When it comes to fertile soil, we must take actions which build and maintain the soil; and we must avoid actions which destroy it. Like clean water, I hope I don't need to explain why fertile soil is important (though maybe I should anyway). You can't live without it. Likewise, you cannot live in the opposite of it-- and the opposite of fertile soil is essentially desert.
GMO monocropping complemented by chemical fertilizers and biocidal products (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides) is detrimental to soil. Monocropping and "-cidal" products are also detrimental to soil when used separately from one another.
To put it blatantly, soil is built by animals pooping on the ground. The most important of these animals are herbivores and decomposers. Herbivores convert plant matter into manure. Herbivore-manure then can either fertilize the soil directly, or get further broken down by decomposers. Deocomposers can break down any organic matter- plant, animal, or poop- and convert it into decomposer-poop, which is arguably the healthiest fertilizer on the planet. There will be much more "how to" information, regarding fertilizer, on the Fertilizer Production page. You will see, there is more to using animal manure than just placing it on or in the soil as-is...
In addition to fertilizing soil with animal manure, Dried Distillers Grains and Solubles (DDGS) and anaerobic biodigesters (primarily used to make biogas) can also be used to bolster the health of soil.
Here's a bit on the big picture of using DDGS.
#264
August 17 2021 7:43PM
I forgot to comment on the cellulosic ethanol production. As I see it, the main goal of cellulosic ethanol is to reintegrate the nutrients back into the soil after the sugars have been removed through fermentation and distillation. Indeed, feeding those Dried Distiller Grains and Solubles (the technical term for the fermentation waste usually known as DDGS) to food animals of all kinds is a good alternative to natural plant matter. This could also supplement hay in the winter. Instead of distributing the DDGS directly back onto the land, the animal waste becomes the fertilizer that replaces the nutrients. It really all depends on how much cellulose is produced by any given crop, though. Corn is a good candidate because there's a lot left over after the kernels are harvested. Harvesting grass just for ethanol production is possible, but the EROEI is teetering on backwards with that type of source. The way I envision cellulosic ethanol production is the waste left over from human food leftovers and waste from harvesting each year. Sugar beets, watermelons, leaves from fruit trees, and other types of crops that produce a lot of unusable plant matter after consumption. I'm not sure of how beneficial those types of DDGS would be to food animals, but it's worth a try. For the most part though, I would assume just dumping the DDGS from that cellulosic ethanol extraction back onto the ground those crops were grown on would be the best plan. I don't know what the exact process would be. I'm just thinking in terms of the apparent most efficient method of dealing with the waste from human food leftovers. It's an abundant resource every year, and humanity allows it to rot, or compost without utilizing the waste as a fuel source. David Blume has patents about DDGS that he refers to as the "Monsanto killer." When done properly, any waste from ethanol extraction re-implemented back into the crop area is extremely beneficial. Cuts down on weeds and invites beneficial bugs and bacteria back into the soil. Whether using every source of cellulosic ethanol extraction as food for animals is worthy of exploring remains to be seen. I'm absolutely positive that DDGS is like diamonds to dogshit in reference to raw grains for cattle feed. Where that ratio stops being so obvious is research I'd like to be a part of, though. Would be fun testing all the variables, and you'd be making fuel in the process. So any failures in producing beneficial food for the animals would still yield a healthy return on labor investment. Win for sure, with the possibility of a win/win. That's great odds for anything.
Another area where cellulosic ethanol production is ripe for the taking is in plant waste that neither humans nor food animals eat, but humans still use the resource. Woodworking waste in particular, and the older derelict woodworking project that are considered trash, and just burned to save landfill space. Most woodworking waste is sawdust, and the general usage of that waste goes into areas like wood pellet stove fuel. The dust is highly compacted into pellets and burned. It's a massive industry. I would strip cellulosic ethanol from that kind of source, dry the waste and pellet the leftovers for burning. That's a great source for cellulosic ethanol as I see it, just like leaves, and other derelict plants that are not really considered food for humans or food animals. Algae would fit into that kind of category as well. In terms of cellulosic ethanol, as I see it, there's huge potential in utilizing waste humans create from our projects, and the waste created by seasonal change. I'm not really too keen on growing crops specifically for cellulosic ethanol, though. That seems like a waste of labor energy to me. If that was the goal for the land in question, one would have to reevaluate their crop selection, and consider switching to a more sugar dense crop for regular ethanol production. But, if the crop is deemed beneficial for humans or food animals before or after ethanol extraction, that falls into the category of win/win. It's a vast subject that has a lot of EROEI math involved to make sense of each individual situation. Every crop is different, and every region every crop is grown in varies. It's not exactly a cut and dry thing, but fun to research.
And here's a bit on using anerobic biodigestion (just a bit, indeed. There's plenty else in here, too).
#592
August 13 2022 6:12PM
Nice buy on the fruit press. Apple butter, apple juice, and ethanol... here we come? Of course there's lots of things that can be used for, but I remember you talking about apples being quite abundant there. With the machinist skills you've acquired, you could also get into helical milling and get super efficient at extraction. A graduated auger press would make that process easier, and it offers many different capabilities beyond fruit juice extraction. We talked about this a while ago when we got into recycled plastic injection molding. Same type of setup, but just a few tweaks to convert it for food handling. Besides fruit juice extraction and human/animal feed production, this is the exact system for extracting oil. I'm guessing (not too familiar with the climate there), rapeseed and sunflowers are the best crop for your region. That might be a good thing to try on your land, other than the staple food crops you actually want to eat of course. I say that because you're so close to Canada, so canola oil is applicable, I would assume, and sunflowers can grow anywhere and be packed in tightly, although there might be a particular genetic strain that thrives that far north. Canola stands for "Canadian Oil Low Acid." There's a type of acid that's bad for the heart, but after several decades of genetic manipulation of the rapeseed plant, the acid has been drastically lowered. Hence the name. Apparently it grows well in Canada. Also, hence, the name. Might be a good crop for your area. That said, since you're pushing efficiency to the limit, are enlightened to the energy conundrum, and have the applicable skills to push efficiency to the limit by building everything yourself (which I'm still amazed by!), sunflowers offer far more things than just sunflower oil for cooking, soap making, and biodiesel production. Their stocks grow large, fat and tall. That's great for my unified energy production system that I've hinted at, but haven't fully explained in detail.
Works like this: after the crop has been harvested, and the seeds removed from the plant, the cellulose structure remaining is put into an anaerobic digester to produce biogas. From there the solids are removed from the liquids using a another graduated auger. The liquid is perfect fertilizer that can be put right back onto the harvested field, which would bolster soil expansion. Imagine that... a system that expands soil instead of depleting it. Crazy in hell, but WE think hell is crazy, heh. Anyways, the solids left over from the anaerobic digester liquid/solid separation phase, can be used in two ways, depending on your immediate needs for the land. One way is to feed those solids to a worm farm for even more soil production, red wigglers being the most efficient choice, or put them into a regular ole compost pile for further soil bolstering at a later date, or as media for potted plants, possibly in a greenhouse. Another way to use those solids, as your soil production will be reaching substantial levels at some point and making more of it will seem wasteful of good resources, biochar production is perfect. This is where the gasifier, retort, pyrolizer comes into play. The solids from the anaerobic digester go directly into a pyrolizer to be turned into biochar/charcoal. They're converted into hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane (along with CO2 and nitrogen), that can be used as fuel for cooking, heating, driving, whatever, and the remaining material after the syngas/wood gas production is charcoal. That charcoal can be pellitized to be run through a gasifier for the aforementioned desires by producing syngas, and leaving pure carbon ash, or the charcoal can be used to process more anaerobic digester solids later. Possibly even in combination as a gasifier AND retort... AND STILL simultaneously. That was another project I was planning on, but didn't get to because, well, you know. So... you plant sunflowers, rapeseed, flaxseed, peanuts, whatever. Harvest the oil from said crop for food, cooking, soap, biodiesel, whatever you require. You then take the remaining plant material, and process it into an anaerobic digester for biogas production. The liquid from the digester goes back onto the field as fertilizer, and the solids become feedstock for a syngas plant, or compost scheme with worms, or aerobic microbes as the benefactors, leaving you with even more soil. The material used for syngas production is is turned into biochar/charcoal, which is later used for more syngas production. Now you're left with essentially pure wood ash. But wait, THERE'S MORE!
If it were me, I'd just put the ashes into a compost pile or worm farm... but every so often use it for potassium hydroxide production. Wood ash is very very basic. To the point of being caustic even, and that's due to the excessive levels of potassium remaining in the carbon. Fairly simple to process, though. Dump the wood ash into a bucket (and that's any type of wood ash by the way, but we're focusing on the crop processing system now), fill the bucket with water and stir. Stir periodically several times for a couple of days. After a couple of days, you allow the solution to settle the ash out. Then you decant the potassium hydroxide water solution into a separate bucket, and dump the remaining wood ash into the compost. From there you reduce the solution until the proper water to potassium hydroxide ratio is adequate for whatever you are using it for. Making soaps has its own ratio depending on the recipe, and using it for biodiesel production has its own ratio depending on the titration of whatever oil stocks you're using. There's tables and equations for this that are extremely vast and impossible to remember the variations of, so whatever stocks you plan on using, I suggest getting literature on it. In the old days before the oil economy mind fucked everyone into subservience to selfishness and stupidity, eggs were used to determine the potassium hydroxide ratio to water. Especially for soap making. Apparently, an egg will float in the optimal saturation level leaving an exposed area of the egg shell above the waterline about the size of a nickel. I haven't done this personally, but people have been making soap since body odor and nappy hair has been a thing, so it's a very old process. How big the egg needs to be for accuracy, how warm the solution needs to be, etc is not known to me, but again, having applicable literature to stifle confusion is recommended. Of course if you're not needing the solution immediately, you could reduce the solution all the way to the crystalization stage. Not much to this. Just boil off all the water until you're left with pure potassium hydroxide crystals, then save it somewhere until you need it for whatever reason. And there it is. From crop growth, to maximization of every resource the plant has to offer, and back to soil for more crop growth. By the way, using sunflowers could also be very beneficial for Bees' honey production to further improve gravity in ethanol making... if that's what you want to do with the fruit juice, but with so many other fuel sources and the capabilities to access all of them, it's probably best to just enjoy a nice cold glass of apple juice, heh. Thanks for getting a fruit press. I don't think I've gotten the opportunity to rant like this in such depth. I can't seem to get most people to even consider listening to me explain syngas production, much less my unified carbon neutral farming ideas.
Some more on the big picture of fertile soil:
#597
August 14 2022 2:18PM
It's always been strange to me why farmers don't grow their own fuel, and maximize the carbon neutrality. It's very beneficial to the land, the equipment, the plants and animals, and the farmer's income. But I've yet to meet a farmer in person who even tries. They all seem to stifle profits by maximizing the anhydrous nitrogen applications, which kills the soil, use as much crude oil derived diesel as possible, and let everything other than their crop specific product die, rot away and turn to dust. There's so much opportunity there, and it's just wasted, while they simultaneously destroy their own land and poison the water. I suspect it's because they get financially invested in certain types of equipment, get into a routine with it, and shun anything that challenges them to reevaluate their investments. I know there's small pockets of farmers out there that are open to possibility, and even fewer that have actually implemented a truly sustainable solution without maximizing their profits. The large biogas producers in England come to mind. They literally grow crops just to rot them to feed their digester. Super wasteful, but profitable large scale. None of them utilizes pyrolysis, but they do reapply the liquids back onto the land. So there's lots of people doing pieces of the unified ideology, but nobody, at least that I've met, is doing everything.