charcoal agriculture - Biochar - Amazonian Dark Earth

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by bazman, Feb 20, 2006.

  1. bazman

    bazman Junior Member

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    Hi All

    Just wondering if any of you use charcoal from burnt greens like arrowroot in your garden systems, the course I did on the weekend that lightly covered this process and use, I would like more information if you have any.

    This is not about using coal and ash from dry wood fires, this process uses uses a few different plants like arrowroot.

    We also covered making potash from burnt orange skins, which is a great idea, you make a kabab from a green stick and half orange skins, then charcoal them and just lightly tap the kabab around your cirtus adding small amounts of potash. Beats buying it. You only need small amounts of this potash too.
     
  2. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    A friend of mine was telling me about charcoal being added to tropical soils to increase its ability to absorb CO2. I didn't really understand the whole deal, but he reckons it is the shit. He wants to build a solar collector out of an old satellite dish to add some solar heat to his charcoal barrel, or something.
    Does this sound like the same thing, Baz?
     
  3. barely run

    barely run Junior Member

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    was a program on ABC about lost villages along the Amazon River....they were killed out by introduced disease but the villages were productive because of the addition of charcoal to the tropical soil.
    Cathy
     
  4. bazman

    bazman Junior Member

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    The charcoal was made from the greens filled with water\oils, this bubbles away and this is what you use, Jade from the course I did called it charcoal agriculture, it's not from the burning of old wood, but because you only need small amounts of charcoal for your garden, you only need a small amount of dry wood to help burn the green stems and leafs. She uses an old clay bowl to make it.

    The topic of the Amazon river came up, not sure if it was the same deal.

    Richard, is he using greens like arrowroot?
     
  5. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    You know, I don't think he was using greens to make his charcoal, I think he was more thinking in terms of using scrap bamboo. I'll have to relate the idea of using green material to him. He has lots of invasive gingers growing on his place that he takes personally, and has been trying to eradoicate by making liquid manure out of all of it, so the charcoal idea may appeal to him.
     
  6. bazman

    bazman Junior Member

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    I think green sugarcane can be used as well.
     
  7. derekh

    derekh Junior Member

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    Hi Baz

    Do you need some Arrowroot (Canna edulis) to play with ?

    I will be digging some out this weekend along with more sugar cane. It is too close to the clothes line and I have been directed to remove it.

    cheers
    derek
     
  8. bazman

    bazman Junior Member

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    Found what I was looking for, i'm pretty sure this is it. (Thanks Jez)

    https://www.biologynews.net/archives/200 ... rtile.html


    Amazonian terra preta can transform poor soil into fertile

    The search for El Dorado in the Amazonian rainforest might not have yielded pots of gold, but it has led to unearthing a different type of gold mine: some of the globe's richest soil that can transform poor soil into highly fertile ground.

    That's not all. Scientists have a method to reproduce this soil -- known as terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths -- and say it can pull substantial amounts of carbon out of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, helping to prevent global warming. That's because terra preta is loaded with so-called bio-char -- similar to charcoal.

    "The knowledge that we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark earths, found throughout the Amazon River region, not only teaches us how to restore degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a wide array of crops in regions with agriculturally poor soils, but also can lead to technologies to sequester carbon in soil and prevent critical changes in world climate," said Johannes Lehmann, assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University, speaking today (Feb. 18) at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

    Lehmann, who studies bio-char and is the first author of the 2003 book "Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management," the first comprehensive overview of the black soil, said that the super-fertile soil was produced thousands of years ago by indigenous populations using slash-and-char methods instead of slash-and-burn. Terra preta was studied for the first time in 1874 by Cornell Professor Charles Hartt.

    Whereas slash-and-burn methods use open fires to reduce biomass to ash, slash-and-char uses low-intensity smoldering fires covered with dirt and straw, for example, which partially exclude oxygen.

    Slash-and-burn, which is commonly used in many parts of the world to prepare fields for crops, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Slash-and-char, on the other hand, actually reduces greenhouse gases, Lehmann said, by sequestering huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years and substantially reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils.

    "The result is that about 50 percent of the biomass carbon is retained," Lehmann said. "By sequestering huge amounts of carbon, this technique constitutes a much longer and significant sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide than most other sequestration options, making it a powerful tool for long-term mitigation of climate change. In fact we have calculated that up to 12 percent of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be offset annually if slash-and-burn were replaced by slash-and-char."

    In addition, many biofuel production methods, such as generating bioenergy from agricultural, fish and forestry waste, produce bio-char as a byproduct. "The global importance of a bio-char sequestration as a byproduct of the conversion of biomass to bio-fuels is difficult to predict but is potentially very large," he added.

    Applying the knowledge of terra preta to contemporary soil management also can reduce environmental pollution by decreasing the amount of fertilizer needed, because the bio-char helps retain nitrogen in the soil as well as higher levels of plant-available phosphorus, calcium, sulfur and organic matter. The black soil also does not get depleted, as do other soils, after repeated use.

    "In other words, producing and applying bio-char to soil would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production, but also could provide a novel approach to establishing a significant, long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide," said Lehmann. He noted that what is being learned from terra preta also can help farmers prevent agricultural runoff, promote sustained fertility and reduce input costs.

    Source : Cornell University News Service
     
  9. SueinWA

    SueinWA Junior Member

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    Amazon has the book for $149USD. I guess I won't be buying it. I'll have to try to find it through the library.

    Interesting concept, useful to the soil and could conceivably remove 12% of the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere annually.

    I googled "terra preta" & found this article to be quite interesting:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/20 ... rado.shtml

    (partial quotation)
    “Bruno Glaser, from the University of Bayreuth, has found that terra preta is rich in charcoal, incompletely burnt wood. He believes it acts to hold the nutrients in the soil and sustain its fertility from year to year. This is the great secret of the early Amazonians: how to nurture the soil towards lasting productivity. In experimental plots, adding a combination of charcoal and fertiliser into the rainforest soil boosted yields by 880% compared with fertiliser alone.

    “Yet terra preta may have a still more remarkable ability. Almost as if alive, it appears to reproduce. Bill Woods has met local farmers who mine the soil commercially. They find that, as long as 20cm of terra preta is left undisturbed, the bed will regenerate over a period of about 20 years. He suspects that a combination of bacteria and fungi is causing this effect.

    “Today, scientists are busy searching for the biological cocktail that makes barren earth productive. If they can succeed in recreating the Amerindians' terra preta, then a legacy more precious than the gold the Conquistadors sought could spare the rainforest from destruction and help feed people across the developing world.”

    Sue
     
  10. bazman

    bazman Junior Member

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    Here's a couple of charters from the book

    Below PDF files are about 1mb
    Chapter 7AMAZONIAN DARK EARTHS AS CARBON STORES AND SINKS
    https://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehm ... mbroek.pdf

    Chapter 14 DETERMINING NUTRIENT BIOAVAILABILITY OF AMAZONIAN DARK EARTH SOILS – METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
    https://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehm ... Falcao.pdf

    Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management,
    Chapter 23 HISTORICAL ECOLOGY AND FUTURE EXPLORATIONS

    https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/fishweir/arti ... sonADE.pdf
     
  11. bazman

    bazman Junior Member

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    Rich black soil – terra preta – was created by humans up to 4000 years ago in infertile regions of the Amazon. The high nutrient content of terra preta is recreated today by low-temperature slow burning pyrolysis of biomass. The resulting product, black carbon, known as bio-char, reduces the need for fertilisers. It can also be used as a fuel.

    Johannes Lehmann from Cornell University wants to see bio-char developed for widespread use. He says it is carbon negative, unlike all known biomass fuels, corn or rapeseed included, which are, at best, carbon neutral. ‘Other biomass doesn’t create a carbon sink, it just offsets other fossil fuel energy,’ Lehmann told the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Even after taking into account transport and other carbon positive processes involved in bio-char manufacture and use, it is still carbon negative, said Lehmann.

    Attempts to recreate terra preta are not as important as understanding how the soil functions, or the implications of producing it, said Beáta Emöke Madari from Brazil’s ministry of agriculture. ‘Bio-Char production is possible, but we have to know the environmental consequences and if it is economically viable,’ she told Chemistry World.

    Madari is trying to understand what makes terra preta so fertile and different from other soil. She says the organic matter in terra preta is stable because it has a core of several aromatic rings. The soil can store nutrients thanks to reactive carboxylic groups on the surface of that core.

    Bio-char production sites already exist in Brazil, and Madari agrees that bio-char is an interesting alternative either as a fuel or for agricultural use. But it must not lead to other local problems, such as deforestation, she cautioned.

    Whether global carbon trading mechanisms are a sufficient incentive for potential agricultural bio-char users to compete economically with those who use bio-char as fuel remains unknown, said Cornell’s Lehmann. ‘If we can plug in other environmental benefits such as reduced offsite pollution with nitrogen and phosphorous, or reduced fertiliser use, we can see immediate economic kickback that will make it more attractive than burning the bio-char either in home cooking or in a power plant,’ he said.

    Lehmann is working with UK researcher John Gaunt at the Rothamsted Institute.

    https://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2006/February/20020601.asp
     
  12. Stacm

    Stacm Junior Member

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    Hey Bazman
    where exactly was the course you mentioned
    Sound great
    Thanks
    Stacm
     
  13. bazman

    bazman Junior Member

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  14. SueinWA

    SueinWA Junior Member

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    Hmmmmm...... wonder what would happen if you mixed the bio-char with manure and put it underground inside a cow horn? "Bio-char-dynamics"?

    How do you do this bio-char? Start a small wood fire in a large bowl, then add green plants? Besides arrowroot, what might you use?

    Sue
     
  15. bazman

    bazman Junior Member

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    I could only guess sorry, Banana, palm, aloe vera, try plants that hold water or sap like those.

    I'm still looking for more infomation on the subject, this was a pretty good read, only three pages

    https://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehm ... 202002.pdf
    snip
    But by the second year, Steiner says, “the charcoal was really making a difference.” Plots with charcoal alone grew little, but those treated with a combination of charcoal and fertilizer yielded as much as 880% more than plots with fertilizer alone.
    snip

    So working with organic fertilizer and bio activators, this could make a large improvement to most soil types
     
  16. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    The relationship between partly burnt wood and the soil has always been an interest to me. I started with virgin tipra soils like a superfine loamy clay and had remarkable things happen.

    Things happened to those two veggie garden/chook pens that seemed to go beyond just mere compost. The soil was scalded in patches, acidic with little nutrient. After 3 years of chooks and gardening it was fabulous, dark and very 'airy'. I dont ever dig or turn soil over, just drive a fork in and wriggle it. This soil recieved no amendments yet by year 3 was producing fabulous crops of veggies. My normal garden didnt achieve the same results and it had been conventionally gardened with all sorts of fertilisers etc before we took over and would have had residues available to plants.

    This is from an earlier post about compost recipes & woodchip to which I wrote:

    Something was happening in the vegie garden which wasnt happening in my normal garden which was also composted.

    Reading the article in 'terra preta' and thank-you for the post-ers on this. I believe now that those partially burned eucalypt, pigeon-pea and sugar cane sticks must have contributed greatly. I would entirely rake a chookpen before starting a new crop and have a little burn in the middle of the pen. This consisted of a lot of sticks and bits but also a lot of dirt and manure. I only ever got partial burns which didnt bother me as I hooked the sticks out and used them as a base for paths between the vegie beds. I liked the charcoal-on-stick relationship with the soil. Sometimes I reburned the big sticks but most of that residue went on the paths.

    During our wet season here we can get downpours of 4''-6'' at a time so paths need a base so you dont compact or squelch the soil.

    I knew the charcoal stick thing was a good thing to do even if I was the only person I knew doing it. I had convinced myself that my secret ingredient was the manure tea I was making. A later discussion on here proved to me that, because part of my tea process was to solarise the crap out of it, I was killing off all of the really good stuff in it.

    I originally picked the worst-est site for my chookpen and had planned to garden around it but dozens of dedicated wallabies and a dearth of funds made me rethink. So I started my veggie garden in the worst spot but behind 6' of chook mesh.

    At one time we were away for a year and had tenants and when we came home the chookpen/gardens had volunteer pigeonpea & pawpaw and weeds up to 5m high in it. It took ages to get it under control.

    It would seem that everything I did contributed, but maybe now I know why the veggie garden was so productive even when compared to my normal garden just 20 metres away. Maybe the stuff on the paths was doing as much good as the compost on the beds.. :D :D[/b]
     
  17. barely run

    barely run Junior Member

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    Will be interesting to see the results when I burn a big pile of tree trimmings....there is too much to just compost so will do a burn mid winter when we've had rain...(please God)....will try to do a bed over the burnt area and see what the result is.
    Cathy
     
  18. heuristics

    heuristics Junior Member

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    bio char

    Hi Cathy - I too have piles of dried wood to dispose of, BUT - isnt just burning off the piles just "slash and burn" rather than creating partly burnt charcoal?
    I got the impression the piles needed to be buried in clay mounds? or somehow reduce that "big hot burn" of a pile into a slow simmer cold burn???????
    I am asking cause I want to play this game during winter too, it sounds V V V interesting, especially as the wattle and gum branches ar too old and big to compost easily.???
    "
     
  19. Mungbeans

    Mungbeans Junior Member

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    I'd assumed that the Amazonians just dug a shallow trench, threw in the waste and then partially covered it with straw and greenery. That way it would only burn slowly. There would also be a far bit that wouldn't be burnt at all. The unburnt bits are just mulched in. Or maybe I've been reading the articles wrong.

    That would certainly be the easiest way. Clay moulds or whatever would just be too hard to implement over a large area.

    I read another article that said that after a lot of sugar growing the soil becomes more furtile, even though the cane field burning is fast and very hot. Even a small amount of charcoal over time improves the soil apparently.
     
  20. barely run

    barely run Junior Member

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    Like the idea of putting straw over the mound esp as it would reduce the risk of sparks etc....have a small tractor now so would be able to dig a gully and push the trees into it as well.
    Cathy
     

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