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Originally Posted by Formendacil

Do the Elves actually have enough corpses to sustain all those crops? I mean, that works well for a fruit tree, maybe, but it won't take care of an orchard, and you'd need a whole cemetery to grow grain for lembas. Sure, after the Last Alliance there might have been a burst of Elven agriculture, but there would not have been a good supply of fertilizer thereafter.

It's been said that every grain/bit/speck has some virtue. Sam didn't need to bury an elf for each tree he planted when repairing the Shire after Sharkey's ruin and ruining. He used one bit per planting. Assume now you have much much more. Also, what virtue resides within elven atoms, or any bits that may flake on in the normal course of the day? Maybe singing expels something of the elf that enhanced the receiver of the sound due to some transfer of physical matter from the elf.

This isn't to say that elven agriculture used only the dead to grow their crops. They also had a deep understanding of nature, and surely didn't have to deal with some natural events that plagued man, like blight. The elves probably taught the locusts to dance and sing.

Furthermore, by implication you are suggesting that the food in the Blessed Realm was nothing as good as the stuff out of Rivendell, since the corpse supply there was precisely two... Míriel and Finwë.

Must be why there were so few feast days...

Let's walk through this. Humans, as organic beings, can be used as fertilizer (although I would be worried about the concentration of prions in the food supply). Why not then elves? If their bodies are 'purer' and more aligned to nature, why couldn't they be a superior source of fertilizer? Those elves that made the journey West and back again carry the light of Aman on their faces or some other mark of the experience. Couldn't these elves contain more 'energy' that, when turned into fertilizer, be transferred into the recipient organism?

Those that lived in Aman, like elsewhere, could use the fallen as fertilizer, but seemingly in Paradise nothing rots, and so how one gets nitrogen back into the soil is beyond science. Presumably the plant life there springs from the ground that is fertilized by the same energy that is transferred the those elves that live there. Telperion and Laurelin must have added to the radiations of the place, allowing life to grow. When these died, their fruits were used to light the world - more radiation - though obviously less than would be available from the live trees.

Who understands the works of Yavanna?

And... what about the Wandering Companies? If someone dies, do they haul the corpse back to the Grey Havens for fertilizer?

Maybe these corpses explain seemingly random copses.

Very importantly:

What about the Dead Marshes? Are you suggesting there's some really awesome watercress waiting to be harvested there?

The best cress!

But you have to factor in the taint of the evil that's in those marshes. And though presumably ugly, methinks that bogs and marshes teem with life - maybe more life per cubic inch than in the forest - though it might not be of any use to elves or men.