Subject: Cow poop & lignite (leonardite)

From: "Permaculture West" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 1997 17:17:11 -0800

Two simple questions that may warrant lengthy answers.
	Q1: What, exactly, differentiates cow manure from other animal manures
thus leading to its historical agricultural fame?  

	Q2:  What is lignite (or leonardite) and what virtues does it bestow upon
the soil as an amendment?

	Lengthy answers gratefully accepted.

								Regards,
								Kirk Hanson

Kirk Hanson
C/O Permaculture West
72 Mattson Rd.
Oakville, WA 98568
ph./fx. (360) 273-7117
e-mail: [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 13:43:40 -0500 (EST)

Kirk,

I suspect that cow poop may have the esteemed role it has earned more because
it is difficult to find adequate collections of buffalo, carabao, elk, deer,
et al in feed yards than because of its unique characteristics. But, then
again, what do I know?
Lignite you got me on that one. Decaying forests abound in it so it has to be
a good thing in these days of fewer forests within which decay is allowed to
proceed.

Milo Clark
Berkeley CA USA

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 21:35:50 -0800 (PST)

>the soil as an amendment?
Q1 I think that basically it has been the availability of cow manure that
has made it so highly regarded.  But there are many people who swear by
sheep manure.  I think that because cows are ruminants they digest
vegetation much better than say a horse and therefore less seed in the
manure that will sprout in your garden.

Manures also have greater or lesser amounts of nitrogen and are classified
as hotter or cooler manures.  All poultry manures are very hot and I prefer
to compost them before using them.  Hourse manure is a cool manure with a
lot of undigested seed.  Both rabbit and sheep manure is mild and and a good
manure for direct use on the garden, though not in direct contact with the
plants if it is still green.

Q2  I always thought that lignite was a form of coal that contained less
sulphur than bituminous coal - but what do I know?  I couldn't find any
other definition in my encyclopedia or in any of my soil books.  Leonardite
I couldn't find either so I am anxiously waiting to be educated
*************************************************************************
<[email-masked]>
Permaculture Institute
Scott & Arina Pittman 
PO Box 3702
Pojoaque, NM 87501

Ingenio Patet Campus

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From: "Steve Diver" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 02:38:07 +0000

> thus leading to its historical agricultural fame?  

Manure from ruminant animals such as cows and sheep have an advantage
over poultry manure, as far as ability to stablize nutrients and produce humus.  
Poultry litter also contains odorous compounds that can dis-flavor
vegetables.  

The microflora in ruminant is beneficial to composts.  Biodynamic
compost has a long history in favor of cow manure.  In addition to 
the aforementioned points, there is probably an esoteric reason that
BD likes cow manure so much.   

If you really want to see something strange, look at paper 
chromatogram of poultry litter. 

See "Chromatography Applied to Quality Testing" by 
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer for color plates.  

When you do a chroma on poultry litter, you can expect to get the 
same response.  However, if you compost the litter and then run a 
second chroma, you get something quite different.  The benefit of taking 
shit and composting it properly, as can be seen thru the chroma test, 
cannot be stressed too much.  Stuart Hill talked about "shallow organics" and 
"deep organics."  To shift the whole farm in terms of soil quality, food quality, 
and pest resistance thru the use of well made compost, that is in the realm 
of deep organics. 

There are also differences in the number of weed seeds in manures: 

Horse manure is notorious for weed seeds.  

Poultry litter has been examined and determined to contain no 
weed seeds, due to gizzard action.  But, poultry litter will 
produce a proliferation of weed growth when applied to land, and this
is due--by my estimation--to be a result of immature humic
substances that mimic conditions akin to weeds of disturbed sites..in 
addition to the well recognized fast nutrient release.  The 
message of immature humic substances is "wake up you stupid
weed seeds, get up and grow and cover this bare soil fast...before the 
rains come and wash our home away." 
  
In contrast, well made mature compost can suppress weeds.  Biomature
compost, having undergone physical, chemical, and biological 
transformation, is built into long-chain humic compounds.  These
compounds mimic a mature, stable soil ecosystem and therefore
do not tell weeds to jump up and grow, but rather they signal
an "all is well" message to the soil ecosystem. "Hang tight lads,
our sensors tell us we've got in made in the shade...vegetative 
stability is already there."

> the soil as an amendment?

The following paragraphs are selected excerpts from an ATTRA 
publication written by Bart Hall: 
 
Humates and humic acid derivatives are a diverse family of products,
generally obtained (directly or indirectly) from various forms of
oxidized coal.

Coal deposits are of three types. Anthracite coal is very dense and
hard with quite low sulphur content. Bituminous coal is a softer coal,
usually with rather high sulphur levels. Lignite coal is a very soft,
coarse coal with highly variable sulphur content and often marginal
fuel value. Softer coals, particularly lignite, are (as a result of
their more open texture) subject to oxidation, especially if found in
a near-surface deposit.

While oxidation decreases the fuel value of lignite coals, it
increases the percent of alkaline-extractable humic matter. 

Oxidized-coal-derived (OCD) humus and humic substances are 
essentially the same as humus extracts from soil, but there has been a
reluctance to accept OCD humus as a worthwhile soil additive. In
part, this stems from the belief that only humus derived from 
recently-decayed organic matter is beneficial.

Production and recycling of organic matter in the soil cannot be
replaced by OCD humus _ the sugars, gums, hemi-celluloses and similar
materials from fresh organic matter play a vital role in both soil
microbiology and structure, but they are not humus. 

Sod-based rotations, green manures and cover crops, preservation of 
crop residues and additions of manure or compost remain fundamental 
elements of any healthy soil management system, but especially organic 
management systems. 

[SGD: Bart is saying that humate products can be beneficial in an 
organic farming system, but they do not replace the fundamental
roles of biologically-derived organic matter]

Many forms of oxidized coal are available, and are generally
classified by stages of oxidation eventually ending in the complete
humification of the starting material.

In the case of lignite coal, the apparent end-product of natural
oxidation is a soft, loose-textured, almost earthy OCD humus known as
leonardite. Leonardite usually occurs at lignite outcrops, or at
the top of very shallow beds of lignite, grading into the parent
lignite seam. 

Partially-oxidized lignite is called slack lignite and contains far
less OCD humus than leonard-ite, but nevertheless more than lignite.
The following table summarizes approximate chemical properties of
potential sources of OCD humus:

                                                      Lignite     Slack lignite      Leonardite
Oxygen in source material	20%	25%	30%
Extracted humic acids	                     5%	30%	85%
Oxygen in humic acid extracts	25%	30%	30%
================================================
                           - end excerpt- 
================================================

The grandaddy reference on humates, humic acids, leondardite, 
and all the rest is William R. Jackson's award-winning 958-page 
book titled Humic, Fulvic, and Microbial Balance: Organic Soil 
Conditioning.

Jackson, William R.  1993.  Humic, Fulvic, and Microbial Balance: 
Organic Soil Conditioning.  Jackson Research Center, Evergreen, CO. 
958 p.

Finally, you can hardly find a more informative web site on humates 
than Dr. Robert H. Faust's Bio-Ag Services at: 
     http://www.wp.com/bioag/

For example, check out: 

A REVIEW OF HUMUS AND HUMIC ACIDS
http://www.humic.com/review-ha.html
by  
T. L. Senn, Head, Department of Horticulture
A. R. Kingman, Instructor in Horticulture
Horticulture Department Research Series No. 165
The South Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station
Clemson University

and, 

Do You Know Humic Acid Derivatives Are? 
from CALIFORNIA FARMER 
http://www.humic.com/dohad.html

"One of the important benefits realized from using manure is that
manures are parent material for the synthesis of humic acid
derivatives (HAD). Humic acid derivatives are mixtures of humic acid,
ulmic acid, and fulvic acid, and are products or organic matter
transformations by the soil microorganisms."

"There are several ways to build up humic acid derivatives in soil -
the application of manures, the growing of a soil-building crop such
as a grass sod in rotation, the growing to maturity of green manure
crops, or by applying concentrated Humic Acid material in the
fertilizer mix."

"Some organic deposits found in various parts of the world contain
various percentages of humic, fulvic, and ulmic acids."

"Humic acid derivatives have several known benefits to agriculture.
University of California research scientists, scientists from other
U.S. universities and European scientists have agreed on these
benefits from the soil humus formation:

1.Improves soil physical properties.

2.Holds exchangeable plant nutrients.

3.Improves moisture conditions.

4.Affects the release of plant nutrients through slow decomposition by
organisms, especially nitrogen release.

5.Improves trace element nutrition through chelation.

6.Has a growth promoting effect.

7.Has a high base exchange capacity - an important basis for soil
fertility concepts."

Steve Diver
ATTRA 

--
[email-masked]

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From: Jack Rowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 13:34:25 -0500

LIGNITE is in fact a type of coal... when burned for electrical generation,
as it is in my home area of Texas, it releases more radioactivity (as
radon, mostly) over the life of the plant than some nuclear reactors (I'm
convinced this statistic ignores -- as is customary -- the solid end waste
products, but still...). Lignite is strip-mined, leading to an interesting
phenomenon in already-ravaged areas such as Texas. Federal laws mandate
'restoration' of strip-mined areas... our local company takes this
seriously enough,  and plain-'ol-Texas is already sufficiently in a state
of terminal rape in general, that some of the areas reclaimed after
strip-mining are as healthy or healthier than most of the surrounding
rangeland, with more ponds, more plant speicies, lots of brush piles, etc.
Too bad we don't require restoration of cow pastures.

Maybe what we're talking about on the list is LIGNIN, a fairly-stable
mid-point breakdown product of cellulose decomposition. As a fairly
long-chain organic molecule, it probably acts a lot like the humic acids. 

Jack

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 14:54:24 -0500 (EST)

---------------------
Forwarded message:
Subj:    Re:  Cow poop & lignite (leonardite)
Date:    97-11-26 14:53:53 EST
From:    YankeePerm
To:      [email-masked]

>e-mail: [email-masked]

Cow manure is the only kind of manure known to be discharged by cows.  No
other species is known to produce this substance.  Dogs, for example, can
only produce the infamous dog shit.

Cow manure has two merits, and only, two, that distinguish it from other
manures.  First is the copious amount produced per animal.  You would need a
family of approximately 70 people, at a wild guess, to crap that much
fertilizer.

Second is the cow as is used in North Temperate countries is mainly a
European animal and Europeans know everything about themselves is superior.
 Therefore, cow manure must be better than, say, tiger manure, by definition.
 It is also easier to keep a cow fed and much safer to visit it to collect
the manure from its habitat.  

I don't know if tiger manure is bad stuff.  Domestic cat manure is--it is
evil, carrying literally 8 diseases known to be serious pathogens of people,
including the leading cause of blindness among American children.  The sand
box appears to a cat as a litter box for godly felines, which fits each cat's
definition of itself.

To my knowledge, cat manure is the only truely evil manure, though human
manure needs to be processed very carefully as obviously we humans carry
diseases of humans.  However generally it can be deposited and processed in
controlled circumstances, people being much easier to regulate regarding post
intenstinal functions than felines.

Chicken manure is an utterly superior manure, particularly that of chickens
on free range.  Of  course they freely deposit all over that range, so all
you have available to gather and spread is under the roosts and in the litter
when they come back to the coop for a free meal of grain.

Back to cow manure, now the question reminds me of one I received once while
teaching permaculture, organic horticulture, tree crops, etc., in a
Massachusetts prison.  Besides my program, the prison had a beef operation.
 One day I was scouting out the fertilizer prospects with the guy who ran
that program and an inmate approached me.  Dan, he said, we've been debating
something and we can't come up with an answer.  We decided to ask you.  What
is the purpose of cow manure?

Well, I replied, cow manure is nature's way of saying "Watch your step."
 That's probably why most guys in prison come from the city.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now correspondence
courses via email.  One is now underway.  Next Live program:  Paraguay, 9/98.
Internships available. Copyright, 1997, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 52,
Sparr FL 32192 USA  [email-masked]  

We don't have time to rush.