Tuesday 5 January 2010

Terra Branco to Terra Preta

Gazing out at the snow falling on snow and listening to sun tanned cricketers in South Africa it almost makes you long for Global warming! Despairing of our inabilities to make even the simplest of agreements in the farrago that was Copenhagen it is tempting just to think, "tsch! Bring it on!".
Certainly the author of the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock is of the opinion that it's too late now to do anything about climate change apart from adapt, and even then, adaptation will only prolong the agonies of massive World disorder for a very short time. All off to hell in that hand cart it seems.
Well no, still time to come to our senses, re build international cooperation, re double our efforts to improve societies through innovative and inventive alternatives to pillaging our fragile and only World. Still time to affect the global politics of haves and have nots by redistributing energy provision. Still time to discover how to move people and goods around, provide enough food for ourselves and yet maintain the habitats of all the other life. Big job, but someone's got to do it.
Actually, James Lovelock does consider that there could be one redeeming solution, along with others he proposes that we adopt the system of sequestering carbon in our soils, then if we (and it needs to be quickly!) enable the use of agriculture and land management to be the very significant solution to climate crisis that it could be.
The dependence on large scale industrial agriculture increases the amount of fuel required to transport the food from field to table, needs huge amounts of fossil fuel to drive the tractors and trucks, manufacture the fertilizers and herbicides, deliver the food (often from one continent to another), all the while degrading the land.
A dramatic shift in agricultural policy (and Hilary Benn MP has started that in today's release of the governments' agricultural policy going forward) and practices to focus on building soil organic matter, including the restoration of carbon to the soil, by organically managing and enriching soils. Currently, soluble nitrogen fertilizers are used which encourage very rapid and complete decay of organic matter, sending carbon into the atmosphere instead of retaining it in the soil as organic systems do. By using "no till" techniques and by enriching soils with natural sources of nutrients, farmers can cut costs and improve on both productivity and profitability.
Success will depend on two factors; A strong bottom up demand for change and a top down shift in national, European and Global policies to support farmers in this transition. Farmers should be paid on the basis of how much carbon they put back into and keep in their soil rather than how many tonnes of grain they can produce. Some experts consider that the potential scale of what can be accomplished by such a shift of agricultural practice could sequester nearly 40% of current CO2 emissions.
That's not all, one of the most exciting new strategies for restoring carbon to depleted soils and sequestering significant amounts of CO2 for 1000 years and more is the use of biochar. Mr Lovelocks panacea. Biochar is a form of fine grained, porous charcoal that is highly resilient to decomposition in most soil environments. It occurs naturally but can be manufactured cheaply in large quantities by burning wood, grasses, manure, stubble or other biomass in an oxygen free or low oxygen environment. This transforms the biomass into charcoal more than 80% pure carbon. The process can also be designed to produce gas that helps fuel the process for making more biochar.
Burying biochar in soil replenishes the carbon content, protects important soil microbes and helps the soil to retain nutrients and water. It reduces the accumulation of greenhouse gas pollution by avoiding the releases that would occur by the rotting of the biomass on the surface, by sequestering the CO2 contained in the biochar, and by assisting the process by which plants growing in the soil pull CO2 out of the air with photosynthesis. Biochar also increases the organic health of soil by stimulating the growth of rhizobium bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi, improving the overall quality of the soil. Not much is new, Amazonian Indians were using biochar at least one thousand years ago to create fertile black soils that are still more productive than the soils around them. These soils, called terra preta by the Portuguese provide a unique way of assessing the benefits to soils by using biochar.
So, there you have it and to quote our old friend Mr Lovelock; ".... you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull CO2 down quite fast.... this is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it."
It's still snowing, terra branco.

2 comments:

  1. All political persuasions agree, building soil carbon is GOOD.
    To Hard bitten Farmers, wary of carbon regulations that only increase their costs, Building soil carbon is a savory bone, to do well while doing good.

    Biochar provides the tool powerful enough to cover Farming's carbon foot print while lowering cost simultaneously.

    Another significant aspect of bichar is removal of BC aerosols by low cost ($3) Biomass cook stoves that produce char but no respiratory disease emissions. At Scale, replacing "Three Stone" stoves the health benefits would equal eradication of Malaria http://biocharfund.org/
    The Congo Basin Forest Fund (CBFF).recently funded The Biochar Fund $300K for these systems citing these priorities;
    (1) Hunger amongst the world's poorest people, the subsistence farmers of Sub-Saharan Africa,
    (2) Deforestation resulting from a reliance on slash-and-burn farming,
    (3) Energy poverty and a lack of access to clean, renewable energy, and
    (4) Climate change.

    The Biochar Fund :
    Exceptional results from biochar experiment in Cameroon
    The broad smiles of 1500 subsistence farmers say it all ( that , and the size of the Biochar corn root balls )
    http://biocharfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=55&Itemid=75

    Mark my words; Given the potential for Laurens Rademaker's programs to grow exponentially, only a short time lies between This man's nomination for a Noble Prize.

    This authoritative PNAS article should cause the recent Royal Society Report to rethink their criticism of Biochar systems of Soil carbon sequestration;

    Reducing abrupt climate change risk using
    the Montreal Protocol and other regulatory
    actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/09/0902568106.full.pdf+html

    There are dozens soil researchers on the subject now at USDA-ARS.
    and many studies at The up coming ASA-CSSA-SSSA joint meeting;
    http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2009am/webprogram/Session5675.html


    Senator Baucus is co-sponsoring a bill along with Senator Tester (D-MT) called WE CHAR. Water Efficiency via Carbon Harvesting and Restoration Act!
    Individual and groups can show support for WECHAR by signing online at:
    http://www.biocharmatters.org/

    Congressional Research Service report (by analyst Kelsi Bracmort) is the best short summary I have seen so far - both technical and policy oriented.
    http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40186_20090203.pdf .

    United Nations Environment Programme, Climate Change Science Compendium 2009
    http://www.unep.org/compendium2009/

    Al Gore got the CO2 absorption thing wrong, ( at NABC Vilsack did same), but his focus on Soil Carbon is right on;
    http://www.newsweek.com/id/220552/page/3

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  2. Thankyou, this is very useful. I will promote Biochar even more vigorously.
    Great to get feed back,
    Martin

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