I think he’s referring to the costs for shipping it to large monoculture Operations that are often distant from sources of properly made compost. As well as equipment to make it on site. Equipment to properly add it to the soil. And expenses from added labor and training to do both.
When you’ve got a 50k acre farm surrounded for a days drive in all directions by other 50k acre farms. The local dump isn’t making enough compost to do the job. When the entire structure of that farm is all about working those 50k acres with 1 guy and 3 large generalised machines. You don’t have the people, structure to make it and use it. And when those 50k acres are all one cash crop you don’t have the material to compost.
It’s an infrastructural problem but there’s potentially big costs there even if the compost itself is dirt cheap.
By contast chemical fertilizers come in easily shipped bags of concentrate that your machines are already designed to utilize. And you don’t have to hire an extra couple of guys to manage and turn the bags.
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Thanks - and yeah, I do get that. But it’s not what was written, and I was not going to let a general/isolated claim that compost itself is expensive and energy-hungry go by without some challenge - compost itself is almost free and needs almost zero energy inputs.
In my experience, that depends on how you do it, and what your inputs are. I recommend the book Let it Rot.
I have to say earning the money that would allow me to get the same results without composting - paying for waste removal, soil amendments, fill dirt, &etc. - would probably be just as much effort, only much less healthy since I’d have to sit on my butt in an office instead of being out in the dirt.
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oh yeah. It’s not a reason not to do it either. The infrastructure problem in question is the exact thing that needs to be altered to make large scale farming sustainable.
Unfortunately as it stands the real dollar costs of any such shift is going to fall on farmers who largely can’t afford it. Until things like soybean exports to china and the ethanol lead rise in corn prices. A lot of these guys were getting by on government subsidies. Even as the large agribusinesses they’re growing for hit record profits.
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I’ve had a copy for a while, now. Good reading.
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Back before mom sold out and retired, we would just rent our ‘empty’ winter fields to ranchers fattening yearling steers. The cows had room to move around, and they pooped prodigiously. In Spring, normal tillage and planting distributed the poop just fine.
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This sounds like a great technology and practice, and if fully used it will contribute a few drops in the bucket. We will need many more drops to really make a difference.
The market based solutions were never going to work, and in practice were nothing more than a scam.
Tax and regulate, with extreme vigour. Stop trying to “encourage” responsible behaviour; mandate it.
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