Lawrence,
I think you are certainly right about the necessity of regenerative
agriculture and producing biochar need not be mutually exclusive with
regenerative practices. In fact, I think using manure, cover crops, dynamic
accumulators, microbial innnoculants, rock dusts, composts teas, humanure
and biochar in a synergistic fashion could lead to drastic soil
improvement.
Producing biochar need not require us to harvest every last bit of organic
matter to be turned into charcoal.
It has been demonstrated however that biochar can last on the order of
1,000+ years (as demonstrated by the Terra Preta soils of the Amazonians)
whereas the organic matter left as mulch or even, as you suggested, plowed
(though I tend to try to stay away from tillage as much as possible myself)
~90% will generally mineralize out and become CO2 within 5 to 10 years.
In short, biochar, like Harry said, is an incredibly stable amendment that
brings to the soil a host of beneficial properties including improved soil
tilth, aeration, increased micohhrizal fungi interactions, increased CEC,
and water retention. It may not work for every soil, but it is very
promising.
Again, instead of attack Flannery, Lovelock, or me, if we want to have a
conversation about biochar we should stick to the subject.
Peace and thanks,
Ryan
On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 2:46 AM, harry byrne wykman
<harrybw@iinet.net.au>wrote:
Forgive me if this represents a similar ignorance to that which you
ridicule. I understanding that the primary importance of biochar as
opposed to organic matter is that biochar is STABLE. That is, it does
not release carbon into the atmosphere. For this reason it is
effective as a carbon lockup strategy.
Harry
On Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:12:12 -0500
"Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@intrex.net> wrote:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture/2009-February/032700.html
[permaculture] 3 . Flip-flop Flannery is a climate changeopportunist
Ryan Hottle ry.hottle at gmail.com
Thu Feb 5 23:40:59 EST 2009
I'm a supporter and practitioner of Permaculture and think biochar
is among the most promising solutions to global climate change. I'd
like to note that Clive Hamilton made no mention of any substance or
scientific relevance about the benefits and risks of using biochar
as a solution to climate change.
Biochar is not exclusive in terms of being able to "cure" climate
change--silver bullet solutions don't exist at this point--but it
does seem to offer a promising and multi-faceted approach to
producing energy, improving soils, and sequestering carbon in a
single process. "Never do just one thing" right?
It can be highly decentralized from small scale pyrolysis cookstoves
to community scale combined heat and power carbon negative power
plants. It can be combined with coppicing/pollarding and forest
garden systems. The soil improving qualities are dramatic particularly in areas with
extremely low soil organic carbon (SOM) such as places at risk of
desertification, sub-Saharan Africa, and denuded landscapes in
Tropical landscapes which tend to have highly leached and low
nutrient soils.
Are you a farmer? Have you ever farmed? Or gardened? Do you know
_anything_ about biological, biointensive, regenerative, natural
agriculture? Using massive amounts of rock dusts, manures, cover
crops and mulch in agriculture?
Why does harvesting all or part of a crop just to turn it into
charcoal only to bury it in the ground make any sense at all?
Gaia Lovelock says that farmers are the logical group to participate
in carbon sequestration by harvesting crop stubble, converting it to
charcoal and returning it to the filds INSTEAD OF SIMPLY PLOWING THE
STUBBLE UNDER TO INCREASE SOIL OM, thereby increasing tilth,
friability, life in the soil and fertility.
He doesn't know beans about agriculture and though I buy into his
Gaia theory completely he seems to have sold out on the biochar thing
without even looking at the long term benefits of traditional
regenerative farming, and local food production.
LL
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