THE LIFE CYCLE AND MAN

In the beginning planet Earth was only rock, water and air with a never ending supply of energy beamed down daily from the sun. But there was no life on earth.

There was no grass, trees or flowers on Earth because there was no soil. It takes soil to grow plants and sustain life. But, it takes decaying life to make and sustain soil.

At some point as our planet rotated in it's planned orbit through space the Almighty saw fit to breath life onto earth, very meager and primitive life, but life with a crucial mission.

As these micro-forms of life lived and reproduced, they fed on and etched away at the rocky mineral earth surface, and as they died, their remains formed humus and mild acids to etch away still more minerals. The process of their decaying bodies and decaying rock went on and on creating our first fertile soil.

Even though extremely small, the life, death and decay of each preceding life form has been creating better conditions for future life forms than were there before. The decay process builds with added interest to the soil's bank account, and after countless centuries of creating conditions for higher and more complex forms of life, Man, the most complex of all life, was able to exist and be sustained.

Walk into the woods and meadows and visit with Nature. You will be in the presence of much life. Especially in the spring, you will find many types of plants, grass, trees, animals and insects-large and small. There will be life in abundance.

Now take a closer look. There is an equal amount of death, particularly in the winter. There will be dead grass and leaves, fallen limbs and trees, even dead animals and insects.

Every living thing will sooner or later die: no living creature, plant or animal, escapes death. In Nature, every dead thing is deposited in the very place it dies, and there it serves as a mulch protecting the soil until it finally decays and in due time is covered and replaced by still later deposits of expired life.

When a plant or animal dies, even though it may be consumed higher in the food chain, it will eventually be eaten by the decomposing microbes. They will decay or disassemble it and put it back into the soil. If they didn't, our planet would now be miles deep in dead things.

This life-death-decay-life cycle has built the thin layer of fertile soil that covers our land. It nourishes and grows our plants which are the bridge of life between the soil and man.

Man...Does he know? And can he trace his life support systems far enough back to understand the life cycles? Man has accumulated much knowledge, but in areas of his healthy existence he seems to be slow to learn. Man sees death as a loss, or something to be sorrowful of, and he considers decay as something ugly. He doesn't understand why Nature always returns the dead back to the soil from where it came.

If man understood the laws of recycle and return, he would without delay put back into the farmlands all the mineral and energy rich organic waste materials his life stile generates. He wouldn't be daily wasting the mountains of manure and thousands of tons of bio-solids and other organic materials that he buries in landfills that seal and lock them away from the life generating, natural Soil building processes that our food producing soils so urgently need.

In a natural environment, there is no waste. All is reused, and usually made into something of still greater value for sustenance of life.

If man continues to break this law of return, he will not only stop the life-generating processes of the soil. He will actually cause the soil to degenerate--a process that will sooner or later degrade all life ... including man himself.

from the book "The Secret Life of Compost" by Malcolm Beck