permaculture

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

I was a sceptic, too. But my good friend and co-teacher, Albert Bates,
wrote a book about it called "The Biochar Solution" which is bioth an
excellent read and packed with info. I threw it in my bag on a trip to the
Amazon to do some consulting, and I devoured it. Very convincing.

Rather than rewrite a lot, I will point you to a small video one of our
students made about making biochar, where we use the heat, which we would
use, anyway, here <https://vimeo.com/173389170> and an article I wrote
about biochar and pig raising, with results in tropical tree crops, with
some controls (very good results), here
<http://permaculturenews.org/2012/06/06/maya-mountain-research-farm-update-pigs-and-biochar/>.
We planted about 200 cacao trees in 2012, and we had 20 controld of the
same cultivar planted without biochar. We were hit with a severe dry, which
is becoming more commn, in 2013, and ALL 20 of the controls, died, and none
of the ones planted with the biochar/compost mix did.

One of the things to think about biochar is that it can burn crop residue
that would otherwise quickly degrade, so the perennial argument that
biochar is exclusive to larger systems is not valid. Most of the "anti"
crowd is under-informed on this. We use coconut husks, rice hulls, old
cacao pods, sesame stalks, corn cobs, corn trash, bamboo, dried citrus
peels, twogs, sticks and whatever we can find, small diameter. We also take
advantage of the heat as we cook with fuel wood, as virtually everyone in
the rural lowland humid tropics does.

What I will mention is that biochar makes a LOT of edge, and all of that
edge is habitat for soil biota, especially fungi and bacteria, the major
players in tropical soils. Ir can be done with byproducts of other cropping
systems, and the heat can be used where people burn biomass for heat,
anyway.

Lastly, biochar is not "THE" answer, but it is a tool in our tool kit, and
for some applications, it works really well.

_____________________________

Christopher Nesbitt


Maya Mountain Research Farm

San Pedro Columbia, Toledo

PO 153 Punta Gorda Town, Toledo

BELIZE,

Central America


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

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 4:38 PM, Gene Monaco <efmonaco@comcast.net> wrote:

> Been reading up on biochar lately, and I get this sick feeling in my
> stomach
> as if it is surrounded by darkness, cloaked in an illusion.  But I'm often
> wrong.  I get the basic idea of it, but I have some questions I'd like to
> ask this distinguished group, for whom I have a lot of respect.
> 1) The literature seems to be divided as to whether or not it actually
> makes
> plants grow better.  Some do, some don't.  How could we trust it in a
> permaculture guild?  Experimentation is the best way, but that takes time
> and controls.
> 2) If the idea is to get biomass into the ground without it having a chance
> to break down, wouldn't it be better to re-afforest degraded areas in
> northern climates where winter will slow things down, burying layers of
> carbon over time, rather than talk of tropical plantations to burn
> fast-growing plants into charcoal before burying it?
> 3) Some biochar literature says that the product needs to be made at temps
> >500C, which seems to me to be a lot hotter than what naturally occurs in a
> temperate forest fire.  Less than that and it's no good.  So how is the
> comparison to charcoal from natural fires or camp fires relevant?
> 4) How do they heat the biomass to more than 500C to make the biochar?  And
> doesn't that produce its own greenhouse gases?
> 5) And finally, what about building soils?  Seems like the stalks of wheat
> that are a "waste" to big ag, would be better off as organic inputs to an
> organic system.
> What am I missing?
> -Gene
>
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