COMPOST — THE HEART OF FARMING AND THE TRUE ROOT CAUSE OF HEALTH
I always wonder why composting is not given its due importance in vegetable farming. Every farm should recycle all its green and dry brown waste. If green waste and brown waste are thrown around to decay by themselves, then it is inefficient recycling of materials worth their weight in Gold. The farmer is throwing away his Gold if he does that. Most farms I visit do not have composting going on at all. Also, fresh cow dung must be composted immediately to prevent it from losing nitrogen fast. Most cow dung is just lying around in piles and all the desi cow urine produced at the farm is not used. Even at our farm sometimes care is not taken to start composting the cow dung immediately. If we can do a 60:1 pile with moist cow dung, it will lose less carbon and nitrogen. But if you let it lie about, its the breeding ground for insects that feed on anything that rots. It will also lose its carbon and nitrogen by outgassing.
Compost is the final product of planned combination and controlled decay of various types of organic matter and organic wastes available in farms and gardens. Its a blackish-brown substance with an amazing earthy smell. Actinomycetes are behind this smell. The smell and feel of humus and rich soil are intoxicating for farmers. A pure joy to smell and feel that soil and compost. This is where life begins and health begins.
Good compost does the following to the soil.
Compost inoculates the soil with a lot of microbes. Improves soil structure by helping to create soil aggregates. Soil aggregates help improve gas exchange within the soil. This creates an ideal environment for increased microbial populations which in turn secrete acids and other substances that slowly melt the soil to release minerals. Soil organisms secrete glues that bind the soil to prevent erosion through wind and water. Compost helps create a complex ecosystem of a multitude of varieties of soil life. The ecosystem feeds the plant roots as per the need of the plants.
Its nature helping nature when feeding happens to plants via soil. Humans have tried to figure this out through artificial feeding of chemical concoctions by using industrial grade fertilizers or hydroponics whose failures are completely hidden in the name of making enough food to solve world hunger. Its just soil mining and soil destruction when we sell the future to make current food yield economics look better. When all the good soil is gone, there is nothing left but all the money made in the process. Of course, you can buy food with money but from where?? Maybe just hydroponics. If all food that all of us eat is made with hydroponics, we will all die soon because all nutrients cannot be made to replace soil nutrients and the magic that happens in the soil. Our deep genetic connection to our soil and years of the evolution of this relationship with soil is deeply disturbed through hydroponics. Hydroponics is a bad idea that demonstrates how twisted human thinking has come to be.
Three tons of organic inputs usually give one-ton of compost. There is enough written in books about compost making. But its all about doing it and not reading about it. You must be an artist to make great compost. No book can teach you that. You can feel and know what you are mixing into a pile and how to gently cook that pile to perfection. C: N ratios of ingredients are embedded in your brain with years of experience in composting. It's half the farming work done when you make good compost.
Ten percent of your farm soil, Forty percent of green matter, Forty-five percent dry matter, 2.5-5 percent biochar is needed and its good to have a minimum of 20 types of ingredients, to begin with.
To make compost with inputs having average C: N ratio as 30:1, 3 months are needed and compost can heat up to 140 deg F temperature a few times before disintegrating to beautiful brown Gold with an earthy smell. Maintenance of 35–50 percent moisture is needed during the composting process.
If the inputs have a 60:1 C: N ratio on average, compost output is much better as carbon loss is in the composting process is less and the composting process with 30:1 C: N ratio input ingredients. This compost pile is maintained by nature between 50F to 110F to achieve finished compost in 6 months.
The final compost product has 30 percent moisture and must be stored in cool dry place. It can be stored for up to six months without losing moisture. The key is to retain the microbial populations in it. It is better to use it sooner than later as the microbial populations need a new home in the soil soon.
Three percent organic matter must be maintained as a minimum in tropical soils and 4–6 percent organic matter must be maintained in temperate soils for good vegetable farming results. You may grow organic food in soils with less organic matter. Such plants will be weak and cannot fight insects and disease and such food will not have sufficient balanced nutrition for a healthy human life. Therefore the very purpose of organic farming can be achieved with good quality compost and soil green manuring, along with some patience to do proper mineral balancing of the soil.
Grow all ingredients needed for compost.
Grains and millets can give dry matter. Napier grass can give dry matter and green matter. Cover-crop (green manure) mix can give green matter and dry matter and the needed diversity of materials inside compost. Vegetable waste and green and dry vegetable plants can give additional compost inputs regularly. Some cow dung is used as inoculum. Tree branches trimmed every year or often gives more input material.
Compost made from plant matter is 4 times better qualitatively than compost made from animal manure. High-quality Indian cow manure can be used as an inoculant for compost. It's a great inoculant rich in microbes. But you must have soil as the main inoculant along with cow dung. Bring forest soils near your farm to add to compost to increase the diversity of fungal and bacterial species in your soil. Plant trees that fix nitrogen and give regular biomass harvest that supplies raw material for compost making. Millettia Pinnata and Sesbania grandiflora are excellent choices.
Depending on material availability one can try to come up with various combinations of input materials and make compost.
30 tons of compost per acre per year is minimum needed in soil growing lot of vegetables if one cover crop is grown in that soil annually. As soil retains more and more humus, less compost can be added to the soil. But it's critical to maintain minimum organic matter levels as indicated above. Farmers try to cut-short soil health to spend less and be profitable in organic. That will destroy the farm in the long-run as they are simply mining the soil nutrients and selling it. These farmers are also destroying the health of their customers and their families. While prices of the organic products are discussed regularly, neither compost nor soil humic content is the topic of discussion.
Six months to three years may be needed to bring soil to excellent fertility levels. This usually depends on the skill of the farmer and availability of raw materials. If the plants are healthy and have more than 4 percent lipid content in them, fungal digestion of these lipids leads to humification. If plants have 2 percent of their weight or lower as lipid content, then soil humification is absent and soil will need continuous feeding to provide nutritious food continuously. It takes more than ten years to achieve healthy soil if the focus on humification is absent in the mind of the farmer.
Calcium is a mineral with base saturation rate of 60–70 percent and a Magnesium base saturation rate of 10–20 percent must be achieved and maintained in soil.
For this purpose, agricultural soft rock phosphate which is a type of clay, agricultural gypsum, and agricultural lime which are certified organic can be added to soil at the rate of 700 pounds of calcium per acre per year. If soil is deficient of magnesium by nature, dolomitic lime can be added.
Mineral and micronutrient amendments are not needed after a few years as soil achieves a good balance. Annual soil tests recommended in a good lab to study soil. please note that soil tests are not an exact science. Soil biology always overpowers soil chemistry. But if the initial soil you start with is seriously deficient in soil chemistry in the form of very low ppm or weight of some elements, This deficiency of elements must be corrected. Study a good book in agronomy if you want to be a good farmer.
Well-humified compost makes soil extremely fertile. Why? I will answer this in the next blog coming up in a week from the date of publication of this blog.
If you started with a farm and corrected the soil chemistry as needed then why do you need soil biology?? — Will be answered in the next blog.
What is the formula to make compost? — Next blog.
Bacteria, fungi, and other microbes seek mostly carbon from the organic matter in the compost pile, just as they do in the soil. This fuels their metabolism. The microbes also need nitrogen to make the enzymes used in the decay process and the proteins (including their chief component, amino acids) that are necessary to build structure and enzymes. Moisture is necessary to provide the optimum environment for the microbes and to prevent them from dying or going into dormancy. You cannot have active bacteria, protozoa, or nematodes without the water necessary for their transport and other life functions.
The Micro-organisms release heat as part of the exothermic reactions happening in the compost pile and slowly reduce the pile to earthy black brown mix that is the world’s best fertilizer for the soil. We will continue in the next blog about compost
- Shankar, Lead farmer, and CEO at Mapletree Farm.
