Better management of discarded produce could help forests regrow

The original site was heavily degraded and was host to mostly a single species of invasive grass, introduced by ranchers for pasture. This invasive grass presumably was preventing native shrubs and other woody plants from re-establishing. The fruit company was permitted to dump 1000 truckloads of orange peels over 3 hectares (30,000 square meters) in exchange for donating 1,600 hectares of primary forest.

What's interesting is that the authors hypothesize that the acidity of the orange peels actually altered the soil pH enough to kill off all of the invasive grasses and allowed the native plants to reestablish themselves. Unfortunately the authors don't test this hypothesis directly, and the intertwined effects of {acidity, asphyxiation of invasive grasses by several tons of material, massive additional organic nutrient input} can't be teased out due to the experimental design. Though with effects like this, I'm sure restoration ecologists would be happy to receive 1600 Ha of old-growth forest in exchange for dumping rights on 3 Ha of disturbed pasture land, even if they don't know the exact mechanism.

One of the best ways of composting that I know is bokashi. It works by a fermentation process. The biggest advantage of it is that you can put any organic matter into it, except maybe bones. Yes, you can even put meat, dairy, rice, pasta etc. in addition to fruit and vegetable matter. Once the bucket is full, let it ferment for a week, drain the liquid once a day, and then bury it. The fermenting for a week means that it breaks down much quicker in the ground. This means that all that waste becomes usable and useful to the bacteria and plants in the soil much much quicker than if you were to compost it the traditional way. It's a difference of weeks vs. months.

One of the biggest concerns is smell, but honestly it isn't so bad. Because it works by a fermentation process you need to keep the environment anaerobic i.e. lacking oxygen. That means keeping the bokashi bucket sealed most of the time, so you only need to smell it when you open the bucket to put your waste in once a day. Besides, the smell itself is as bad as you might expect. It's like a strong pickled smell, reminiscent of vinegar.

Also, the liquid that you drain can be used as a fertiliser. You just need to dilute it 1:100, and pore it at the base of the plants when watering.

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/08/22/orange-new-green-h...

It cites an interesting court case by a rival company that occurred after the contact to dump was signed:

"But a year after the contract was signed — during which time 12,000 metric tons of orange peels were unloaded onto the degraded land — TicoFruit, a rival company, sued, arguing the company had “defiled a national park.” The rival company won the case in front of Costa Rica’s Supreme Court, and the orange-peel-covered land was largely overlooked for the next 15 years."

Maybe the way for science to speak to the masses is to just pretend that every confirmation study is a brand new piece of science. "New study finds that reduced caloric intake causes weight loss!"

Put enough compost on a plot and it will turn into a jungle, just like my garden did after I stopped tending it. I was afraid to go in there to pick tomatoes.

I do wish they had ph tested the soil before so we could know whether the orange peels altered the soils acidity.

Grass clippings, Leaves, and other yard waste are the biggest input we humans like to truck around aimlessly. Chop and drop in a semi organized way, and you too can grow a forest.

#permaculture