Rural System

Rural System's E-Book

Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management

by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007

Chapter 13. Soils of the Working Platform

Dreaming: Health is wealth; stuff to produce further wealth.
"Wealth" is what you have.
Sounds like money…sounds like health …
a condition to produce more money
that may gain more health…or maybe longer
but maybe it won't
and so we tried and lost money
and lost health
and ability to seek wealth
and lost wealth … and ran out of time.
Time is wealth; slithery stuff for dreaming, living, gaining wealth.
Wealth is what you don't have with health
and you cannot tell whether it beckons … or emerges
from within the capitalists' coffers. Just dreaming …

General comments about soil of the working platform, tending it and the relations of soil moisture.

Getting in the way of the working platform idea (Chapter 12) is "soil." Soil has been so dominant in past rural decisions that it cannot be suppressed, even briefly, for new insights about the ambiguous, tentatively uncommitted working platform. Soil, however, may be a form of capital that can be readily understood.

There are rich and poor soils. From a soil sample to an agricultural laboratory, the key results come back as levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. When you buy a bag of fertilizer it's labeled with three numbers, e.g., 5-10-10 indicating parts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the bag. The rest (most of it) is ground limestone. Soils are rich or poor for many reasons, chief among which is the raw rocks from which they were formed.

The surface geology is inherently rich or poor in nutrients that can be used by plants. The rocks are acid or not, fertile or not. Thus the soil that forms from them is fertile or not, acid or not. To get rich from (or even benefit a little from) the soil, people must extract the richness from it. They mine the nutrients and have been doing so in the US for 5 centuries. It's done slowly. A plant is a mini-mine. When the soil is poor or already mined out (rich converted to poor), then the costs are high to get it back into shape for producing crops, even for a lawn. This is true for gardens, forest woodlots, farms, and plantations. The loss in capital value of soil is insidious, like a regional or national decline in the rate of interest or the value of money. The loss can be reversed

The surface geology of a county of Virginia (Wise in western Virginia) can be complex or very simple, with startling effects on soil characteristics.

and value increased, but it is only cost effective on soils with the right location, right structure, and adequate time for change and payoff. Identifying such places is now possible using the capabilities of the proposed GIS Group within Rural Sytem or an affiliate. Positive changes may take well over 60 years depending on moisture and temperature. Soil nutrients are added, plants die and decompose into generalized "organic matter", moisture is held, loss of nutrients by leaching is slowed, and desirable structure gained depending on reasonable cultivation and compaction, all tending toward a mature soil.

After understanding of soil and its nutrients and their role comes an awareness that those nutrients come at high costs, especially high energy costs, and those are both increasing. Then comes the awareness that soils are impacted by rain drops and that they need protection, partially to hold their nutrients but also to stay in place. Soils are moving; gravity rules. Within soils moving, nutrients are lost. Rural System devotes major efforts to keeping soil in place, preventing erosion by water and wind. There are costs of doing so but they are essential for the long-term productivity of the diverse products and future opportunities and potentials of the entire land ownership. Improving soil and keeping it in place is fundamental to the life of the area and to the System. Soil loss is a cost of rural business, as evident as vandalism or shoplifting. Costs of controlling it are real, need to be kept low, but action can reduce the need for expenditures to gain control .

Getting soil back into shape and keeping it that way for effective plant production processes means adding proper amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium for the crops and conditions --- N, P, and K. The tough part is that N has very high cost! It is crucial to the formation of proteins. It is essential to life. It is in short supply. The only two major places from which it comes are from lightning --- of all things! --- and the special troop of bacterial hordes called the nitrogen fixers, and some insect functions. They pluck it out of the air where there's an abundance of it, but it is about as unavailable as great success in small business. Things in shortest supply are the highest valued but this rule is best modernized as "the things that cost the most energy and/or take the longest time to collect or are most critical to survival are the highest valued."

Soil nitrogen in a form useful to plants (we're not talking about the air we breath) is an example of an absolutely-fundamental-to-life substance that people will eventually stop wasting, take very seriously, and pay dearly (even more dearly than now). Each crop, each soil type, each amount of rainfall, and together, constitute a different condition. Each condition provides for advantages to businesses, but each also costs a different amount. The wise business person selects the best possible condition ---the capital -- that will serve best over the long run.

The texture of the soil (the relative amounts of sand, silt, clay and organic matter) is its most important physical property. With good texture, the moisture can be improved by irrigation. Neither water nor fertilizer will work toward increased production without a desirable soil texture. When the mix is excellent for crops, it is usually called loamy soils. The soil -- all of these factors lumped into one little four-letter word -- was once the key to business and community starts and successes --- and still is --- and will once again be more important than almost anyone (so many of them now urbanites) can now imagine. The present and future owners of Rural System Tracts will realize these increasing gains in the value of their capital.

The emphasis in ecology is on relations. In soil, these relationships are profound. Legume plants (those of the pea family, e.g., clover, peas,) collect and store nitrogen from the atmosphere. They form nodules on plant roots. The lumps are full of bacteria that grab nitrogen from the air and add it to the soil, naturally. The land owner can add a bit of nitrogen to the soil and it will help, but add too much and it will kill the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. It is as if they feel unwanted or unneeded. In a similar paired relationship, calcium has to be in the right balance with magnesium or else poisoning of plants will take place. If soils become too acid (as they might near service stations, a waste disposal site, or through mounting air pollution) then aluminum in the soil dissolves and this becomes toxic to plants. Acidity can be reduced by additions of lime.

Probable soil erosion from each alpha unit can be mapped as a function of estimated variables of several universal soil loss models. These can be developed for regions of counties as shown here, then made specific for land ownerships and continually revised based on field observations.

It is incredibly complex, this stuff on which we walk and cover with concrete. It is a world unto itself with dozens of strong relations. Put your chin on the ground (without letting anyone see you) and watch your yard or a piece of park lawn for at least 5 minutes. There you will see in micro scale highways, skyscrapers, and 100 creatures of different kinds. Some are predators, some prey. Many are competitive. Most are special and adapted to a special layer or plant. There are earthworm species that run shallow, others that live in deep layers. They consume organic matter, pass it through their tube-bodies. A substance they exude coats their burrows. It is rich in nitrogen. There it is again, that nitrogen! The plant roots push down through the worm burrows. It's easier and rewarding that way. In addition, root growth is enhanced by the substance lining the holes of the earthworms. The roots go faster, faster. The relation of worm and root growth is simple, but only one such relation. Water penetrates more readily in wormy soil, and plants grow more deeply, and vegetation on which earthworms feed grows more deeply and abundantly, and earthworms flourish -- and roots, and plants, and percolation increases, and --- the system develops. Less water runs off the surface.

"Culverts" are those large costly metal tubes running crosswise under streets. Their sizes (and costs) do not need to be so large because of earthworms and their community. Similarly, mud damage is lessened for people who insist on living in the flood plains. As water percolates deeply, ground water supplies and wells are replenished, all as a function of the soil capital, the soil and all of its organisms.

Plants are dependent upon the soil system for many structures and processes. It is the base of Rural System but it can be changed and modified, and even though ruined in some spots, it can be restored and revitalized for the future. The meanings of this "soils talk" for Rural System and its groups include corporate admonitions to:

Identify the richest soils with the best textures and potential textures. Invest in them. Treat them with care. Don't mine them further; enhance them as if they were priceless treasure to be handed to a great-great grandchild. Differences in regional soils are great due to temperature, glaciation, and other factors. Generalities quickly fail.
See that texture of soil generally improves. To allow well-textured soil to be covered or washed away is to ignore capital. Texture is formed by plants and animals as well as other forces like freezing and thawing. When soils dry out, they may not produce crops. Deep freezing can destroy them too, but they have an adjustment. Some of the organic acids they accumulate are antifreezes. These, in part, explain why deep forest soils can absorb water in the winter while lawns and denuded areas are at least as good as pavements in shedding water from their hard-frozen surface. We get a disastrous double play in such frigid conditions - no ground water recharge and also winter floods. The staff of Rural System tries to reverse the trends that parallel those of soil for a property, a town, a county. The on-going concept is to build capital of soil and water for a variety of purposes, some not yet imagined. Build to reduce costs and store carbon.
Don't waste money on fertilizer or lime. [Careful. Misunderstanding is easy.] Apply fertilizer and lime only after soil tests are made and with great care and caution. Never add one cupful more than needed. Doing so wastes money and may cause imbalances that will be costly later. Seek expert help; soil is too valuable to allow some just-about-didn't-graduate generalist college graduate to tend it for you.
Work to save the special soils. Think of them as large rich flower pots of soil. If a pot is all you can tend, so be it. It is a legitimate testimony to your good citizenship that your soil is rich and well balanced. The planter at the window or outside the office is a substantial challenge. Every cubic foot of water held in soil or retained is seven and a half gallons of water not released into the tax-costly storm sewer system. The tree outside has a root system, conceivably in a pot of its own making. That tree is like a wick in a kerosene lantern. It pumps water from the ground into the air. Better there than in a storm sewer, or flooding the warehouse, or dampening the soil that increases the wood rotting process of the back-porch steps.
Farm on the contour. Pictures of the oriental countryside suggest that people there understood the above concept very well. They built walls and barriers and behind them collected the soil and tended it. The slopes are steep but "in-the-small" the farmers have created level areas around the mountains. The farmers and their families have created sinusoidal wedge-shaped "flower pots." At a different scale, a yard or a farm is a collection of special sites - merely large pots. By concentrating attention on them, mapping them accurately, giving them the special care and attention that they need, great gains can be made over the future. In the U.S. we've not learned this. We've had much too much space and technology and energy. We've not had to tend our soil (we thought). All of that is changing and business people with an eye on the future will tend soil, acquire rich land near roads and waterways, and build landscape scale "flower pots" - the rich soil wedges of the hillsides. U.S. farmers have almost forgotten how to build terraces, the stair-stepped lands. There are opportunities to create such areas with high intensity work by youths, by criminals, and by those of us who love to work in the outdoors with our hands and bodies and to see progress. There is time to use the last of the fossil energy in driving heavy equipment to build such structures for the future. We can grow very effectively what is needed in the tended garden spots of humans. Keeping water where it lies, allowing it to percolate and participate in forming the complex soil community, building productive capital, preventing it from running off and carrying nutrients and sediment with it …these are the business strategies for the pot, planter, or pasture-for the people of the future.
Work with wind and barriers to reduce seasonal evapotranspiration and loss of soil. Livestock are energy budgeters and convection losses from them can be great.

An example of well-known material not being integrated into applications in the fields and forests is that microscopic soil organisms are needed to breakdown leaves, stems, and other forest litter. Also they are needed to capture nutrients, particularly nitrogen, and actually to "pump" it into the roots of trees for growth. Forests, by several measures, are declining in productivity. The decline is slow, and since there are few harvests (no more than 5 in any Eastern U.S. hardwood forests (usually only 3-4) then the "trend" is hard to see. If people argue that there is no decline, there is little evidence to counter the statement. If the argument is that there is decline, opponents suggest inappropriate sample sizes upon which to draw conclusions or to argue that small changes of 1 or 2 percent are "not significant." Even a real half of a percent over 100,000 acres can represent a massive financial loss. Over many rotations, discounted at modest interest rates, even very small losses are spectacular.

There is something missing in the soils message for the average farmer. Very small amounts of nutrients gang up with large areas and long periods to hide from them the insidious losses to them from soil loss. Losing 1/8th of an inch of soil from a 20-acre field washing down the hill or losing its productive power is the loss of over 9000 cubic feet of soil. Imagine having to replace that from Wal-mart at 50 pounds a cubic foot! We now know how to reduce that erosion, retain the nutrients, add nitrogen, and map the differences that now exist in soils using GPS technology. We can apply fertilizers specifically for specific crops in small amounts to match their rates of plant recovery from the soil. It is intensive soil management, of course, but it makes sense when the future is in the equation, not exploitation and soil-mining, and when the costs and losses are fully counted. It makes sense when we truly understand and treat the soil in each alpha unit as if it were the unique entity that it is. It's reasonable now that there is no more land to exploit, little more surplus energy to use for fertilizer or even for applying it. The soil largely determines plant response to insect and disease attacks, thus knowledge of it and plant placement and management determines the financial losses …or the costs of preventing them.

Soil Moisture

Soil is one form of capital. Another is moisture. It is a mistake to think that precipitation is capital since there are too many ways to get moisture without it. When ecologists deal with precipitation, they quickly switch to "available moisture" since that is the functional stuff in the ecological system. Moisture which may be available to plants for their stability or growth is the key. What if 50 inches of rain falls, but 30 run off due to steepness and bad land surface management? What is left may then evaporate, say another 10 inches. What is left? A mere 10 inches a year is all that plants have to use. The condition of 10 inches of rain is known as semi-arid. What appears to be abundant precipitation (as in tax-hungry Appalachia) may, under study, be a disaster area. Some of the environmental problems of the Appalachian coal fields, the reclamation of strip mines, is this very problem. It is tough to get plants to grow where there is only 10-15 inches of available moisture a year.

But look at what caused the shortage! Not the origin, only the demand for it and the care. The structure, the capital is there, but the care seems missing. The situation seems to be one of having a fine home and letting the undisciplined lad (surely the spouse's) chop at it with the new scout hatchet. Water, like soil, is precious capital. Water with soil is even more precious.

I think available moisture is essential to understanding soil quality and function. The reason for the emphasis is that the flexible, creative business person need not really care where it comes from as long as it is available. When an analysis is done, the simple equation is:

AM = R + S + H + F + G - GR - E - T - RO.

The equation can be exciting because it shows there are at least nine things that influence available moisture and we can work with or influence most of them. When you discover there are 362,880 permutations (meaning combinations as well as sequences) or ways that the available moisture, AM, can be changed, then there's an arena for a pretty exciting ball game. Winning means selecting the one best from among the 360 thousand options. We can quickly go through the equation:
AM is a function of:

R = Rainfall (examples of what actions can be taken: select an alternative location, use wind barriers, improve estimates and predictions)

S = Snowfall (snow fences and vegetation, snow removal or movement, use of chemicals (including carbon black to absorb energy), and artificial snow-making machines or removal equipment)

H = Hail (select areas; probably minor)

F = Fog drip (many areas get more soil moisture from dew and fog dripping off plants than from rain; develop catchment devices; improve estimates; seek new locations; harvest the fog water

G = Ground water (capture ground water; build springs; preserve spring seeps; protect continually-wet pasture areas; irrigate from wells)

GR = Ground water recharge (improve soil surface; build settlement ponds; reduce erosion and pore space filling; improve texture)

E= Evaporation (reduce drying winds; cover water bodies; use deep cisterns)

T = Transpiration (movement of water by plants: remove trees or improve tree and shrub spacing, favor grass; reduce any vegetation)

RO = Runoff (apply a wide variety of soil-holding techniques such as terracing, contour farming, vegetation barriers and strips, gully control, etc.)

There are many potential actions that differ in each area. Computer optimization for making decisions among the alternatives is now a reality.

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