Terra preta

I just spread compost on the lawn every year, and mix my own fertilizer(NPK)for lawn and plant use...works well....of course I'm not growing crops(sic) and in farming it's all about yield per acre....

..."Carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) have attracted increased interest in agricultural production in the twenty-first century owing to their excellent bioactivity, high conductivity, eco-friendly manufacturing processes, and large-scale production. A recent publication in the Journal of Cleaner Production focuses on applying CNPs as a foliar spray and soil drench to boost corn production and nutrient absorption."...

https://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=39258

I have a neighbor who puts leaves, kitchen waste, specially purchased worms and other things in the top of blue plastic barrels and gets very fertile soil out the bottom. This is a smaller scale version of what you are writing about. The process and good quality of soil are all true but calling this "self-sustaining" makes me wonder if you are running for political office. The man-hours and transportation costs to collect, store and then spread these materials on a field make this very expensive compared to fertilizer.

I know that cow and chicken poo are being used more often as a natural fertilizer. Yard waste and other bio mass waste is being composted more often. Some good things are economically happening and hopefully there will be more. What is needed are methods that are at least close to being economically justified because in the long run a wasteful economy is not sustainable either.

I regret that I have only one "GA" to give.

Also Poly meaning a parrot, noted for the brevity of brains.

Tick an incontrollable twitch.

Twitch, to twitch or look at birds, noted in the first line.

So politics requires mindless self introspection.

There are many words that are composites of their origins.

For instance:Therapist=Two Words: The + Rapist (They rape your wallet).

A friend of mine,who was a psychiatrist(PhD) said that all that was needed was simply a person to talk to that did not judge and would keep everything that was said confidential.

I asked him what the shrink was writing in his note pad while the person was on the couch spilling his guts.He said I did not want to know.

I insisted.

He said,"OK.Mortgage payment,boat payment,car payment,club membership fees,alimony,child support,female escort service.And he keeps looking at his watch to balance his budget."

He said a good dog was as good as any therapist or psychologist.FWIW.

He has passed away,so I think it is ok to pass this along now.

Bio char can be made using very basic simple equipment,and there is plenty of material to use for feed stock just lying around.The net is full of ideas on how to make bio char cheaply and efficiently.

The payback in the long term is better soil,more crop productivity per acre without the need for commercial fertilizers,whose production is not pollution free.

No need to slash and burn the rain forest every year to get fertile soil because the land is depleted of nourishment.

So what is cheaper in the long term?

IMHO:

Modern farmers are addicted to fertilizer as much as a dope addict is addicted to his dope,and that is the way the chemical companies like it.

...."Soil Regen, which is co-owned by Hedrick of Hickory, N.C., issued a Facebook post saying Hedrick has turned in a harvest for the 2022 National Corn Growers Assn. (NCGA) yield contest totaling 459.51 bushels per acre for his no-till dryland plot. When that number is confirmed — the NCGA doesn't formally release contest results until December — it will shatter the previous dryland record of 442.14 bushels per acre set by Frances Childs in 2002.

Childs, of Marshall County, Iowa, was the first grower to break 400 acres in a controlled contest, according to his obituary. He used deep tillage for back-to-back record-setting years in 2001 and 2002, claiming inspiration from zone tillage pioneer Ray Rawson. The current world record corn yield for all practices is 616.2 bushels per acre, set by Dave Hula of Charles City, Va., in 2019. Hula accomplished the feat in a category consisting of mulch-till, strip-till and min-till on irrigated land.

Hedrick is a first-generation farmer who's known for his innovative and unconventional approach to no-till. He first took the plunge into row crops in 2012 with 30 acres. From there, he began challenging conventional farming practices in a quest to improve his soils and his farmland. Today, he's grown his operation to 800 acres and beyond as co-founder of Soil Regen, Heritage Ground and mobile grain milling operation Regen Mills. In 2017, he won the North Carolina Corn Yield contest, becoming the first person to win in the state using regenerative practices.

Hedrick will talk about his record-breaking methods at the 2023 National No-Tillage Conference during a workshop titled "How to Trim Fertilizer Costs Without Reducing Yields," hosted in partnership with Regen Ag Lab's Lance Gunderson, and a classroom session titled "Capturing High Yields with Regenerative Ag." Learn more and register for the sessions here."...

https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/12038-no-tiller-russell-hedrick-breaks-20-year-dryland-corn-yield-record

https://www.agsoilregen.com/regenerativeag

Fertilizer is carried into the ground until it reaches an impermeable layer.

There it accumulates.

Deep tilling can bring these nutrients closer to the surface within reach of crop roots.

Even farmers from the 1900's knew that it was beneficial to plow deep enough to get a little clay on top of the soil.

No-till is great because it prevents soil loss and conserves moisture.

Adding carbon to the soil is also a great amendment to the soil,giving habitat for microorganisms to flourish.Sterile soil is dead soil.

It is my hope that someday the farmers can take the needle out of the farmland and break the fertilizer addiction.

I know farmers are hesitant to try some new things,and do not have the resources to experiment in case of a crop loss or decrease.

Perhaps when the more well funded farmers can prove the amazing results they will try it in small lots at first.

IMHO:

I don't expect to see many public acknowledgements of this because the chemical companies have strong lobbyists to resist any threat to their bottom line.

To the contrary,I would not be surprised to see some negative press about this method.

God bless the farmers!

..."Fertilizer is carried into the ground until it reaches an impermeable layer."...

I don't believe that is correct, there are several components to consider, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and organic content, all interact with the soil and plant in a different way...

"Plants need larger quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium than any other plant nutrients. Often called primary macronutrients, these three are among the 17 nutrients essential to all plant life. Other elements, such as iron, are just as critical to plant survival, but plants need them in much smaller quantities."

Different plants have different needs that's why you see pre-mixed fertilizers for different uses...The needs change from starting the plants to harvest time, so over the life of the plants a different mix may be required and ph testing of the soil...

https://cals.cornell.edu/field-crops/corn/fertilizers-corn#:~:text=The%20fertilizer%20used%20as%20a,the%20rate%20of%20fertilizer%20required.

Fertilizer is water soluble,and is carried by the water like water through a coffee filter full of ground coffee.

It migrates downward till it is stopped or slowed by a dense layer of clay or hard pan soil.

The plants must absorb this while within the reach of their root depth.

Certainly different plants need different amounts and types of fertilizer,but heavy sustained rains can deplete the soil of fertilizer.

Deep tilling can bring these valuable nutrients back to the top,reducing the need for fertilizer.

Ask a farmer about this.

Then how is the no-till method successful even with diminished use of fertilizers...?

https://eos.com/blog/no-till-farming/

The main benefit of no till is erosion prevention and moisture conservation.It is more beneficial in hilly land.

It is not the best fit for all areas,as the following link shows a bottom plow at 6 feet depth,bringing the stored nutrients to the surface.Highly compacted soil benefits from deep plowing,and sub soiling.

Every location is different.

YMMV.

A cover crop can be planted in the off season to prevent erosion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYSGFml6q_8

It just shows how clever people were back then when they had less to work with than we do now.

More and more is being learned about their civilization with the aid of penetrating radar and lasers to peer beneath the canopy.What they have learned so far is that they had large cities,some larger than in Europe at the time.Some recent explorers saw the newly generated maps and said that they were withing feet of some of the structures and did not recognize them,they were just a hump on the ground.The Spaniards wiped out their civilization with conquest and disease,and the survivors fled the cities and began a small wandering tribe life.Later on,scientists believed they had no civilization because they only found small tribes.By self sustaining,I meant self regenerating year to year.

Here is a link:https://charcoalremedies.com/terra-preta/

I dare say that you could look under the ruins of any old poor section of many cities you would find the same ingredients...the only difference being heaps of plastic....

Sometime in the distant future,some species will inhabit the earth and their geologists will find a very thin layer left by humans.

There will be a layer of radioactive waste.

The plastics in the ocean will have gone to the bottom along with the creatures that ate them and will be covered by a layer of sediment and new plastic eating creatures will have evolved.What once were our landfills will have been compressed and heated and are now oil deposits.The oil extracted will have to be filtered to remove contaminants,such as metals,concrete,and still edible hot dogs.Yes,hot dogs.Still edible hot dogs have been found in landfills over ten years old,with no sign of deterioration. Still edible.

Those nitrites and nitrates really do their job.

Someone asked George Burns how he felt about all the preservatives in food.He said "At my age I will take all the preservatives I can get."

Heirloom corn that is hundreds of years old, actually can create its own nitrogen.

corn grown in the arid high mountains in Peru, actually creates its own nitrogen.

all this has been bred out because of the commercialized corn trade-off for getting high productions.

Public Broad Casting (PBS) had an excellent program, from the University Of Wisconsin - Madison had an program about it, with a French Professor.

I’ll see if I can find a link to it.

There are many nitrogen fixing plant types....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ-dSxYonog&ab_channel=MossyEarth

All legumes produce nitrogen in their roots.Even the Locus trees produce nitrogen.

When planting walnut trees,they put a locus tree in between them.The locus will grow faster,and shade the walnut tree while feeding it with nitrogen that encourages growth.The shading will also encourage the walnut tree to grow taller.When the trees are about 10-15 years old,the locus trees are harvested for lumber value,and the walnut trees are well on their way,having had a good start.

The walnut tree produces a poison that will kill nearby growth,so the spacing of the locus trees is out of that zone.

Corn is a grass,.. but does not fall under a legume… it’s actually a fruit… at least to botanists…

I found the article, it’s actually a strain of corn that hosts a bacteria the produces the nitrogen.

Yes, such as alfalfa… the interesting thing with corn is, the commercialized corn uses more nitrogen then it produces, the heirloom type corn, produces a lot more nitrogen usages is and sustainable.

in Peru in the arrid mountains of Peru, the corn is self sustainable. And this is going to grow with the government cutting the domestic fossil fuel production.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45008830

Doesn't bio char produce some CO2 the bane of the tree hugging UN navel gazers?

No more CO2 than the natural decay produces.If properly designed,the production method burns all of the exhaust so there is no smoke.Methane is usually produced in natural decay and it is burned in the very hot,smoke free exhaust.So by burning up the methane,there is only CO2 produced,which has less negative effect on the atmosphere than the methane from natural decay.

So all in all,it is a win win process,sequestering carbon in the soil,and releasing no methane.The terra preta provides a place for the beneficial fungi and bacteria,and improves the soil and actually grows deeper every year.

IMHO:

If the complainers would stop picking lint out of their navels and take off their blindfolds and let some light into their brains--(using the term lightly here)-- they might be able to see the big picture instead of a myopic close up of their inner pious sanctimony.

Thank you for this thread. We need more of this kind of effort.

I would say back in the day you would be lucky to get just a few bushels of corn yield per acre....today we average over 150 bushels per acre....If we had to rely on such low yields everybody would be staving to death...

It's modern farming methods that have allowed the human population to thrive for the last 100 years or so....Without fertilizer and diesel tractors, you probably wouldn't exist...so there's that to consider

If we had to rely on such low yields everybody would be staving to death...

As opposed to being over fed, over weight and dying from a massive coronary.

Life expectancy back in the 1800's was around 35-40 years, and 100 years ago it was early 50's.... now there were certainly other contributing factors, but there is little doubt that an abundance of food has caused a population boom...

i don’t disagree, abundance of food creates a population explosion…

..."The number of centenarians, or people age 100 or older, has also increased from around 32,000 in 1980 to more than 53,000 by 2010. In 2020, it is projected that the older adult population could include 92,000 centenarians, and the number could increase to nearly 600,000 by 2060."...

Going off topic a bit… my imo.

Living to become a centenarian is one thing, having not only the quality of mental health somewhat stabilize, but also physical heath so they can enjoy life.

When it becomes to much to cope with, these near becoming centenarians, finally say, enough and they are ready, depending on their fight in their past, they decline rapidly.

A village was discovered in South America where the average age was over 100 years.The only salt they had was in their food,no added salt.After modern canned foods were introduced the average life span declined sharply.A reporter was interviewing a centenarian,who was in a field full of stones,picking them up.He asked the man how did he live to be over 100 years old?

He looked up from his work and replied" I have been picking up stones my whole life. Who wants to live that long?".

Gonna' have to call BS on that one....I think that was a joke that you lost the punchline to...

Here’s a little tidbit on Albert Einstein thoughts of extending his life…

The healthcare industry has changed a lot in the past 67 years, I doubt Einstein would say that today as his physician assures him that this is a routine surgery and he'll be back on his feet in a few days, and as good as new in a few weeks....He was only 76 at the time...

https://myhealth.alberta.ca/health/AfterCareInformation/pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=ud1765&