permaculture

[christopher nesbitt <christopher.nesbitt@mmrfbz.org>]

Alberts book is brilliant. It is well researched, informative and funny, in 
parts. I hate to see Albert Bates get trash talked, even in a passive 
aggressive way like this, attacking his motives. Albert is an exceptional 
human, a great teacher, and a very kind man. He has also done a lot of 
research on biochar and soil biota. I also see that making an ad hominem 
attack on Albert and his motives is easier for you than to debate the 
contents of his writing, which, since you have not claimed to have read, I am 
going to go out on a limb and say that, in point of fact you have not read. 
That, alone, weakens your argument, at least to me. Refute what he has 
written, chapter, verse, page and paragraph, and maybe, just maybe, you might 
convince me.  Other wise it appears to me you are just another mouthy under 
informed malcontent who is too lazy to refute what someone wrote and can only 
argue against the person who wrote it and their motives. 

Maybe you have read a lot more than me, and maybe you have done 
experimentation with biochar as much as I have. Sure. Why not? I am not a 
blanket biochar fan boy enthusiast, anyway, and think that making biochar to 
make biochar makes little sense, but I have been working with biochar for the 
last few years fairly extensively in conjunction with clean burning stoves 
for cooking, and I have had outstanding results in tree crops in leached and 
damaged tropical soils with high clay content with biochar inoculated with 
compost. Making biochar while cooking? Its hard for me to see the down side 
of this. 

Your mileage may vary. 

Let me step back and give you some context and anecdotal, first hand, 
information:
On our farm, which has over 24 acres of managed land, most of which is 
devoted to tree crops and perennial crops, with over 600 species of plants, 
we have a lot of trees. Much of this land was citrus and cattle, 25 years 
ago, when I bought it. It was heavily damaged. We have repaired much of the 
soil using analogs to natural successional plant communities that would 
regenerate primary rainforest if we were not here using human centric species 
for food, fiber, medicinals and marketable crops. We have very specific plant 
guilds we use to take pasture and make it forest. That is a whole other topic 
that I have no time to address, but it is important for context of why we 
have tried biochar. 

We are constantly thinning out trees, cleaning up trees that have reached 
senescence, or dealing with branches the trees have shed. I spend an hour or 
two a day walking around in the shade of trees I planted, looking for fallen 
food, fuel, fodder for my pigs, opportunities for intercropping and observing 
what the farm is doing. Cleaning up the fuel wood from the floor of the 
agroforestry system reduces the fuel load in our dry season (in 2008 we 
suffered a run away fire that severely damaged most of our non cultivated 
areas. The farm, itself, was unaffected). We have an abundance of fuel wood. 
Where we live and work, %97 of the people cook with fuel wood. That is 
because propane is expensive, and wood is free. We burn wood in a cook stove, 
a few different rocket stoves, a cob oven (Saturday night is always pizza 
night) and a few locally made biochar stove. 

Most people here use open fires, "hearths", and many Maya women suffer from 
eye disorders and from respiratory problems as they age. We managed a water 
project with Ministry of Health, collecting data and sampling water from the 
hand pumps in the communities for fecal contaminants and looked for ways to 
avoid ass to mouth diseases. that was mostly pumping water from springs some 
distance from the communities. A women centered set of pulmonary and eye 
illnesses tied to fuel wood was observed in every community. Clean burning 
stoves are a way to minimize pulmonary and ocular diseases. We have spent 
some time working with people to address that issue. 

Where people burn wood to cook, as we do, they release carbon into the 
atmosphere. I designed a series of small biochar stoves, specifically 
designed to cook food and using the gasses generated by pyrolisis to be 
burned to cook the food. These were made from recycled materials, old propane 
tanks and old 55 gallon drums, which are abundant on most of the planet. 
These stoves are cleaner burning than traditional Maya fire hearths. The 
primary product in this is the heat we are looking for for the purpose of 
cooking the food we eat (and for the food we cook for our pigs). The 
secondary product is the left over carbon in the pyrolisis chamber. We mostly 
use rice hulls and cahune palm seeds or small diameter fuel wood. What we 
have done in this scenario is use biomass for fuel, like most people do 
outside of rich industrialized nations, to cook. So far, so good, right? Par 
for the course. Use biomass to cook food. 

Now, where we branch from the familiar is that we are using pyrolisis for 
part of our cooking. We have two chambers, one external, oxygen rich, and onr 
internal, for pyrolitic combustion. When we are in pyrolitic mode, there is 
no oxygen in the pyrolisis chamber. The heated biomass off gasses methane, 
hydrogen, oxygen and other gasses, which are very hot and also very 
flammable. As these gasses exit the oxygen depleted environment to the 
external, oxygen rich, combustion chamber, they are converted into flame. 
This heat, again, is used for cooking. In this scenario there are less carbon 
emissions, especially once the pyrolisis chamber is depleted of oxygen. The 
byproduct of making this heat is the left over carbon that off gassed all its 
flammable gasses from the pyrolisis chamber. 

We like to use rice hulls, which we get from the village rice mill. They have 
a small mountain of it. The carbonized biomass left over from the biochar 
process has a high surface area to core mass ratio, and on a microscopic 
level, the rice hulls are full of pores. Instead of burning off the carbon 
into the environment, we are able to add that carbon to the compost we make, 
and then to the soil.

Last year we had the driest dry season in the 25 years I have farmed here. 
Cacao trees that were 5 years old, three years old and one year old, died. 
The trees we planted in the previous year, using a mixture of pyrolixzed rice 
hulls and cahune seed, crushed, with compost from the piggery and chicken 
pens, as well as other sources of biomass, did very well. Almost none of them 
died. ALL of the test trees planted without biochar/compost died. The trees 
are now 16 months old. They have all reached their first jorquette, the 
horizontal branching of the cacao tree, leading to the desirable shape for 
more surface area for the flowers that come from the branches and trunk. 
Usually this takes up to three years to reach this stage. Worth mentioning is 
that this cacao cultivar we have been planting is a very slow growing rare 
relic Maya cultigen found off in the rainforest at several Maya sites. It has 
been slow growing everywhere we have planted it, but in combination with the 
biochar/compost, we are seeing incredible rates of growth, 

Biochar, when inoculated and added to the soil, is teeming with life. All the 
fungi and bacteria and nematodes and other microrganisms use the biochar like 
a cross between a condo for microorganisms and a coral reef. Fungi move in. 
Like a coral reef, biochar has a lot of edge effect. One gram of charcoal can 
have many yards of surface area for the fungi and bacteria to colonize. Thats 
massive edge effect! I think that the very active fungal communities in the 
soil, radiating away from the compost and biochar retained soil moisture 
longer in the soil than areas untreated with biochar and compost. That would 
explain the low incidence of mortality in the targeted cacao trees and the 
high mortality in the trees we planted without biochar and compost.

Anyway, I am probably not going to convince you, and you sound like you have 
made up your mind enough to not bother reading a book that will challenge 
your assumptions, so take what anecdotal evidence I put forth here anyway you 
want. For what it is worth, I was a heavy biochar sceptic, too. I did not get 
it.  Alberts book was very well written, and his arguments were well 
presented. It made me interested enough to try it. We have used biochar to 
cook our food for the last two years, once or twice a week. The trials we 
have done in the last two years on using biochar as a soil emendment, as 
HABITAT for microorganisms, not as food for microorganisms, have convinced me 
that biochar, as a bi-product to cooking, is a useful tool to have in your 
permaculture tool kit. It is not THE answer, it is AN answer. 

Your mileage may vary.

The article being discussed below talks about the risk of fire in a forest of 
dead and standing beetle ravaged pine trees. We have some pine forest in 
Belize that was ravaged by pine beetle, and the fires were pretty bad. 
Converting the dead and standing wood into biochar while using the energy 
for... something, seems like a good idea. When it burns in the wild, it just 
burns, and does a lot of damage to the soil and leads to siltation and 
destruction of riparian zones. It is not as bad an idea as it sounds, to you. 

Lastly, here is an article about our experience with biochar:
http://permaculturenews.org/2012/06/06/maya-mountain-research-farm-update-pigs-and-biochar/




_____________________________
Christopher Nesbitt

Maya Mountain Research Farm
San Pedro Columbia, Toledo
PO 153 Punta Gorda Town, Toledo
BELIZE, 
Central America

Country code 501-630-4386

www.mmrfbz.org
www.facebook.com/MayaMountainResearchFarm




On Nov 7, 2013, at 5:22 PM, John D'hondt wrote:

> 
> Well, just maybe I have read a lot more about it than you Christopher for 
> at 
> least two decades. At least the latest from the ISIS institute confirms my 
> own misgivings.
> And please, science should be about critical thinking and experimenting and 
> I have done both, personally.
> 
> The worse and more complex the problems become the more simplistic and 
> often 
> stupid the solutions proposed become. That seems to be the general rule. 
> And 
> I am sure Albert Bates will make more money out of this than I ever will.
> John
> 
>> Again, John, you do not understand the science. Please read "The Biochar 
>> Solution" by Albert Bates so you have any understanding. Right now you are 
>> reactionary and clueless.
>> 
>> 
>> _____________________________
>> Christopher Nesbitt
>> 
>> Maya Mountain Research Farm
>> San Pedro Columbia, Toledo
>> PO 153 Punta Gorda Town, Toledo
>> BELIZE,
>> Central America
>> 
>> Country code 501-630-4386
>> 
>> www.mmrfbz.org
>> www.facebook.com/MayaMountainResearchFarm
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Nov 7, 2013, at 12:11 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
>> 
>>> Lawrence you know what I think about "biochar". The name is a very good 
>>> name
>>> to sell a product that is quite bad for the planet.
>>> Want to keep the planet cool? Then go for living trees and shrubs and all
>>> sorts of plants. You want to do something good for the soil then let
>>> residues rot in situ. That is food for living organisms. Bio-char is a 
>>> dead
>>> substance whatever the name.
>>> John
>>> 
>>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>>> From: "Lawrence London" <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
>>> To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
>>> Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 4:07 AM
>>> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Beetle Kill and Biochar-- Fwd: USDA Invests 
>>> in
>>> Research to Convert Beetle-Killed Trees into Renewable Energy
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 8:18 PM, Amy Little <amylittle@hvc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Though not stated clearly... Cool Planet Energy Systems is  BIOCHAR
>>>>> oriented
>>>>> company.....
>>>>> 
>>>>> From: "USDA Office of Communications" <usda@public.govdelivery.com>
>>>>> To: jeffs@ncat.org
>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, November 6, 2013 1:04:01 PM
>>>>> Subject: USDA Invests in Research to Convert Beetle-Killed Trees into
>>>>> Renewable Energy
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> That could be a lot of trees across the country utilizing losses from 
>>>> ash
>>>> dieback, pine beetle and other sources. I remember the years when pine
>>>> beetle devastated
>>>> quite a large number of southern yellow pines and possibly other
>>>> varieties.
>>>> If the harvesting is done on tree farms, state and national parks lands,
>>>> federal land,
>>>> private sector tracts growing timber for paper or lumber products then 
>>>> you
>>>> might have a lot of material to convert to biochar. The main issue is
>>>> getting the trees harvested and
>>>> transported to biochar production sites; who is going to pay for and do
>>>> this?
>>>> 
>>>> Lawrence London
>>>> lfljvenaura@gmail.com
>>>> http://www.avantgeared.com
>>>> avantgeard@gmail.com
>>>> https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> 
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>> 
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> 
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