According to my hippy dippy regenerative/sustainable agriculture no-till organic living soil youtube education, the availability of nutrients to plants is determined by interactions among decomposing organic matter, the bacteria and fungi that cause the decomposition, and root exudates that entice the sugar-hungry decomposers to do their thing close enough to the roots for nutrients to be absorbed. And moisture levels and temperature and pH and redox equilibrium and microbe populations and whatever else.

That's probably hard to get right at scale, though (or maybe compost is just too expensive), so wouldn't it be nice if there were some rock-like substance that were distributed throughout the soil and leached bioavailable nutrients into roots (and everything else, I guess) at a similar rate?

As the paper points out, it's better than dumping fertilizer onto the soil multiple times per season and having it all wash out into rivers...

As a neophyte, I'm guessing the point is to allow the nutrient minerals/elements to dissolve but far more slowly so that if e.g. there is sharp rainfall after application it's not all lost. The paper says complete solubility took 6 days or more, which is persisting.

If the stuff is bioavailable but less prone to migration it's a massive upside: less applied for more benefit and less runoff contamination.

Making glasses does mean changing the fertiliser manufacturing process. I wonder if NPK mixes can be post processed? And what's the extra energy burdens?

Really want to know whether this stuff spreads like sand (good) or whether it spreads like powder (bad).

> 0.85 and 2.0 mm

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