Biochar Part 1 - Don Slater

Don Slater explains the benefits of Biochar.
The existence of an anthropogenic and carbon (C) enriched dark soil in different parts of the world and especially in Amazonia (Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) or Terra Preta de Índio) proves that the predominant Ferralsols and Acrisols can be transformed into fertile soils. Charcoal formation and deposition in soils seems to be a promising option to transfer an easily decomposable biomass into refractory soil organic matter (SOM) pools. The production of charcoal for soil amelioration purposes (slash and char) out of the aboveground biomass (secondary forest and crop residues) instead of converting it to carbon dioxide (CO2) through burning (slash and burn) could establish a C sink and could be an important step towards sustainability and SOM conservation in tropical agriculture.
www.biochar.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• biochar
• eldorado
• permaculture
• peak
• oil

[panstriato2]

Biochar does not need to be finelly divided, big chunks can have severall functions like avoiding wind erotion if used as mulch.

Biochar is any charcoal custom made for agricultural use.

[panstriato2]

@tigerone1970 You are right, but even put straight it does get bioactive as microbes and fungi use it as refugee and search for condensates inside the charcoal.

Whether it is best to inoculate all the charcoal in compost before or not depends on the particular situation.

Cheers!

[skybluskyblueify]

I cannot hear the interviewer's questions. :(

[IrlDave71]

Have you tried to make charcoal using an Adam Retort? It is said to be much more efficient than traditional methods.

[tigerone1970]

Perhaps you would have more success if you ran your char through a compost heap first.

If it is bioactivity you want, why put it into the soil straight?

[tigerone1970]

Gorilla habitat is being destroyed from burning charcoal?

Where does she get her information?

Google: logging blattner drc

and watch Carving Up The Congo.

[dektronic07]

biochar could help farmers to deal with droughts by improving the water reserves in their soil, increasing water retention, and reducing water loss- meaning that they would habve more water in their soil when the drought began, and would be able to make less water go further during the drought as less fo it would simply wash out of the soil or be evaporated by the sun. I imagine the dark color of the biochar particles would also help reduce the severity of early/late cold snaps on crops too...

[dektronic07]

This could help to drastically improve soil fertilities, especially in the depleted/eroded soils of many developing nations, thus making a drastic difference in fighting world hunger. As biochar not only improves soil biology, nutrient retention, and soil strucutre, but also improves water retention and reduces water loss due to evaporation (most of which occurs from direct exposure of water in soil to light, which the dark color of biochar helps prevent), biochar could help farmers to deal...

[dektronic07]

This could, just as importantly as the employment aspect, go a long way towards helping to halt the accumulation of Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) in the atmosphere, and fighting world hunger. the major problem of world agriculture right now is often not that farmers in developing countries are theoretically incapable of producing enough food to feed the local populations, but rather that they cannot afford the technologies, resources, and infrastrucutre needed to porduce enough food. This could...

[dektronic07]

What's all this about large scale operations being a drawback? With a technology like this, where there is the potential of release of carcinogens into the atmosphere if it is not done right, you'd almost want to see things be more centralized to make sure it is being done safely and cleanly. Still, the level of centralization for something like this would probably end up being fairly low (small regional processing plants scattered over local communities, I would suspect). This could, more...