I have been gardening organically for almost a half century at this point.
It has been a continuous challenge to raise and maintain soil organic
matter. While it is true that you can raise humus levels over time, it is
also true that the fraction of added organic material that ends up as humus
is very small, and even that is subject to accelerated oxidation under
tillage. The increment of carbon added to the soil with biochar is hugely
greater, and its stability is also vastly greater. I don't think charcoal
can completely substitute for humus, but the functions for which it is an
adequate substitute are impressive and greatly beneficial in enhancing the
value of the land for agriculture and aquifer recharge. Even without carbon
capture to recommend it, biochar would be very worth pursuing. If it can be
subsidized for its carbon-capturing effect, it could revolutionize agriculture.
Joel
At 03:38 PM 8/6/09 -0400, you wrote:
Ryan,
On Thu, 6 Aug 2009 07:46:18 -0400 Ryan Hottle <[email protected]>
writes:
I seriously recommend looking into it before simply
> giving the
> "knee-jerk" anti biofuel reaction.
I have read a lot of the online papers and conference products, including
Lehmann's, and discussed the question with him in his office. He was much
more cautious than any of the online stuff when he realized that I, like
anyone who has studied soil carbon pool dynamics, knew that there are
effective farm soil organic matter building practices that produce the
same results as the effects attributed to biochar. And at the same time
produce food! Which the use of land to produce biomass for biochar does
not do.
biochar
> is
> special in that it is a highly recalcitrant C that is not easily
> mineralized.
The eventual effect of the aforementioned practices over time is to build
a soil pool of carbon that is just as recalcitrant (meaning stable) as
biochar. A fact that Lehman acknowledged. What do you think makes highly
productive muckland black?
> biochar to
> sequester C for centennial to millennial time scales can be
> sustainably
> harvested from all sorts of sustainably managed and harvested crops.
> Short
> rotation willow coppice, saw dust, saw ends, nut shells, storm
> debris, urban
> lawn debris, low-input high diversity energy crops
Using willow or other energy crops does not answer the question, What is
the trade-off? What crop is being sacrificed to grow biofuel on that
acreage? How important is the alternative crop compared to the biofuel or
biochar? In the post-hydrocarbon age, biomass again will become a main
way energy enters our world. Its uses need to be considered carefully.
The other sources you cite - like saw dust - are byproducts that 1) are
simply too small to scale up, or 2) will become valuable for other more
purposes. Like biofuel from french fry oil, they don't amount to a hill
of beans. A Vermont farmer had to collect all the used cooking oil from
as far as he could economically transport it, just to power one small
farm. Hawthorne Valley farm, another producer of biodiesel for farm use
from cooking oil, found that China had cornered the market on cooking
oil from all the local fast food outlets. China! Because of steadily the
rising price of sawdust, our farm will soon be unable to purchase the
sawdust we use, first as horse bedding, then to beef up the C/N ratio of
our farm-scale composting. As the oil age wanes, these are bellwethers of
change in the way all sorts of biomass is valued in the marketplace.
In time, unholistic approaches to all questions like how we use of
biomass will be revealed as frivolous. Every problem needs to be studied
in its proper context. Light talk of energy production using the "wastes"
that currently litter our extravagant agro-, residential and industrial
landscapes will soon be brought to heel by nature's law:
waste=food=waste=food... ...and as food becomes more expensive, what
will waste be used for, biochar or food? Biochar or winter heat?
>And it [biochar production] means local manufacturing and local jobs...
Oh please, this is the superficial level of thinking I would expect from
my local congress critter...
Karl
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