3.1.2.1 What is compost?

Similarly like in the evaluation of digestate when the daily practice has simplified the problem very much because the main functions of mineral and organic fertilisers are not distinguished from each other, the simplification of the problem of composting and application of composts has also led to an absurd situation. In many countries the compost is understood to be a more or less decomposed organic material, mostly from biodegradable waste, which contains a certain small amount of mineral nutrients and water. The main requirement, mostly defined by a standard, is prescribed nutrient content, minimum amount of dry matter, absence of hazardous elements and the fact that the particles of original organic material are so decomposed that the origin of such material cannot be identified. Such ‘pseudo’ composts are often offered to farmers at a very low cost because the costs of their production are usually paid by producers of biodegradable waste who want to dispose of difficult waste.

The producers of such composts often wonder why farmers do not intend to buy these composts in spite of the relatively low cost. It is so because the yield effect of fertilisation with these composts is minimal, due to a low content of nutrients it is necessary to apply tens of tons per 1 ha (10 000 m2), which increases transportation and handling costs. In comparison with so called "green manure", i. e. ploughing down green fresh matter of clover, lucerne, stubble catch crops and crops designed for green manure, e. g. mustard, some rape varieties, etc., the fertilisation with these false composts does not have any advantage. The highly efficient decomposing activity of soil microorganisms, supported by equalising the C : N ratio to the value 15 — 25 : 1, works in the soil similarly like the composting process in a compost pile where the disposal of biodegradable material is preferred at the cost of a benefit to farmers.

What should the real compost be like? It is evident from the definition: the compost is a decomposed, partly humified organomineral material in which a part of its organic component is stabilised by the mineral colloid fraction. It is characterised by high ion — exchange capacity, high buffering capacity and is resistant to fast mineralisation. The reader of this text has surely noticed that the nutrients have not been mentioned here at all. Of course, they are present in the compost, their amount may be higher or a lower, but it is not important. It is crucial that the compost will maintain nutrients in the soil by its ion — exchange reactions and that it will protect them against elution from topsoil and subsoil layers to bottom soil or even to groundwater, no matter whether these plant nutrients originate from the compost itself or from mineral fertilisers or from a natural source — the soil-forming substrate in the soil-forming process. In the production of such "genuine" compost it is necessary to ensure that organic matter of the original composted mixture will be transformed not only by decomposing mineralisation, exothermic oxidation processes but also partly by an endothermic humification process that is not a decomposing one, but on the contrary, it is a synthetic process producing high-molecular, polycondensed and polymeric compounds, humic acids, fulvic acids and humins, i. e. the components of soil humus. It is to note that we should not confound the terms "humus" and "primary soil organic matter"; these are completely different mixtures of compounds, of quite different properties! Humus is characterised by high ion-exchange capacity and very slow mineralisation (the half-time of mineralisation of humic acids in soil conditions is 3 000 — 6 000 years!) while primary organic matter, though completely decomposed but not humified, has just opposite properties. Sometimes it may have a high sorption capacity but not an ion — exchange capacity.

The high ion-exchange capacity of humified organic matter is a cause of other two very important phenomena: huge surface forces of humus colloids in soil lead to a reaction with similarly active mineral colloids, which are all mineral soil particles of silicate nature that are smaller than 0.001 mm in size. These particles are called "physical clay" in pedology. The smaller the particles, the larger their specific surface, which implies their higher surface activity. Clay-humus aggregates are formed, which are adsorption complexes, elementary units of well-aerated, mechanically stable and elastic soil microaggregates that may further aggregate to macroaggregates and to form the structured well-aerated soil that has a sufficient amount of capillary, semi-capillary and non-capillary pores and so it handles precipitation water very well: in drought capillary pores draw water upward from the bottom soil while in a rainy period non-capillary pores conduct water in an opposite direction. The basic requirement for soil productivity is met in this way. It is often much more important than the concentration of nutrients in the soil solution (and hence in the soil).

The other important phenomenon related to ion-exchange properties of compost or soil is buffering capacity, the capacity of resisting to a change in pH. Soils generally undergo acidification, not only through acid rains as orthodox ecologists often frighten us but also mainly by electrolytic dissociation of physiologically acid fertilisers and intensive uptake of nutrients from the soil solution by plants. By the uptake of nutrient cations plants balance electroneutrality by the H+ ion, which is produced by water dissociation, so that the total electric charge does not change. If it were not so, each plant would be electrically charged like an electrical capacitor. The humus or clay or clay-humus ion exchanger in compost or in soil, similarly like any other ion exchanger, behaves in the same way as the plant during nutrient uptake: when any ion is in excess in the environment, e. g. H+ in an acidifying soil, the plant binds this H+ and exchanges it for another cation that was bound by it before. The

H+ ion is blocked in this way and the pH of soil does not change. High buffering capacity is a very favourable soil property and is typical of soils with a high content of mineral or organic colloid fraction, i. e. of heavy-textured soils and of organic soils with a high degree of humification of soil organic matter.

As described above, it is quite obvious what soils should be fertilised with real genuine composts preferentially: these are mainly light sandy and sandy-loam soils in which mineralisation processes are so fast due to high aeration that the organic matter of potentially applied organic fertilisers factually "burns". Mineral nutrients are released from an organic fertiliser but very soon there is a lack of necessary organic matter in such a soil. Energy for the soil microedaphon is not sufficient, ion-exchange capacity is low because decomposed organic matter fails to undergo humification. Such a soil does not hold water while rainfall quickly leaches nutrients from the soil. Only the application of genuine composts can markedly improve the productivity of these soils. Their clay-stabilised organic matter resists the attack of oxygen excess and remains decomposable, so it is able to maintain the required microbial activity of soil.