The Impact of Composting
Many years ago, society started the process of preparing soil, sowing, adding fertilizers, planting, irrigating, harvesting, and storage. Farming is a way of living, it was way back when and it still is now. Farming has grown with new technology and more land to provide society with the foods they need. Recently researchers have noticed that crops aren’t like they used to be and this is because the earth has been losing soil ever since farmers began tiling. 95% of global food production relies on soil, it is home to a quarter of all terrestrial species, and it plays a crucial role in storing carbon and water, which helps mitigate climate change and prevent flooding, but when the soil decreases down to zero percent which is expected within the next 60 years the earth soil will be useless. No farmers means no food. Organic waste in landfills generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By composting wasted food and other organics, methane emissions are significantly reduced. Compost reduces and in some cases eliminates the need for chemical fertilizers. Compost promotes higher yields of agricultural crops. Improving soil is a must and by composting, it benefits soil by enriching the soil and helps plant growth by balancing the soils density.
For how easy composting is, it makes a huge impact on earth. The process of composting is to control degradable organic products and wastes into stable products.
“Chemical fertilizers make nutrients readily available
to plants, but their disadvantages outweigh their advantages.
For example, chemical fertilizers contribute to greenhouse
effects, environmental pollution, death of soil organisms and
marine inhabitants, ozone layer depletion, and human diseases,”
According to Modupe Ayilara in “Waste Management through Composting: Challenges and Potentials.” Due to the issues of chemical fertilizers farmers are changing and leaning towards the concept of composting in order to regenerate the soil fertility. Every farm and produce company always has an enormous amount of waste that can be used in the process of composting and help the farmers benefit from their money, time spent, and recycle wastes. With addition of waste and activators to raw material such as wood chips that are thrown away will help to improve the nutritional quality of compost. Viricides, fungicides, anti-nematodes, and antibacterial of plant or organic sources can be used and will improve compost quality.
Over several years, studies have shown that in California alone 39 million tons of waste has been thrown away. 20 percent of it is organic food and 12 percent of it is wood. In Sudhanshu Behera essay, “Sustainable approach to manage solid waste through biochar assisted composting,” Behera claims, “Composting also mitigates the amount of waste and generates humus-like compost materials that can be used as fertilizer,” By reducing food waste and composting, we can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change. Food loss generates about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while using land and water puts increasing pressure on biodiversity.
In order to preserve soil fertility and reduce nutrient losses, organic matter must be present in the soil. Compost is an organic fertilizer that enriches the soil with nutrients and organic matter. A chemical fertilizer could be required to swiftly provide a crop with the requisite nutrients. Chemical fertilizers, in contrast to organic fertilizers, benefit plants right away; organic manures, on the other hand, must first be converted into nutrients before plants can use them. However, organic matter continues to improve soil fertility, soil structure, and water storage capacity while chemical fertilizers are exhausted by the end of the growing season.
According to Tom Veldkamp, in, “The Preparation and Use of Compost” Fresh organic materials and humus make up the organic matter in the soil. Fresh organic debris can include dead animals, animal droppings, dead plants, and more. Soil organisms convert the fresh organic matter into fine organic matter and humus. Humus imparts a black hue to the soil and holds onto moisture and nutrients. It enhances the structure of the soil and increases the soil’s resistance to the erosive effects of wind and rain. As it holds onto water and slowly releases it, extending the amount of time that water is available to the plants and holds onto nutrients and slowly delivers them over a longer time to the plants. Also, compost comprises the three primary nutrients that plants can access after decomposition: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
When compost is extremely beneficial to the soil it is benefiting a farmer’s crop yield. According to M.J. Denney, throughout the article, “USE OF COMPOSTED ORGANIC WASTES AS ALTERNATIVE TO SYNTHETIC FERTILIZERS FOR ENHANCING CROP PRODUCTIVITY AND AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY ON THE TROPICAL ISLAND OF GUAM.” Denney stated, “Yield results from the dry season trail showed gradual increase in crop yield as compost application rate was increased from 0 tons per acre to 120 tons per acre of compost application.” The soil benefits from compost in a number of ways that synthetic fertilizer cannot. First, it improves the way water interacts with the soil by adding organic matter. Compost functions as a sponge in sandy soils, holding onto water that would otherwise flow below the reach of plant roots and defending the plant from drought. Compost aids in increasing the soil’s porosity in clay soils, facilitating drainage and preventing waterlogging and brick-like drying out. Additionally, compost inoculates the soil with a large number of advantageous microbes that encourage soil biological activity.
References
Ayilara, M., Olanrewaju, O., Babalola, O., & Odeyemi, O. (2020). Waste Management
through Composting: Challenges and Potentials. Sustainability, 12(11), 4456.
MDPI. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114456
Behera, S., & Samal, K. (2022). Sustainable approach to manage solid waste through
biochar assisted composting. Energy Nexus, 7, 100121.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nexus.2022.100121
Nickel, M., De Smet, P., Tersmette, T., & Veldkamp, T. (n.d.). Agrodok 8 The
preparation and use of compost.
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/AD8.pdf
Golabi, M. H., Denney, M. J., & Iyekar, C. (2007). Value of Composted Organic Wastes
As an Alternative to Synthetic Fertilizers For Soil Quality Improvement and
Increased Yield. Compost Science & Utilization, 15(4), 267–271.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
Needs a Title.
Be careful importing References. The formatting you import can completely undermine the links you’re trying to preserve. I’ve done my best to strip away the coding problems that were messing up your References section. If “paste” options are available, choose the one that preserves the integrity of your links.
Hey Professor, can you give me feedback on what you think about this writing. In our meeting we cleared up my hypothesis better. So I know I am gonna have to adjust things, but I would like to have a general guide in where to go from and what you think about it.
I usually get distracted early by Introductions or second paragraphs, Soulpond, and never get around to “general guide” advice. But, since you’ve asked specifically, I’m going to read all the way through and leave an overall impression of your hypothesis and persuasiveness.
Soulpond, I would never recommend a “checklist essay,” but it may be too late to discourage you from doing one, so I’ll instead advise you how to make the best one you can.
By “checklist essay” I mean an essay that says, for example, “There are four primary advantages to GM crops” and then spends a paragraph on each. Who is the ideal reader for such an essay? A person who has NO FAMILIARITY with the concept of GM crops and wants only to be reassured that they’re not evil or dangerous. (They know a lot of people avidly avoid GM foods, but they’re not sure why.)
You spend roughly a paragraph on each of five advantages:
1. GM crops are pest-resistant
2. GM crops are more nutritious
3. GM crops are disease resistant
4. Oops, another paragraph for pest-resistant
5. GM crops preserve the soil (“herbicide-resistant”)
6. GM crops require less water
As I say, this sort of essay will not be satisfying to anyone who wants to know HOW a GM crop becomes more pest-resistant, or disease-resistant, or requires less water, or gains any of its advantages. It’s helpful only for readers who weren’t familiar with any of these advantages.
So the best you can do is provide the best evidence you can find that GMO crops ACTUALLY HAVE these advantages.
1. For “pest resistance,” you have Phillips say: Scientists can engineer pest-resistant crops. That’s it. She just says it’s so.
2. For “more nutritious,” you have NatGeo say: Crops can be engineered to be more nutritious by “merging” them with multivitamins. That’s it. They just say so. (Then you add irrelevant details about “insecticidal trails” and “annual yields” without saying how that shows nutritional enhancement.)
3. For “disease resistant” you offer an interesting case study about cucumber mildew. This shows promise. But the example is extremely confusing. It says cucumbers were attacked by downy mildew while a nearby field of GMO squash was healthy, but it NEVER SAYS downy CUCUMBER mildew WOULD EVER attack unmodified squash.
4. This second paragraph about insects should be connected to the first. It’s also confusing. We don’t understand what it means for insects to “get stuck” on plants. And we’re really confused about the USE OF “less environmentally friendly insects.”
5. Your “preserves the soil” paragraph has one job to do, and we’d really like to understand the benefit. But you distract us with “insecticidal substances” and “higher crop yields” and “profitability.” You don’t explain why the soil is suffering a “major decrease.” Eventually you suggest “herbicide resistance” is helpful in this regard. Not every reader will make the logical leap from that to “week control” or understand how crops can be planted without tilling.
6. For “less water,” your evidence is “Genetically modified crops can allow farmers to use less water.” That’s it. You just say so.
Maybe you’re planning to use your second 1000 words to provide evidence of HOW genetically-modified crops accomplish all these benefits, SoulPond, but it may be too late to catch up if readers aren’t convinced by your first 1000 words that they actually DO achieve benefits.
If you’re committed to proving five or six benefits in a checklist approach, you’ll need to find the best short convincing examples that they really exist.
Thank you Professor, I have been thinking about this paper and I was lost at first, but now I know what I want to do.
I see you waited until a few days ago to completely discard your first draft on the GMO topic and replace it with all new material about Composting.
This late change was probably a smart one, but you should/could have let me know you wanted a reaction to the new draft in time to give you a chance to revise.
The details seem impressive, but your sketchy citation technique on the Causal Rewrite forces me to look very closely at the proportion of “imported” material to your own writing. Do I need to be as skeptical of your paraphrases as I was when I first started looking at your other short arguments?
Work that was never submitted for feedback or revised after a first draft can only be graded moderately well in a Rewriting Course, SP. You haven’t left us much time to make up for the lost weeks. Please spend your time making sure your work is your own and doesn’t owe everything to your sources.