posted by admin on Feb 4
We are currently very low on fertile soil - and it can affect us all.
With more than 6 billion people in the world today relying on crops grown on less than 11% of the worlds surface - things are getting a bit tight!
Soil erosion and degradation are common in most countries due to misuse of land (as with monoculture and large machinery compaction) or due to ignorance - or desperation (where individual farmers are damaging the environment by clearing woodlands, farming on hillsides or growing the ‘wrong’ crops for that land).
For years, scientists have been trying to improve farming techniques to retain and improve existing soils to cope with our need for food - even more important for communities in the marginal areas where the land could become barren in just a few short years of mismanagement.
Well, it’s possible that the Amazon may hold the answer!
Terra Preta do Indio:
Archaeologists working in the Amazon rain-forest have managed to identify a large number of sites with unusually fertile soils - and have begun to find out why. Ever since the 50’s this soil has been known, but other issues were more pressing. However now it’s uses are vital to many people.
A normal patch of soil in the Amazon Basin is able to sustain plant life (ie - the rain-forest itself), but it only holds it’s nutrients at the very surface and it a delicate ecosystem. It normally has a very thin layer of organic matter from dead leaves, etc and up to about 8 inches of topsoil. All this is very sensitive and is held together by the lives of the vegetation and wildlife: If the forest is cleared, the soil will be washed away by the rain in just a few short years.
However, more recently it’s been found that this Terra Preta is so much more and can be farmed for many years without losing it’s fertility - centuries in fact! This soil is only found where human settlements have been, so it is definitely a man-made resource.
Why is is so special?
The organic matter is still on top from plant waste, but underneath there is up to 6.5 feet of fertile top soil!
These people have managed to create vast deposits of carbon-enriched earth either on purpose for farming or just as a side-effect of another aspect of their lives - scientists are not quite sure about it’s origins.
These deposits are normally about 2-3 acres in size - although some are up to 40 acres - and they include charcoal, food refuse and other waste materials including broken pottery. The layers and layers of these ‘ingredients’ have increased the average carbon content of the land from between 30-150 tons per hectare to between 150-500 tons per hectare.
Worldwide significance.
Scientists have managed to re-create this type of soil in laboratories and have found it to sustain many crops successfully including rice, corn, manioc and beans.
The key to this soil is the charcoal. Tests have found that by adding crumbled charcoal and condensed smoke into damaged tropical soils had a profound affect on fertility. Microbes that keep soil healthy tend to attach themselves to the charcoal rather than being washed away with the rains - literally keeping the soil alive with nutrients.
It is possible that other tropical communities across the world could use the technique to help re-fertilise their own soils - adding back in the carbon and the minerals that have been lost. It’s like a compost heap on a grand scale.
And it could save lives!
February 5th, 2009 at 4:09 am
Biochar Soil Technology…..Husbandry of whole new orders of life
Biotic Carbon, the carbon transformed by life, should never be combusted, oxidized and destroyed. It deserves more respect, reverence even, and understanding to use it back to the soil where 2/3 of excess atmospheric carbon originally came from.
We all know we are carbon-centered life, we seldom think about the complex web of recycled bio-carbon which is the true center of life. A cradle to cradle, mutually co-evolved biosphere reaching into every crack and crevice on Earth.
It’s hard for most to revere microbes and fungus, but from our toes to our gums (onward), their balanced ecology is our health. The greater earth and soils are just as dependent, at much longer time scales. Our farming for over 10,000 years has been responsible for 2/3rds of our excess greenhouse gases. This soil carbon, converted to carbon dioxide, Methane & Nitrous oxide began a slow stable warming that now accelerates with burning of fossil fuel.
Wise Land management; Organic farming and afforestation can build back our soil carbon,
Biochar allows the soil food web to build much more recalcitrant organic carbon, ( living biomass & Glomalins) in addition to the carbon in the biochar.
Biochar, the modern version of an ancient Amazonian agricultural practice called Terra Preta (black earth, TP), is gaining widespread credibility as a way to address world hunger, climate change, rural poverty, deforestation, and energy shortages… SIMULTANEOUSLY!
Modern Pyrolysis of biomass is a process for Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration,10X Lower Methane & N2O soil emissions, and 3X Fertility Too.
Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration, Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.
Biochar viewed as soil Infrastructure; The old saw, “Feed the Soil Not the Plants” becomes “Feed, Cloth and House the Soil, utilities included !”. Free Carbon Condominiums, build it and they will come.
As one microbologist said on the TP list; “Microbes like to sit down when they eat”. By setting this table we expand husbandry to whole new orders of life.
Senator / Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar has done the most to nurse this biofuels system in his Biochar provisions in the 07 & 08 farm bill,
http://www.biochar-international.org/newinformationevents/newlegislation.html
Charles Mann (”1491″) in the Sept. National Geographic has a wonderful soils article which places Terra Preta / Biochar soils center stage.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text
Biochar data base;
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node
NASA’s Dr. James Hansen Global warming solutions paper and letter to the G-8 conference, placing Biochar / Land management the central technology for carbon negative energy systems.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf
The many new university programs & field studies, in temperate soils; Cornell, ISU, U of H, U of GA, Virginia Tech, JMU, New Zealand and Australia.
Glomalin’s role in soil tilth, fertility & basis for the soil food web in Terra Preta soils.
POZNAN, Poland, December 10, 2008 - The International Biochar Initiative (IBI) announces that the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has submitted a proposal to include biochar as a mitigation and adaptation technology to be considered in the post-2012-Copenhagen agenda of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A copy of the proposal is posted on the IBI website at
The International Biochar Initiative (IBI).
Given the current “Crisis” atmosphere concerning energy, soil sustainability, food vs. Biofuels, and Climate Change what other subject addresses them all?
This is a Nano technology for the soil that represents the most comprehensive, low cost, and productive approach to long term stewardship and sustainability.
Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.
Cheers,
Erich J. Knight
Shenandoah Gardens
540 289 9750