Compost, a Limiting Factor?

General Discussions
35

Yep.
Yes first: I am no master of these thermodynamic concepts. But have been familiarised with them about 20 years ago. So I will translate what I meant in general more than what these concepts meant in details.
Second: made a spelling error : in american you would write negentropic! Not negUentropic… French tendency to add "U"s after some consonants!!!

So what I meant, in this context :

  • there is a tendency to energy dispersal in any organised system,
  • but the life itself (meaning: all the living things) brings more subtle levels of organisation each day.

Example: there was no biodiversity on earth billions of years ago, and it increased day after day, making earth ecosystems more and more complex. Life, using solar energy, creating even more life, which can be looked at as more complexity…

The english adjective “organic” also implies something which is simply … organized:

Also, “organic” is an adjective meaning that there is a dominance of the carbon compound in the mater: organic materials are made of “everything that is living or has been alive on the planet”

So, what I meant in this context, in that entropy/negentropy debate, is that this can be summarized into two tendencies :

  • a tendency to energy dispersal (what, as a non specialist, I would call “entropy”)
  • and a tendency to increase in complexity: any “organisation”, if meant as a process (what I called “negentropy”)

And to organise anything there is a need for energy. That, in nature, comes from the Sun, via light : through what we call photo-synthetis. Leaves, being -to my knowledge- the highway to initiate complex organisations, so to say to create complex organisms. - By the way, any fossil “fuel” being the result of an old photosynthesis, as we all know -

So when it comes to soil and land use in general: either you go towards a greater “organisation” - which will bring in more biodiversity, water retention, water infiltration, and then “sustainability”, and also shock absorption now called “resilience”, etc -. or you go towards “dis-organisation”, which is - if you look at it from a chemist point of view - : simplification of a complexity - in simple words: destruction.

That later is what agronomists refer to as the mineralization process, opposed to the humification process:

  • Humification being the tendency to a greater organisation in complex molecules organised around carbon atoms, and including minerals (and some parts of hydrogen and oxygen). i.e. humus
  • Mineralization being the tendency to a greater energy dispersal, which means dissolution of the carbon bounds, discharging of minerals on one side and CO2 on the other. + occasionnally some parts of H2O. - the additionnal O elements being taken from the atmosphere.

So, as in nature, and as in farming the 2 processes are known for ages and occur simultaneously, the main notion to introduce here is the one of balance sheet year after year, so to say the dynamic. Otherwise we don’t get it.

So to summarise this in dynamic terms, and from a farmer point of view, as some advanced farmers say : “if we leave behind more soil on the Earth than there was before, it means you have been successful, and that the next generations will be able to keep producing”. That is what I meant by negentropy. In other words how can we, as humans, and as gardeners or farmers, create more humus than we destroy.

It is an approach, a way to look at dynamics, from the organic balance sheet point of view. I used “negentropic” in regards to this organic balance sheet, meaning overall dominance of the synthesis process of complex, stable, energy and nutrient dense, organic matters, with all its collateral… advantages!

Links :

  • “The Job of a Farmer is to Feed the Soil - podcast” organic maters, animals, soil microbiomes, cover crops, inputs, nutrient density, etc.
    (Personally -as most gardeners - I prefer more radical approaches, using no fertilizers, etc. But it is a great podcast to get those concepts from a farmer point of view. She is a great teacher. Slightly contrasting is my approach, directly inspired by Yann, himself inspired notably by Fukuoka, so to say, from a radical, zero input agriculture mindset, confronting this great problem of organic balance sheet, so to say the problem of losing soil, which we reverse through cover crops, and the corollary and mostly inconceived problem we both see in the systematic compensation of this loss through high entropy inputs to produce vegetables. Compost being one of them… and of course far from being the most problematic… But still, and globally, the compost equation is: first you undress Paul to dress Peter, then you cook Paul’s clothes for a while, during that process most of Paul’s clothes go in the sky as CO2, and then you bring the mineralised part to your plants, so to say you bring a highly concentrated solution of nutrients… Which is - sure!- great to grow most of your vegetables… but as soon as you dezoom a bit from your squash - or whatever vegetable - and you understand the bigger problem, you may want try adressing it. In other words: search for and then try to localize the solution to this bigger problem - “problem” that most gardening trends of the past 40 years don’t even conceive… Then, as most of us, from a practical, localised and opportunistic point of view, I use for parts of my garden composted cow manure of my neighbour, to boost my cucurbits a bit, and will do that until I find my life’s soil as great as I want)
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3_w_Gp1mLM Chritine Jone, saying about the same things in other words, from a scientist point of view… “Making life from light”, as she says nicely.
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