Carby Lawrence Mayhew

The simple title of this article is in-tended to contrast the common usage ofthe word "carbon" with the incredibilitycomplex: carbon compounds that areimportant to agriculture. The elementcarbon has the ability to form over 10million different compounds, making itthe most versatile and the most commonelement in all organic matter on the faceof the Earth, in living and dead matter.

When someone says you have to in-crease the carbon in your soils to feedmicrobes and build soil organic matter,etc., just what are they talking about?They should be talking about buildingup soil humus from the complex carboncompounds found in composts, greenmanure crops, microbe and worm poop,and the exudates released by plant rootsinto the rhizosphere.

SIMPLE CARBONSThe complex carbon compounds that

are beneficial to crop production havevery little chemical, physical and biologi-cal similarities with the simpler forms ofcarbon. One simple form of elementalcarbon is graphite, which is one of thesoftest natural materials; it is used for lu-bricants and pencil leads. Diamonds arecomposed almost entirely of carbon andare the hardest natural material known.Obviously, these examples are not the"carbon" that is used in agriculture.

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onThe carbon in carbon dioxide (C02)

that plants pull from the air, or the car-bon in carbonates, such as the calciumcarbonate (CaC03) of limestone, are notchemically the same as the carbon foundin living organisms. These simple formsof carbon are referred to as inorganiccarbon compounds because they are notclosely associated with hydrogen atoms.

The carbon that is important to soilhealth and crop production is referredto as organic carbon. Organic carbon,which can combine with hydrogen andoxygen in an almost infinite number ofways, is the basis of all life as we know it.The simplest organic carbon compoundis methane, which is made up of onlycarbon and hydrogen. It wants oxygen sobad it will explode upon oxidation. Natu-ral gas, swamp gas and the gas coming offof garbage landfills is primarily methane.

Again, this simple organic carboncompound is not the carbon referred towhen you are advised to increase yoursoil carbon content. Carbon compoundsfrom green manure crops and compostsare much more complex.

COMPLEX CARBONCarbon has some remarkable char-

acteristics that make it very adaptableto biological systems. For example, thecarbon atom has the unusual ability tocombine with itself, forming either longchains of carbon - carbon bonds, orforming rings of carbon-carbon bonds.

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IVarious hydrogen and oxygen com-pounds can attach to the carbon chainsor carbon rings in an infinite numberof combinations. It's sort of like usingbricks to build almost any kind of struc-ture imaginable, then placing functionalcomponents into the bricks, such asdoors and windows. In organic chemis-try they are called functional groups.

The example [Carbon 4] of a carbonring with an -OH functional group at-tached is typical of carbon ring drawingswhere each intersection of a line indi-cates a carbon atom. The carbon atomsare eliminated from the drawing for thesake of simplicity. Carbon rings have theability to attach to each other, formingextremely complex ring combinations.

TWISTS AND TURNSAlthough some carbon compounds

may have identical chemical formulas,amino acids for example, the way theyare configured will cause them to havecompletely different chemical proper-ties. Just as bricks, doors and windowscan be arranged in all sorts of configu-rations, functional groups on organiccarbon chains can be arranged manydifferent ways also; twisted, turned, flipflopped, and left and a right configura-tion, just like your hands. Your handsare for the most part identical, but yourleft hand functions in a different mannerthan your right.

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Every twisted, turned, flip-flopped orright handed/left handed version of or-ganic carbon reacts differently in livingorganisms. As a general rule, human-made (synthetic) organic compoundswith the identical chemical formula asnatural products do not have the samebiological activity as natural substances.Somehow, nature has figured out how toefficiently control the flipping and flop-ping of carbon molecules and chemistshaven't.

COMPLEX CARBONSIN THE CARBON CYCLE

With all this twisting and turning inconcert with the ability to form any kindof carbon structure with no limits on thekind of structures, nature must have hada plan on what to do with the millionsof possible carbon compounds. As youcan imagine, the complexity of organiccarbon compounds can be mind bog-gling, otherwise you would love studyingorganic chemistry, right?

The cycling of carbon in natural soilsystems starts out simple. Plants take in

carbon dioxide (C02) from the atmo-sphere, combine it with hydrogen (H)and oxygen (0) and then make all sortsof organic carbon based sngars, starches,acids, fats, waxes, lignins, etc.

Organic adds and complex sugars areexcreted through the plant roots to feedthe microbial soil system. The primarybeneficiaries of this soil-microbe-plant-food system are bacteria, who in turnfeed the plant with bioavailable minerals,plant growth stimulants, provide diseaseprotection to the plant, and become foodfor fungi and other soil organisms.

Upon the death of plants, some partsof the plants decay rapidly in soils whileothers (waxes, fats, lignins) are muchslower to decay, and will eventually con-tribute to the more stable carbons foundin healthy soils. The fungi in the soilthat thrived by eating the bacteria, leavebehind an extremely complex, thereforestable, dark colored class of carbon com-pounds called melanins. [Carbon 1]

When the bacteria and fungi die off,their remains commingle with the re-mains of plant roots and shoots. That

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creates an extremely complex combina-tion of slow and fast decaying chemicalsand biomatter mixed up with all of theenzymes and stuff that are put into thesoil by living plants and microbes. Call-ing this complex mixture an "alphabetsoup" would be grossly understating thesituation.

The less complex carbon compoundsleft behind in the soil are consumed im-mediately by bacteria and the more com-plex carbons are decomposed by fungi.As the physical remains of plants andmicrobes become less and less identifi-able, the dark material that starts form-ing is what we commonly called humus.

The very slow decay process of themore complex carbons (waxes, fats,lignins, melanins) results in a completechemical change (as well as physicalchange) in the original materials. Whenthe completely decayed materials fromplants and microbes are allowed to com-mingle over relatively long periods oftime, the result is an even more complexsupermixture that is no longer recogniz-able (either physically or chemically),

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usually black in color, and can no lon-ger be easily separated into its originalchemical components.

The process of first breaking downplant and microbial matter into complexcarbons that recombine over time intosomething entirely different is call hum i-fication. Because of their extreme com-plexity, the final black products of hu-mification have never been well definedchemically because they have no obviousstructure; they just look like black dirt.They are called humic substances; the mostcomplex of all compounds in the world.

HUMIC SUBSTANCESHumic substances are the black mate-

rials that impart the dark color to fertilesoils and compost. They are literallyeverywhere. They are the most commonform of carbon in soils and they areresponsible for maintaining the healthof every ecosystem on Earth. The water-soluble portions of humic substances(dissolved organic carbons) are respon-sible for the dark tint of some streams,rivers, and lakes.

Because humic substances are com-posed of the microbial decay productsof biomatter that has recombined in-to a more stable form of carbon, theyare resistant to any further microbialbreakdown. When combined with daysand minerals, they protect microbes andtheir enzymes as well as keeping plantnutrients in bioavailable forms, provid-ing ideal conditions for microbes andminerals to interact in soil systems. Analmost identical system of interactionsproviding protection and nutrient bio-availability occurs in livestock and hu-man digestion.

COMPOSTCOIIlPOSting starts a very complex

process that is dominated primarily bythe microbial decay of hydrocarbons. Theless complex carbon compounds foundin plant tissues, such as carbohydrates,are broken down rapidly; while the morecomplex carbons, such as lignins, willtake a much longer time to decomposeand will not totally decompose in thecompost pile. As the pile matures, the

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color of the composted materials tendsto get darker and darker as the carboncompounds are converted to humus,which is a complex mixture of partiallyand fully decomposed organic matter.

The conversion of biomatter to hu-mus (humification) that takes place incomposting systems is similar to theprocess that occurs in soil systems. Al-though composting provides some hu-mic substances, there are biochemicaldifferences in the humic substances pro-duced in compost compared to humicsubstances found in soils, lakes, riversand streams because there are some ma-jor differences between the conditions insoils compared to compost piles.

The soil humification process occursin an environment of incredibly complexchemical, physical and biological interac-tions that is not duplicated in a pile ofabove-ground compost. A compost pileis not exposed to the same metal com-ponents, enzymes, pH, trace elements,earthworm interactions, and the complexinteractions of plant exudates with mi-crobes that are found in soil ecosystems.

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Time and temperature; composting israpid and hot, whereas the humic sub-stances in soils are developed over longlengths of time at much lower tempera-tures. Depending on soil conditions, it cantake years, decades, or more, for nature tocreate a completely humified material insoils. The end results of both processes,humic substances, are very similar withonly some minor chemical differences,but those differences may be crucial.

The humic substances that developfrom various source materials have slight-ly different chemical profiles. Munici-pal sludge, animal manure, straw, paperwaste, vermicompost, etc. provide humi-fied materials of different chemical andmicrobial makeup. The good news is theyall work very well when applied to soils.No matter which source of raw material isused to make compost, the humified re-mains tend to increase the nutrient hold-ing capacity (CEC), metal complexation(chelation), water retention, and biologi-cal activity of the treated soils. Over time,the different humic substances from thevarious amendments "mature" in the soil

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systems to become completely humifiedmaterials, if good biological agriculturalpractices are used.

Mature hurnic substances are morecomplex and have more of those func-tional groups that I mentioned earlier,where I likened them to doors and win-dows in houses. Their function is similarto doors and windows in that they allownutrient cations and anions to becomepart of the humic structure by allowingthem to move in and out of the struc-

ture, holding them or releasing theminto biological systems.

Less mature humic materials havefewer functional groups, making themless effective at governing nutrient avail-ability and providing protection frompoisons. The more functional groupspresent on a hurnic molecule (we as-sume they are molecules), the higher thenutrient holding capacity and the abilityto bind toxins and other nasty things,like toxic metals and pesticides.

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HUMIC PRODUCTSThere are numerous humic products

in the marketplace today. Typically, theraw materials used in humic products arederived from large geological deposits ofhurnified organic matter that have ma-tured over long periods of time. Most ofthese deposits consist of dark substancesthat remain after the natural biodegra-dation of biomatter, and whose distinctcharacteristics are their highly hetero-geneous molecular makeup and relativeresistance to further biodegradation.

The main difference between humusin compost and the dark colored materi-als found in geological deposits is the in-ability to chemically define the dark ma-terials in the deposits, whereas humus isa mixture of both non-definable as wellas easily defined substances, such as wax-es, lignins, amino acids, polysaccharides,proteins, fats and numerous chemicalsof microbial origin. Only a small frac-tion of well-defined compounds existfreely with humic substances.

In soils, mature hurnic substances arecritical components of ecosystems, pro-viding the conditions that are necessary

to maintain balance and self-regulationwithin the chemical. physical. and bio-logical realms of soil systems. The ex-pression of these self-regulated systems issoil health, plant health, and production.

On the whole, humic substances ofgeological origin are strikingly similarto the mature humic substances foundin soils, suggesting that their role inagriculture is obvious. They can be usedto replace the humic substances thathave been destroyed by non-sustainablepractices, provide stability to any soilthat is low in organic matter, or enhancebiological/organic production systems.They are extremely versatile.

The complex plant carbons fromgreen manures, such as lignin and mela-nins, will be slowly degraded by fungi andother bugs over longer periods of time.These complex carbons will eventuallyturn into humus, or brown carbon. Thebrown carbon from composts provides amore sustained release of nitrogen, phos-phorus, micronutrients and sulfur thanfertilizers alone, while providing for bet-ter soil water holding capacity, pH buffer-ing and increasing biological activity.

All of this activity over long periodsof time will eventually end up as humicsubstances. Humic substances, or blackcarbon, are responsible for extending thestabilization of nutrients and soil condi-tions over longer periods of time becauseof their extremely high cation exchangecapacity, pH buffering, water holding ca-pacity, ability to detoxify, and resistanceto further microbial breakdown.

BALANCING FOR CARBONWhen green manures are tilled into the

soil, they provide carbon compounds thatare easily broken down by microbes. Thisenergy source for microbes causes an ex-plosion in the microbial population. Theimmediate benefit from green manures, orgreen carbon, is the conversion of lockedup soil minerals into plant available nu-trients, and the microbes themselves willbecome plant food upon their death.

Lawrence Mayhew will be presenting at the2010 Acres U.S.A. conference in Indianapolis,Indiana, as well as instructing a pre-conferenceintensive workshop, "Comprehensive Eco-Growing Systems," Dec. 6-8. For informationvisit www.acresusa.com.

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