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Plant Roots and Soil Life: Mutual Dependence in the Extreme

        Root exudates create a booming economy in the root zone, the area right around the roots of plants and their mycorrhizal associates. Only a few millimeters to a few centimeters thick, the root zone contains the most life of any part of the soil: ten to fifty times the numbers of bacteria and many times the amount of fungi of soils outside the root zone. Between eleven thousand and fifteen thousand species of bacteria live in the root zone per teaspoon of soil, compared to the several hundred per teaspoon outside it, and there are several miles of mycorrhizal threads per teaspoon of root-zone soil, compared to several meters per teaspoon outside. This commitment by plants of their hard-earned solar energy to support a bunch of freeeloaders down there in the soil must have a payoff, right? How important are these little critters to the trees?
      Because of this energy transfer, “nutrient retention and cycling, soil physical structure, and the composition of the soil community are directly tied to the types of plants. This bioregulation of soil processes and properties by plants benefits plant growth, and plants and soils become tied together by reinforcing positive feedback. When trees or ecological equivalent plants are removed from forest ecosystems for a long enough period, the ability of soils to support those plants deteriorates.
     In the 1960’s, loggers clear-cut a number of forested areas in the Siskiyou Mountains of southwestern Oregon. Most clear-cuts regenerated well, but every one of four or five replantings at the “Cedar Camp” clear-cut failed. Twenty years after the cutting, ecologists studied the soil structure and biology at Cedar Camp soils were structureless, “like beach sands,” while nearby forests contained well-structured and aggregated soils with diverse pore sizes. Greater numbers of bacteria and harmful fungi, and fewer mycorrhizal fungi, inhabited the Cedar Camp soils. Compounds called siderophores, which are created by beneficial microbes and which help plants resist pathogens and gather iron, existed in much lower numbers. Populations of mites and other tiny arthropods that graze on bacteria and fungi were also low.
    The scientists replanted the site, this time adding about 3/4 cup (150ml) of soil from established forests to the tree holes at planting time. The results were dramatic. “Seedlings given soil from young forests grew roots faster, formed more mycorrhizas and survived and grew better than seedlings receiving no soil transfers. Soil transfers from older forests improved seedling growth, but not survival and mycorrhiza formations. Forest soils (especially those from younger forests) contained something (or ‘somethings’) that had been lost from the clearcut, and that loss effectively destroyed system resiliency.
    The researchers aren’t sure exactly what happened, in either the problem or the solution. They hypothesized that the loss of energy from root exudates so changed the food web structure of the soil community that nutrient cycling caused by grazing soil organisms pooping out digested microbes effectively increased. With no mycorrhizas, the trees had no other mechanism for gathering nutrients. The loss of soil aggregates compounded the problems by altering the physical and chemical structure of the soil. These and many other factors, including the harshness of the site, prevented reestablishment of trees. We don’t quite know how generally we can apply the results of this work. Some things do become clear, though.
    The mutual interdependence of plants and the soil community, especially in extreme environments, is obvious. Soil biology is key to nutrient cycles and plant health, and plants are key to soil biology and health. The worse your soils, the more attention you should pay to soil biology, but even those of us with decent soils should not garden in complete ignorance. We disregard the soil community at our peril, and our lack of respect can come back to haunt us. Not only pollution and chemical additives can damage the soil community, but also the “simple” change from forest to grassland modifies the soil community immensely, affecting crop production, crop survival, and our workload.
    If the trees are paying so much attention to the soil microbes, why aren’t we? We should not pant trees. We should plant ecologies. This means polycultures, not only of plants, but also of all the living elements of a healthy soil food web.
                             
                      - Dave Jacke, Edible Forest Gardens Volume 1: Ecological Visions and Theory for Temperate Climate Permaculture

Cyril G. Hopkins, "Shall We Use 'Complete' Commercial Fertilizers in the Corn Belt?" (1912)

“The real question is, shall the farmer pay ten times as much as he ought to pay for food to enrich his soil? Shall be buy nitrogen at 45 to 50 cents a pound when the air above every acre contains 70 millions pounds of free nitrogen? Shall he buy potassium at 5 to 20 cents a pound and apply 4 pounds per acre when his plowed soil already contains 30,000 pounds of potassium per acre, with still larger quantities in the subsoil? Because his soil needs phosphorous, shall he employ the fertilizer factory to make it soluble and then buy it at 12 to 30 cents a pound in an acid phosphate or “complete” fertilizer when he can get it for 3 cents a pound in the fineground natural rock phosphate, and when, by growing and plowing under plenty of clover (either directly or in manure), he can get nitrogen with profit from the air, liberate the potassium from the inexhaustible supply in the soil, and make soluble the phosphorous in the natural rock phosphate which he can apply in abundance at low cost?”
                                  - Cyril Hopkins, Chief Agronomist and eventual Director of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station from 1911 to 1919

        Prices may have changed, but the basic truths about long-term soil fertility and economic independence for the farmer are as clear now as they were then.
        The efforts of Cyril Hopkins serve as a metaphor for independent truths set up against an advertising and sales blitz that tries to pretend the truths don’t exist. The result of more than a half a century of fertilizer salesmanship is that no one today remembers Cyril Hopkins. The soil fertility truths that he championed, although they were understood for generations, have been forgotten so long that they are now regarded as some sort of revolutionary heresay.
         Hopkins was well aware of that possibility. He wrote numerous experiment station bulletins encouraging farmers to realize that no salesman was going to tell them about these ideas because there was so little to sell. He warned them that the large fertilizer manufacturers were concerned first and foremost with selling and only secondarily with farming. He predicted that the manufacturers would push their products endlessly, until farmers forgot how well agriculture could work with a bare minimum of purchased products. Well, Cyril Hopkins may have lost that struggle and been momentarily forgotten, but the truth of “permanent soil fertility” is still right there in the earth for those who care to look.
                                - Eliot Coleman

The Ego vs. The Eco

           There are numerous theoretical reasons why we humans have strayed so far from a benign symbiotic relationship with the planet, and have instead taken on the visage, if not the behavior, of planetary pathogens. Human beings, like all living things on this planet, are inextricably intertwined with the elements of nature. We are threads in the tapestry of life. We constantly breathe the atmosphere that envelopes the planet; we drink the fluids that flow over the planet's surface; we eat the organisms that grow from the planet's skin. From the moment an egg and a sperm unite to spark our existence, each of us grows and develops from the elements provided by the Earth and sun. In essence, the soil, air, sun and water combine within our mother's womb to mold another living creature. Nine months later, another human being is born. That person is a separate entity, with an awareness of an individual self, an ego. That person is also totally a part of, and completely dependent upon, the surrounding natural world, the eco. When the ego and the eco are balanced, the person lives in harmony with the planet. Such a balance can be considered to be the true meaning of spirituality, because the individual is a conscious part of, attuned to, and in harmony with a greater level of actual Being. When too much emphasiss is placed on the self, the ego, an imbalance occurs and problems result, especially when that imbalance is collectively demonstrated by entire cultures. To suggest that these problems are only environmental and therefore not of great concern, is incorrect. Environmental problems (damage to the eco) ultimately affect all living things, as all living things derive their existence, livelihood and well-being from the planet. We cannot damage a thread in the web of life without the risk of fraying the entire tapestry.
         When the ego gets blown out of proportion, we get thrown off balance in a variety of ways. Our educational institutions teach us to idolize the intellect, often at the expense of our moral, ethical, and spiritual development. Our economic institutions urge us to be consumers, and those who have gained the most material wealth are glorified. Our religious institutions often amount to little more than systems of human-worship where divinity is personified in human form and only human constructs (e.g., books and buildings) are considered sacred.
         No discussion of a subject should be considered complete without an examination of its moral, philosophical and ethical considerations, as well as, a review of the intellectual and scientific data. When we ignore the ethics behind a particular issue, and instead focus on intellectual achievements, it's great for our egos. We can pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves how smart we are. It deflates out egos, on the other hand, to realize that we are actually insignificant creatures on a speck of dust in a corner of the universe, and that we are only one of the millions of life forms on this speck, all of whom must live together.

                   - Joseph Jenkins, The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Humanure

Excerpt from Joseph Jenkins: The Humanure Handbook

Compost can degrade toxic chemicals

      Compost microorganisms not only convert organic material into humus, but they alsodegrade toxic chemicals into simpler, benign, organic molecules. These chemicals include gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, oil, grease, wood preservatives, PCDs, coal gasification wastes, refinery wastes, insecticides, herbicides, TNT, and other explosives.
In one experiment in which compost piles were laced with insecticides and herbicides, the insecticide (carbofruan) was completely degraded, and the herbicide (triazane) was 98.6% degraded after 50 days of composting. Soil contaminated with diesel fuel and gasoline was composted, and after 70 days in the compost pile, the total petroleum hydrocarbons were reduced approximately 93%. Soil contaminated with Dicamba herbicide at a level of 3,000 parts per million showed no detectable levels of the toxic contaminant after only 50 days of composting. In the absence of composting, this biodegradation process normally takes years.
Compost seems to strongly bind metals and prevent their uptake by both plants and animals, thereby preventing transfer of metals from contaminated soil into the food chain. One researcher fed lead-contaminated soil to rats, some with compost added, and some without. The soil to which compost had been added produced no toxic effects, whereas the soil without compost did produce some toxic effects. Plants grown in lead contaminated soil with ten percent compost showed a reduction in lead uptake of 82.6%, compared to plants grown in soil with no compost.
       Fungi in compost produce a substance that breaks down petroleum, thereby making it available as food for bacterica. One man who composted a batch of sawdust contaminated with diesel oil said, "We did tests on the compost, and we couldn't even find the oil!" The compost had apparently "eaten" it all. Fungi also produce enzymes that can be used to replace chlorine in the paper-making process. Researchers in Ireland have discovered that fungi gathered from compost heaps can provide a cheap and organic alternative to toxic chemicals.
      Compost has been used in recent years to degrade other chemicals as well. For example, chlorophenol contaminated soil was composted with peat, sawdust, and other organic matter and after 25 months, the chlorophenol was reduced in concentration by 98.73%. Freon contamination was reduced by 84%, PCPs by up to 98%, and TCE by 89-99% in other compost trials. Some of this degradation is due to the efforts of fungi at lower (mesophilic) temperatures.
     Some bacterica even have an appetite for uranium. Derek Lovely, a microbiologist, has been working with a strain of bacteria that normally lives 650 feet under the Earth's surface. The chemically altered uranium excreta becomes water insoluble as a result of the microbial digestion process, and can consequently be removed from the water it was contaminating.
     An Austrian farmer claims that the microorganisms he introduces into his fields have prevented his crops from being contaminated by the radiation from Chernobyl, the ill-fated Russian nuclear power plant, which contaminated his neighbor's fields. Sigfried Lubke sprays his green manure crops with compost-type microorganisms just before plowing them under. This practice has produced a soil rich in humus and teeming with microscopic life. After the Chernobyl disaster, crops from fields in Lubke's farming area were banned from sale due to the high amounts of radioactive cesium contamination. However, when officials tested Lubke's crops, no trace of cesium could be found. The officials made repeated tests because they couldn't believe that one farm showed no radioactive contamination while the surrounding farms did. Lubke surmises that the humus just "ate up" the cesium.
      Compost is also able to decontaminate soil polluted with TNT from munitions plants. The microorgamisms in the compost digest the hydrocarbons in TNT and convert them into carbon dioxide, water and simple organic molecules. The method of choice for eliminating contaminated soil has thus far been incineration. However, composting costs far less, and yields a material that is valuable (compost), as opposed to incineration, which yields an ash that must itself be disposed of as toxic waste. WHen the Umatilla Army Depot in Hermiston, Oregon, a Superfund site, composted 15,000 tons of contaminated soil instead of incinerating it, it saved approximately $2.6 million. ALthough the Umatilla soil was heavily contaminated with TNT and RDX (Royal Demolition Explosives), no explosives could be detected after composting and the soil was restored to "a better condition than before it was contaminated." Similar results have been obtained at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant, the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in Bangor, Washington, Fort Riley in Kansas, and the Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada.
      The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that we would save hundreds of millions of dollars if composting, instead of incineration, were used to clean up the remaining U.S. munitions sites. The ability of compost to bioremediate toxic chemicals is particularly meaningful when one considers that in the U.S. there are currently 1.5 million underground storage tanks leaking a wide variety of materials into the soil, as well as 25,000 Department of Defense sites in need of remediation. In fact, it is estimated that the remediation costs for America's most polluted sites using standard technology may reach $750 billion, while in Europe the costs could reach $300 to $400 billion.

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