Soil Carbon: the Basis of all life

Plants and animals, without exception, are principally made up of carbon compounds, in which carbon is combined with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements.

Nearly half of the solid (non water) parts of plants is carbon.  Because carbon is also processed through plants and given off to the atmosphere during respiration, plants need far more carbon than any other nutrient.  Plants get their carbon as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which is why it is sometimes called “the gaseous nutrient’. Carbon dioxide occurs in the atmosphere at about 0.03% by volume (300ppm), and lack of carbon dioxide is not a limiting factor for growth under normal circumstances (although crop yields can be more than doubled if additional carbon dioxide is supplied).  The nutrient plants need most of, after carbon, is nitrogen, and our recent scientific view of plant nutrition has been rather nitrogen focused.  Carbon, on the other hand, is most undervalued nutrient, and the vital role of carbon in the soil has been too easily ignored.