plants.

Fertilizers are to plants what fast food is to humans: tasty and unhealthful. Just as fast food will grow a person big (terminally obese) and kill them before they’ve reached even a fourth of their life expectancy, so too will the unbalanced nutrients and toxins in fertilizer force plants to grow big and die early.
Even though most plants that fertilizer is used on are destined to die early from harvest, the fertilizer will weaken the plant’s immune systems, reduce nutrient value and otherwise endanger the consumer.
And we won’t forget to mention that fertilizers cause great harm to the ecology!

So why do we compost?

Why should anyone compost?

Composting is a good way to deal with human sewage and wastes. Not just fecal wastes, but kitchen wastes, office wastes and other trash as well. If just “thrown out,” these wastes cause more damage to the ecology and the farm than the compost: compost is more easily distributed over a very large area (reducing its negative – and positive – effects to nothing) and is the most cost effective method of making sewage and waste safe by employing the efforts of countless microorganisms that eat the wastes and sewage.

The waste products of these microorganisms are often safe enough to eat directly because they transform the waste into fertilized soil (though it would prove to be a very bad dinner: no person likes to eat dirt).

Domesticating the microorganisms necessary for waste management is easy. Provide atmosphere into the compost heap by including bulky items to trap air (no need to turn a pile!), provide water when the pile gets too dry (below 40% moisture) and provide adequate drainage to prevent the pile from becoming too moist (above 60% moisture). Keep the pile from becoming too hot or too cold.

Nature takes care of the rest by providing a plethora of biodiversity. Fungi, bacteria, viruses and protoviruses are required to render the most toxic chemicals safe (radioactive wastes, fossil fuel wastes and other highly toxic wastes are easily handled within a few months by the hungry microorganisms).
We apply the science to our fields by tilling regularly (to increase atmospheric content in the soil), increasing biodiversity and preventing our soil from becoming too hot or too cold. In this way, we have reclaimed soil polluted by automobile engine oil, excessive fertilizer and other nasty toxins.

Tilling regularly and treating your soil like a compost heap also results in negative erosion. The creatures in the soil will mineralize (a word describing the transformation of a gas, liquid or plasma into a solid) atmospheric chemicals like nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorous, potassium, etc. These “fertilizers” are then easily eaten by the roots of plants. We don’t need to plant green manures or other “food” for the composting to happen. Bacteria, viruses, protoviruses and fungi lived long before plants and animals ever polluted the soil with their dead bodies. Microorganisms need macroorganisms like a fish needs a bicycle.
How come our plants live so long and are so healthy if they are being fertilized by what is (arguably) the largest compost pile in Elbert County?

The biodiversity in the soil prevents any one kind of bacteria, fungus, virus or protovirus from becoming too numerous and polluting the environment with its special kind of waste. The stable state of the microecology results in the ideally balanced nutrition for plants (because plants adapted to eat from healthy soils).

Plants eat the waste products of microorganisms, not the air or decaying matter that the microorganisms eat because plants evolved after microorganisms did and took advantage of their wastes. Plants help keep the environment clean for microorganisms, but reduce the populations of those microorganisms whose niche it is to control the wastes and populations of the other microorganisms.
Some microorganisms eat the wastes of bacteria, fungi, viruses and protoviruses. These scavengers are more numerous without the presence of plants because there is more food for them. With plants gobbling up the wastes of the microorganisms, the scavenger microorganisms are outcompeted…which is a good thing for the plants because these scavenger microorganisms typically produce wastes that are highly toxic to plants.

When a compost pile is constructed, it is “fed” an imbalanced diet of dead matter. Food scraps, office paper, human sewage…these microorganism foods result in an imbalanced microecology that results in an imbalanced nutrient content for plants. Microorganisms adapted to eat air and soil, not decaying waste matter.

Even still, the responsible person composts their waste rather than send it to a landfill or into the rivers and oceans. A compost pile can even be built in cities where the people do not have back yards if the apartment dwellers work together to allow the rooftop to be used. Before you begin, though, it is essential that you check your local city, county, and HOA rules: many areas have restrictions against how and where composting is undertaken.

Reducing the pollution humanity releases into the environment begins by managing the wastes we produce every day: office wastes, kitchen wastes and fecal wastes. The best way to manage waste is through compost.

Though there are countless sources for further reading on the subject of soil science and composting, if the selective reader has time for only one, they should read the authoritative Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins. It contains valuable and easy to understand information on composting for every family’s needs, reviews of other books, essential chemistry explanations, instructions for construction of various tools and machines, and beautiful illustrations.
Topics: Elbert County , fertilizer , Humanure Handbook