Industrial agriculture depends upon long and complicated supply chains. Fertilisers, pesticides, machinery, fuel and animal feeds may travel hundreds or thousands of miles before food reaches the consumer. This system has produced abundant food, but it depends upon cheap energy, reliable transport and farmers being able to afford increasingly costly inputs.

Biocyclic Humus Soil offers a very different approach. It seeks to build fertility from local plant material and to keep nutrients circulating within the locality.

More than ordinary compost

Biocyclic Humus Soil begins as plant-based compost. It can be made from leaves, grass, vegetable waste, prunings, crop residues, fruit pulp and other plant material. Unlike ordinary garden compost, however, it is allowed to mature for a much longer period.

In one documented example, olive leaves, olive pulp and grape pulp were composted aerobically for five or six months. The material was then left to mature for a further three years. It gradually acquired a stable, soil-like structure which could be placed in direct contact with plant roots. A study by the Agricultural University of Athens describes the process.

This long maturation is important. Fresh compost continues to decompose rapidly and releases soluble nutrients. Mature humus holds nutrients within a more stable biological structure. Water, air and nutrients are retained around the roots, while soil organisms help make those nutrients available to plants.

It is therefore better understood as a lasting soil-building material rather than merely another fertiliser.

Farming without imported fertility

Biocyclic vegan farming excludes livestock manure, slurry, blood, bone and other animal-derived fertilisers. It relies instead upon plant residues, green manures, crop rotations, legumes and mature plant-based humus. The international standard describes it as a wholly plant-based form of organic farming. Biocyclic Vegan International explains its principles here.

The method need not be adopted solely for vegan reasons. Its wider importance is that it asks a fundamental question: can a locality maintain its soil fertility largely from its own biological resources?

In many places, enormous quantities of organic material are treated as waste. Leaves are collected and transported away. Hedge cuttings are burnt or shredded. Vegetable waste enters the refuse system. Food processors produce skins, pulp and stalks. Gardens generate grass cuttings, weeds and prunings.

A local humus system would treat these materials as a valuable resource.

The locality’s fertility bank

A locality could establish several humus-making sites serving farms, market gardens, allotments and households. Plant material would be collected over a short distance, composted carefully and then placed in maturing heaps.

These heaps would be a form of fertility bank. Instead of holding financial claims, they would hold carbon, minerals, water-retaining capacity and the means of producing future food.

This would create useful local work. People would be needed to collect and sort suitable material, manage compost temperatures and moisture, turn the heaps, test the finished humus and distribute it to growers. The work would require knowledge and care, but it would not depend upon enormous factories or distant corporate management.

The humus would take years to mature, so localities would have to plan ahead. That is not a weakness. It would encourage a longer view of food security. A community which begins making humus today is preparing its soil for the conditions it may face several years from now.

Possible benefits

Mature humus may improve soil structure, biological activity and water retention. This could become especially valuable as Britain experiences longer dry periods followed by intense rainfall. Soil rich in stable organic matter can absorb more water when rain falls and retain more of it for plants.

An experimental tomato trial reported a yield of 116.8 tonnes per hectare using Biocyclic Humus Soil, compared with 80.6 tonnes using inorganic nitrogen fertiliser and 63 tonnes in the untreated plots. The researchers suggested that improved root conditions and water retention contributed to the result. However, this was one trial involving one crop and a relatively small number of plots. The authors themselves said that much more research was required.

We should therefore avoid claiming that Biocyclic Humus Soil can immediately replace every fertiliser on every kind of farm. Arable crops remove considerable quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Nutrients exported from a locality in food must eventually be replaced or recovered. Plant residues may also have competing uses as animal bedding, mulch, fuel or wildlife habitat.

The system must be tested honestly under British conditions, including heavy clay, thin upland soils, wet winters and different crops. Transport, labour, storage space, contamination and the long maturation period must all be considered.

A place within localism

Localism does not mean pretending that every locality can become completely self-sufficient. It means meeting more essential needs nearby, using local resources before importing distant ones and reducing dependence upon systems which may become unaffordable.

Biocyclic Humus Soil fits this principle remarkably well. It converts neglected plant material into productive capital. It strengthens the connection between households, gardens, food businesses and farms. It replaces part of a linear system of extraction, purchase and disposal with a local biological cycle.

In a shrinking economy, synthetic fertiliser may become increasingly expensive because its production, particularly that of nitrogen fertiliser, requires large amounts of energy. Long-distance transport will also become harder to afford. Soil fertility will then be too important to leave entirely dependent upon imported products and volatile world markets.

A sensible beginning would be small. A locality could create a trial site, use clean plant material and produce several grades of compost and mature humus. Local growers could compare treated and untreated plots over a number of years. Results could be recorded and knowledge shared.

Biocyclic Humus Soil is not a miraculous substance, and it cannot remove all the difficulties facing agriculture. Its greater significance lies in the principle behind it. The fallen leaf, the hedge cutting and the discarded vegetable are not useless waste. They are part of the locality’s future fertility.

Industrial society has tried to sustain the soil by purchasing inputs from elsewhere. Localism must learn once again how to create and conserve fertility close to home.