[Tania]

a very interesting quote from the article Regenerating Soils with Ramial Chipped Wood (LAVAL UNIVERSITY)

THE PRODUCTION OF A STABLE HUMUS
There are humic substances that have a short life (compost and manure) and others that have a long life (more than 1000 years). These substances play an important role in the balance of the soil. The Asian steppes, the South-American pampas and the North-American prairies, being covered with herbaceous plants, have short-life humus. The soil claimed from hardwood forest has long-life humus.
In soils farmed intensively with synthetic fertilizers exclusively, a modified bacterial and mostly fungal biology ends up consuming the long-life humus of forest origin. By using farm manure or compost in which the only source of lignin is straw, we cannot hope that humus having a long life will form massively and stabilize the soil on a long term. This type of organic amendment brings the soil to a condition similar to the North-American prairie soils which derived its lignin from Graminaceae over thousands of years and which have not long resisted to intensive farming. These soils are now subject to massive erosion. Only the addition of ramial chipped wood can be viewed as a means to return the soil to its former forest origin condition and reinstitute, in three years, a long-life humus content.