Do you have a link to the electricity restoring sense of touch research? I've noticed the same thing by accident after some nerve damage and would love to be able to improve further.
The problem isn't at all soil or nutrients: those are cheap and make up a very small fraction of the final mass of food. Instead, it's energy required to power photosynthesis, turning them into delicious calories.
The way that you can turn normal Rust functions into systems, grabbing the relevant components through their type signature is wonderful sugar, and feels magic to use.
Whale corpses tend to reach the bottom of the ocean largely intact actually! It's hard for most creatures to eat them quickly enough, and they're typically largely eaten by sharks and scavengers on the ocean floor.