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Coal and oil come from carbon captured during the Carboniferous period, before the evolution of species of bacteria and fungi that could digest the lignin in plants.

Coal and oil formation is not being fed by plant life today. The carbon in plants is recycled rather quickly in to the ecosphere.




Fair. So then I would augment my comment to focus just on soil production in the wild. Not all of the plant debris is being composted. It gets buried too.


IMHO any plant debris that gets buried in the soil is - in the long term - also composted, only its breakdown is slower.




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