{"id":6162,"date":"2020-06-11T18:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T15:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/city-compost-programs-turn-garbage-into-black-gold-that-boosts-food-security-and-social-justice\/"},"modified":"2020-06-11T18:10:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T15:10:00","slug":"city-compost-programs-turn-garbage-into-black-gold-that-boosts-food-security-and-social-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/city-compost-programs-turn-garbage-into-black-gold-that-boosts-food-security-and-social-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"#City compost programs turn garbage into ‘black gold’ that boosts food security and social justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#City compost programs turn garbage into ‘black gold’ that boosts food security and social<\/a> justice<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\n Good-quality soil (right) looks, feels and smells different from degraded soil (left). Credit: Sue Ishaq, CC BY-ND
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Almost overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed many Americans’ relationships with food. To relieve some of the stress associated with shopping safely for groceries and ensure food security, many people are once again planting “victory gardens.” This tradition hearkens back to previous generations who cultivated home gardens during both World Wars.<\/p>\n

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Interest was high even before the pandemic. In 2014 the National Gardening Association reported that 42 million U.S. households\u2014about 1 out of every 3\u2014grew some kind of food, either at home or in community gardens.<\/p>\n

But home gardening isn’t always easy. Poor soil quality will hamper vegetable growth and food production. And many gardeners, especially in lower-income communities, don’t have access to resources that can improve the soil.
\nWe are scholars who have analyzed the power of microbes in settings that include forest soils and permafrost, the built environment, and digestive systems and agricultural soils. In our view, the time has come for major public investments in a well-known gardening resource: compost.
\nMicrobes make compost by breaking down organic matter, such as food scraps. Compost improves soil health so dramatically it’s often called “black gold.” Large-scale municipal composting is a public resource that can reduce food waste, cut greenhouse gas emissions and promote better stewardship of our most valuable natural resource: soil. <\/p>\n

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\n High-quality compost, like this batch made from horse bedding, looks very much like healthy soil. Gardeners use it to help soil retain water and nutrients and nourish microbes. Credit: Kristen DeAngelis, CC BY-ND
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How compost feeds soils<\/b>
\nHealthy soils are living mixtures of minerals, microbes, organic matter, water and air. Unhealthy soils may contain fewer microbes or less organic material. This makes them less active and less helpful for plants. Poor soils have trouble holding water, and are unable to decompose organic material into usable building blocks for new growth. <\/p>\n

Making degraded soils healthier requires feeding the microbes. They need new organic matter\u2014plant or animal tissues\u2014that they can break down and recycle.
\nIn healthy soil, some of that food comes from growing plants that fix carbon from sunlight and pump almost half of it, in the form of sugars, into the soil. In exchange, the microbes provide other nutrients that plants can’t acquire on their own.
\nSoil microbes also feed on old organic matter, like leaf litter and dead roots. And new biochemical analyses suggest that when these microbes die, they become part of soil organic matter themselves.
\nTo make good compost, you mix green plant waste, like vegetable peels, garden leaf litter or straw, with brown organic matter like soil or manure. Then, over weeks to months, microbes turn the mix into compost, which looks just like soil. <\/p>\n

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