On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 22:52:36 -0700, Ingrid Bauer/J-C Catry
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:


>i understand that putting compost is increasing the top soil but at the
>expense of other soils from which your kitchen waste were taken from .
>My statement was talking on a global perspective !

You can harvest the plants of a given piece of land (let say cucumbers),
eat something of eat and have the rest of it composted and put back.

The soil gets everything back, except for what you ate.
You can also put back what you ate, as you can easily imagine.

What you aktually take away is the weight your body is made of, and energy.
The 140 lbs or so of your body  are very small, compared to the enormous
weight of the soil.
Energy is flowing down from the sun in much greater amounts as ever needed.

The plants increase the substance of the soil by taking substances out of
the air and making organic material out of it.
Particularly CO2 (carbon dioxide) adds the carbon
N2 (nitrogen) adds the nitrogen and water adds the hydrogen.
Catching the nitrogen is done only by special plants,
particularly by legumes and some other.
It's more than a perpetuum mobile, it's even growing.

In this way the plants have managed to build up the topsoil in each thermal
from new. Last thermal of 12000 years build up a soil lawyer often many
meters thick. Each ice age discarded all again in glaciation.
All the biomass was constructed from new several times.

Animal farming above a certain extent is different.
The animals produce much more waste (shit) out of the fedder as can be given
back to the land. Mostly, because much protein fedder is added from
foreign spaces. In part because it's too much as could be revived
(put to living organisms) again.

Most of the biomass comeing from abroad (robbing these soils)
goes to waste out of the animal. Evaporating into the air or into the water.
*This* is the luxury i spoke about.

Making compost is so effective particularly by increasing the living
organisms in in. Its full of various small animals.
Increasing the biomass in the soil, which is *living* is the main
goal for a natural and sustainable production.

> what happens to the craddle of occidental civilisation, what was left of
> the fertile croissant way before chemical fertilisers, where is all the
> water that was running in now dried out river and stream beds that i saw
> from plane betwen india and the mediterannean ?
And to the sahara, which was a wheat production centre of roman times?
This was a shift in climate. Possibly also caused by humans.
By deforestation, overgrazing, unknowing destroying ecosystems.
There *are* antic destroyed ecosystems.
But not by farming. Normally by deforestation.

Have you seen the beautiful landscapes of France or Germany?
Exactely *these* have been under a natural agricultural regime
from 4400 BC to 1900 AD. 6300 years of successful production.
The danger of change is *now*, by industry agriculture.

regards

Amadeus

It needed only a few thousand years, because 7000 years back
the earth was comparable to today.







Compost is great for build






>When you took over your land the fertility have been compromised to say the
>least ( bulldozing,  deforestation, may be tilled for many years ....) so
>bringing compost was a quick way to restore some fertility. by bringing
more
>than you loose in the tilling.
>so i will restate by saying that,  only nature is able to increase top soil
>without having to steal the biomass from somewhere else.
>
>There is no time or space to not want to adress the root of  the global
loss
>of biomass ,fixing problems created by tiling is not going to be enough. We
>have to question our interferences into the natural fertilisation process.
>jean-claude