Benefits: The Application of Compost
Compost Regenerates our Land!
Healthy soil is key to a healthy society. Unfortunately, our soil isn’t looking so healthy these days. Thankfully, compost can help breath life back into it!
“Our soil is a living matrix that soaks up, stores, and filters water; holds landscapes in place; and provides nutrients for an entire food chain, from what would otherwise be bare rock, hardened clay, and desert sands. Though the soil sponge is now severely degraded across much of the globe, it remains ready and willing to spring back into action as soon as we allow it.”
Didi Pershouse
1) Feeds Soil Vital Nutrients
Compost helps to replenish our degraded soil with the much needed nutrients, like nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and micro and macronutrients, that they currently lack.
In addition to providing nutrients, the application of compost improves the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of soils, which in other words, improves their ability to hold nutrients for plant use in both the immediate and long-term.
In contrast, chemical fertilizers that you might find in an aisle at Home Depot only provide nutrients to the soil in the short-term.
2) Improves overall Soil Structure
Didi Pershouse has shared a great way to think of soil structure: imagine a piece of bread on a plate, and a pile of flour on a plate. Now imagine a paper cup that’s had a few holes poked into it. Imagine that we fill that cup with some water and hold it over the plate with bread on it and the plate with flour on it. Think about how each of these two “landscapes” changes when it’s subject to “rain”. In this scenario, flour represents degenerated soil and the bread represents healthy soil.
In a second scenario: imagine a piece of bread on a plate, and a pile of flour on a plate. Now imagine you take a hair dryer next to each plate and turn it on. In this scenario, we can visualize how “wind” would affect our two “landscapes”.
In both scenarios, it’s easy to realize how different the two “landscapes” react to basic weather events (rain and wind) and how much worse it would be to live on or near “flour” (such as a desert) than it would be to live on “bread” (land with healthy soil).
Compost helps to improve soil structure and reduce soil erosion (again, picture the flour being “rained” on or hit by “wind”) by up to 86%!
When we reduce soil erosion, we prevent floods, droughts, and even fires.
Everyday life is easier and extreme weather events are less catastrophic when our land is healthy and not so susceptible to damage.
3) Revitalize and Filter Local Water Sources
Compost holds 20x its weight in water! That means when compost has been applied to our soil, the soil can retain MUCH more water when there’s precipitation, preventing run-off.
On the other hand, if there’s a lack of precipitation for an extended period of time, soil amended with compost has a back-up source of water to keep itself and the plants that depend on it alive and healthy.
Compost also has the ability to bind and degrade contaminants (like heavy metals and other chemicals), reducing their ability to leach into and be absorbed by plants.
This same ability to bind and degrade contaminates has been shown to help filter out stormwater pollution by up to 60-95%!
4) Sequester Carbon to Reverse Global Warming
Compost helps to improve the health and structure of our soil, enabling it to sequester carbon much more easily via photosynthesis!
According to the IPCC, soil carbon sequestration has the greatest potential for reducing emissions in our atmosphere at the lowest cost of all the solutions available to us today.
Even if we stopped all the activities that emit carbon today, we would still need to remove the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere, otherwise our planet will just keep heating… so even as we shift to cleaner forms of energy (which we aren’t doing fast enough!), compost will still be a critical component of combating climate change.
5) Save our Food System
Creates Healthier Food
Compost naturally acts as a fertilizer, mild herbicide, and helps to suppress plant diseases — All of which make other fertilizer programs more effective. With regards to growing food, applying compost in alongside other regenerative farming practices has been found to negate the need for chemical inputs altogether!
Chemical inputs are linked to a multitude of human health problems related to fertility, cancer, respiratory diseases, endocrine (blood) system, gastrointestinal issues (GI tract), and neurological issues (ADHD, Alzheimers, etc.). The reasons for wanting to avoid chemical inputs are endless.
As I mentioned earlier, compost supplies our soil with vital nutrients for plants (i.e. our food, or the food of animals we plan on eating) to use in both the immediate and long-term and improves the plant’s ability to hold onto these nutrients. The result is more nutrient dense foods on our plates that actually nourish our bodies the way they need to be.
Lowers Production Costs for Farmers & Improves the Quality of their Yields
Compost helps to revive farmer property and security, especially when used in conjunction with other regenerative farming practices, improving the quality of yields and resulting in healthier, chemical-free food (that can be sold at a higher price point).
Additionally, industrial & chemical agriculture practices are extremely expensive for farmers to keep up with. Check out this video Farmer’s Footprint | Regeneration which tells the story of how a four generation farm was nearly destroyed due to industrial agriculture methods and the pressure that big AG put on the farm and industry. Sadly, this story is NOT unique. Thankfully the farm was saved due to a complete change in thinking and the implementation of regenerative practices that are much less costly.
Supports and Builds Resilient Food Systems
Composting is a circular system that allows farmers to take operations back into their own hands to provide healthier, safer food for their community and customers.