The Dark Side of Nitrogen

Those who have followed my postings know that the solution to this problem (and it is impossible to underestimate the problem) is understood in these pages and been slowly advanced around the globe by an expanding group of individuals.

This article does an excellent job to help you get your mind around the extent of the environmental calamity been produced by nitrogen fertilizer.  The other components are way less a problem. It is mostly about soluble nitrogen and its great mobility.

I have posted that adding biochar which is mainly elemental carbon or strongly reduced organics at the least will certainly grab and hold nitrogen ions in place in the soil until it is freed by plant roots.

This was and is the magic of terra preta in the Amazon jungle.

All American farm land needs to build up the biochar content of its soils to plausibly five percent and perhaps higher to even fifteen percent until the soil optimized as to growing ability.  As I have recently posted it is as simple as producing corn stover to run through a simple kiln heated by a high temperature burner fueled by the emitted volatiles.  There are lots of ways to make it more complicated but that can wait a few years while we treat our soils just as fast as possible.

The Amazonian Indians built stone age civilizations on soils we all thought impossible to work.  They had dense populations for over two thousand years on these soils.  That was totally impossible unless nitrogen was preserved.

The dark side of nitrogen

4 FEB 2010 3:00 PM

BY STEPHANIE OGBURN

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-11-the-dark-side-of-nitrogen

Few people spare a thought for nitrogen.  But with every bite we take—of an apple, a chicken leg, a leaf of spinach—we are consuming nitrogen. Plants, including food crops, can’t thrive without a ready supply of available nitrogen in the soil.

The amount of food a farmer could grow was once limited by his or her ability to supplement soil nitrogen, either by planting cover crops, applying manure, or moving on to a new, more fertile field. Then, about 100 years ago, a technical innovation enabled us to produce a cheap synthetic form of nitrogen, and voila! Agriculture’s nitrogen limitation problem was solved.  The age of industrial nitrogen fertilizers had begun. 

The breakthrough, by German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch (rhymes with posh), made it possible to grow many, many, many more crops per acre. For the last 50 years, farmers around the world have used synthetic nitrogen fertilizers to boost their crop yields and drive the 20^th century’s rapid agricultural intensification.

But in their fervor to increase yields, farmers often dose their crops with more nitrogen than the plants can absorb. The excess is now causing serious air and water pollution and threatening human health. Ironically, all that fertilizer may even be ruining the very soil it was meant to enrich.

Nitrogen, it seems, has a dark side, and it has created serious problems that we are only now beginning to reckon with.

Nitrogen kills a bay

To see nitrogen’s ill effects up close head to the mid-Atlantic coast and visit the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary. Once the site of a highly productive fishery and renowned for its oysters, crabs, and clams, today the bay is most famous for its ecological ruin.

On Dec. 9, 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency’s restoration program for the Chesapeake Bay marked its 25th anniversary. Other than the passing of the years, there wasn’t much to celebrate. TheChesapeake Bay Program’s goal is rehabilitation of the vastly polluted estuary, yet its 2008 “Bay Barometer” assessment found that “despite small successes in certain parts of the ecosystem and specific geographic areas, the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay did not improve in 2008.” (The fight to save the Chesapeake continues; in 2009, President Obama ordered the federal EPA to lead the ongoing cleanup efforts, but groups involved are still arguing over the details.)

A significant portion of the Chesapeake Bay pollution comes from agricultural operations whose nutrient-rich runoff—in the form of excess nitrogen and phosphorus—fills the Bay’s waters, leading to algal blooms, fish kills, habitat degradation, and bacteria proliferations that endanger human health.

The nitrogen runoff comes from the synthetic fertilizer applied to farm fields, as well as the manure generated from the intensive chicken farming on the east bay. Of course, the nitrogen in that chicken manure—some 650 million pounds per year, according to The New York Times— can largely be traced to synthetic nitrogen; the chickens are merely recycling the synthetic fertilizer that was originally applied to feed crops.

This type of reactive nutrient pollution is now so common that the dead zones, acidified lakes, and major habitat degradation it can cause are occurring with greater frequency, not just in the Chesapeake Bay, but in other parts of the United States and around the world.

Bombs away: Synthetic nitrogen comes of age

Nitrogen is ubiquitous. It makes up 78 percent of the earth’s atmosphere. But atmospheric nitrogen is inert. It exists in a stable, gaseous form (N2), which plants cannot use. Unless nitrogen is made available to plants, either by nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil or by the application of fertilizer, crops won’t grow as productively.

The German chemists Haber and Bosch found a way around this availability problem. Originally conceived as a way to make explosives for war, their technique turned inert nitrogen gas into highly reactive ammonia (NH3), a form of nitrogen that can be applied to soil and absorbed by plants. With their discovery, nitrogen ceased to be a limiting factor in agriculture.

The widespread use of synthetic fertilizer took off after World War II when innovations allowed nitrogen fertilizer to be produced inexpensively and on a grand scale. When Norman Borlaug, a leader of the Green Revolution, and other plant breeders began developing and exporting dwarf, high-yielding, fertilizer-loving varieties of corn and wheat, the new chemical fertilizer addiction went global. In 1960, farmers in developed and developing countries applied about 10 million metric tons of nitrogen fertilizer to their fields. In 2005, they applied 100 million metric tons.

This order of magnitude increase coincided with the Green Revolution. Indeed, nitrogen fertilizer is largely responsible for the phenomenal crop yield increases of the past 45 years. Without the additional food production fueled by nitrogen fertilizer, researchers estimate that two billion fewer people would be alive today.

Shifting shapes, getting around

Modern agriculture—and, consequently, present-day human society—depends on the widespread availability of cheap nitrogen fertilizer, the ingredient that makes our high-yielding food system possible. But the industrialization of this synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has come with costs.

The high temperatures and very high pressures needed to transform N2 to NH3 are energy intensive. About one percent of the world’s annual energy consumption is used to produce ammonia, most of which becomes nitrogen fertilizer. That’s about 80 million metric tons (or roughly one percent) of annual global CO2 emissions—a significant carbon footprint.

Nearly half that fertilizer is used to grow feed for livestock. Herds then return the nitrogen to the landscape, where it contributes to several different kinds of pollution—the second cost of synthetic nitrogen.

Synthetic fertilizer is made with reactive nitrogen—that’s what makes the fertilizer easy for plants to use. As it turns out, though, reactive nitrogen doesn’t always stay where you put it. Farmers may apply this synthetic fertilizer to their cornfields, but the nitrogen in it will happily engage with the soil carbon, oxygen, and water in its environment. This is the essential problem with reactive nitrogen—its ability to morph and move around, often to unhealthy ends (see illustration).

http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=http://www.grist.org/i/assets/infographics/nitrogen_pathway.jpg&w=615&q=90&w=615

Estimates vary on just how much nitrogen escapes from fields and remains reactive and potentially harmful, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that plants absorb 30 to 50 percent of the nitrogen in the soil. So if a farmer applies 125 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer to an acre of corn, 30-50 percent of it will end up in the corn; as much as 70 percent—or 87 pounds per acre—could end up somewhere else.

‘N’ stands for ‘Needs to improve’

There is an obvious way around this nitrogen problem: use less fertilizer more efficiently. But there’s not much incentive to cut back.

Farmers get paid by the ton, which makes yields the driving force of modern agriculture. Most agronomists agree that farmers can get the same yields without applying as much fertilizer and manure as they now do. But few farmers are willing to take that chance. Many farmers use fertilizer as a form of insurance; better to apply a little too much and get high yields than apply too little and risk yield (and profit) declines.

 The challenge then is to find a way to provide plants with enough nutrients to maintain high yields while also minimizing nitrogen leakages. This may sound straightforward, but it’s tough to find mainstream farmers who are using nitrogen efficiently and safely. There simply aren’t incentives to do so. Fertilizer is cheap, and polluters don’t pay.

The situation might change if nitrous oxide becomes regulated under climate legislation. But in the climate bills currently making their way through Congress, agricultural emissions are explicitly exempted from any cap. Even if ag-related nitrous oxide emissions did get capped, policies would have to address efficiency directly. Otherwise, a climate-focused policy risks encouraging farmers to adopt practices that simply force the reactive nitrogen in another direction—into ground and surface water, for example.

Farmers don’t over-apply nitrogen on purpose. Nor do they want to contribute to estuary pollution and dead zones. But for 40 years, we’ve invested in a type of agriculture that rewards high yields over all other considerations.

U.S. grain farmers operate under pressure to generate volume, and have little or no incentive to conserve synthetic nitrogen along the way. Under the Farm Bill, commodity farmers get subsidies based on how many bushels they churn out, not how efficiently they use nitrogen. Even when fertilizer prices spiked in 2008, synthetic nitrogen remained a remarkably cheap resource—and corn farmers had every economic reason to lay it on liberally.

In their 2009 paper in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, researchers G. Philip Robertson from the University of Michigan and Peter M. Vitousek from Stanford noted that the cost of applying a little additional nitrogen to a cornfield is more than paid for by the marginal gains in yield. In other words, corn is really cheap—but nitrogen is even cheaper.

Scientists now know that this arrangement can’t last forever—agricultural intensification has come with enormous costs. They also know there are other ways to manage crops and reward farmers. The Rodale Institute’s research on high yield production using cover crops to build soil organic matter and biologically fix nitrogen provides one example of a potential alternative to current practices. But the incentive structure around farming must change.

No longer can farm-support policy blindly push maximum yield. Farmers should be rewarded at least as much for conserving nitrogen and building the organic matter in soil. Rodale’s research suggests that those goals can be achieved without sacrificing much in the way of long-term yield.

Twenty-five years ago, the Commonwealths of Pennsylvania and Virginia, the state of Maryland, and the District of Columbia formally agreed to cooperate with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, in order “to fully address the extent, complexity, and sources of pollutants entering the [Chesapeake] Bay.” As it turns out, the Bay and other nitrogen-threatened ecosystems need more than cooperation to get healthy. They need the kind of political will that will take nitrogen efficiency and impacts seriously—and force actual changes to agricultural practices. And endangered ecosystems need for those changes to happen soon. We don’t have another quarter century to spare.

Agrarian writer Stephanie Ogburn currently lives in Oakland, Cali

Best Practise for Biochar

It has taken less than two years, but many voices are now been heard on the biochar front in support of using the method as a way to best sequester carbon and plausibly gain an advantage from the effort.

There continues to be some lingering concern as to the method’s efficiency for all prospective soils. My answer to that is very simple. First every farmer will want to do his own conformation of the process. Thus after one is able to convert available biomass into biochar one starts with a one acre patch or strip. This allows you to draw biomass from a much larger field and to readily concentrate the input. That way you can take it up to as high as fifteen percent and to test it out over three years. You can also then continue to broadly augment the remaining fields with a very low level of input to commence the process.

Once you understand the effect of fifteen percent, spread the acre out over two acres and repeat the process. This brings the concentration down below seven percent. Again evaluate the effect on the crops over three years. At this point, you fields are likely at one to two percent if you had plenty of biomass to work with and you have a fair comfort about were you want to end up at. At that point you adjust the two acres to the level you want.

This simple process allows the farmer to develop his own confidence in the process and never risk any thing more than a single acre if that. It is a lot less scary than using roundup, and I assure you that most farmers acted just like I described with that. After all, few could read the related scientific literature very well.

This editorial confirms that others are connecting the dots when it comes to biochar. No one has picked up yet on my method of forming an earthen kiln from dried out corn stover and using the roots to form the kiln walls. I suspect that was the method used to expand its usage by the Amazonian Indios. It was not overly necessary in the garden itself but its application would generate a best result for little extra effort. In the fields however, it was a necessity. Maize and cassava were the two principal crops according to the archeological record over the time periods involved and maize is otherwise a surprise in this environment.

Most likely, state taxation drove its adoption and the establishment of larger fields. Thus a method that also preserved fertility was core to the economy.

We so far have no cultural confirmation of the three sisters culture used in North America and little in the archeological record, but it seems reasonable that method also dominated there.

The reason that I bring this topic up is that a family with only the land and no significant tools for making biochar can easily make it with their bare hands if it is necessary and thus secure a patch of fertile tropical soils to themselves. Therefore, it is simple to encourage this technology world wide. In fact, it is the farmers already practicing industrial farming who will likely have the most difficulty in implementing this method.


Editorial

Nature Reports Climate Change

Published online: 2 June 2009 doi:10.1038/climate.2009.53

Best practice for biochar

Olive Heffernan

http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0906/full/climate.2009.53.html

With just six months left to go, all sectors are vying for a place at the table in Copenhagen, where negotiators will begin sketching what should eventually become an all-embracing climate deal. While some players are seeking assistance in adapting to the impacts of climate change (page 68), others are hoping to stake a claim in the emerging green economy (page 72).

The prospects of the latter are bright for those involved in the nascent biochar industry, which plans to sequester vast quantities of carbon in soil using an ancient Amazonian agricultural practice and to sell the latent emissions as credits on a global carbon market.

The concept is simple: if terra preta — or charcoal-enriched soil — was re-created globally, as much as 6 billion tonnes of CO2 could be prevented from entering the atmosphere annually, a substantial fraction of the 8–10 billion tonnes emitted each year by humans. Proponents, who include no small number of world-class climate scientists, say that burying biochar not only would slow the rate of warming, it would enhance soil fertility — and the charcoal-making process could produce sustainable biofuels to boot.

In late May, the United Nations released its draft negotiating text for Copenhagen (UNFCCC document FCCC/AWGLCA/2009/8), which specified that biochar should be considered eligible as an advanced mitigation option under a post-Kyoto treaty. Should negotiators — who will discuss the document over the coming weeks in Bonn and again in Copenhagen — find the suggestion favourable, the biochar industry will unavoidably become a legitimate source of tradable carbon credits.

And why not? Burying biochar could be the closest contender yet for a silver-bullet solution to climate change (Guardian 13 March 2009), in which case its deployment can't come quickly enough. And unlike some of the more technologically complex methods of sequestering greenhouse gases, such as carbon capture and storage, it could, in theory at least, be easily adopted worldwide through small- and medium-scale operations.

But despite its astounding potential, caution is warranted in implementing biochar on any sizeable scale. Though re-creating terra preta sounds simple, recent research suggests that modern-day soils may respond less well to the treatment and that the carbon may escape sooner than anticipated. On these questions alone, all of the evidence is not in. Yet we clearly don't have the luxury of time to answer them definitively.

The recent exuberance over biochar is reminiscent of the earlier fervour over biofuels, as critics have been eager to highlight (Guardian 24 March 2009). But both face some of the same problems — most controversially, the need for land should carbon credits command a high enough price — suggesting there is scope here to learn from previous errors.

What's now needed is an international code of best practice for biochar that evolves as knowledge comes in. For a start, this would clearly define acceptable land-use policy for plantations, as well as a lower limit on carbon sequestered from those claiming certification. Inclusion in a global climate deal will certainly speed the adoption of biochar, but it can also help ensure that this solution is applied responsibly.

Biochar and Commercial Composting

I grabbed this from a post by Mel Landers. It is a good update on the evolving practice of composting and biochar application. A lot of this has been influenced by terra preta in the Amazon. The point is that there is plenty of help out there with the many experiments been conducted. The results have been generally encouraging, even if most of these trials are examples of over kill.

That is fair though. The original terra preta was produced because stable households were established on a hectare or so of backyard garden over time scales that approached millennia and was at worst centuries. These backyards received everything.

Larger fields saw a modest inoculation of carbon to produce terra mulatto.

This was written as a response to contracts been established to recover market waste in several South American cities. The intent is to convert the material into salable compost improved with biochar rather than chemical fertilizer.

This is a good opportunity for you to evaluate what I have suggested for large scale production of dark earth soils. There would be no better organic compost/fertilizer/soil amendment than dark earth soil. You could compare the results with what you produce with your planned procedure. The addition of biochar after composting will lower its usefulness, as any nutrients that leach out during the process could be captured by the charred material during composting.

The addition of biocharr alone is still being suggested for the production of dark earth soils. Although the charred material will certainly make the soil a few shades darker, it will in no way produce anything close to the dark earth soils that were produced in the Amazon basin before the conquest. Charred material by itself is inadequate to provide a steady supply of nutrients for crops. A healthy soil includes a high amount of stable humus. The soils on my farm had a minimum of 5.8 % organic matter content. The dark earth soils have much higher than that and the main organic component is not charred material, but stable humus.

I would suggest, at the very least, a layer of charred material as a base of your compost pile, if you are going to use a hot process; although that would be difficult to maintain, considering the turning necessary in a hot compost system. I do not suggest a hot compost however. Besides, the nutrients lost to leaching, others are cooked away in a hot compost; especially the energy producing carbohydrates that would be used to produce stable humus in an anaerobic compost process. To me, humus is too valuable of a substance to just let its components speed up the decomposition process. It’s worth the wait for the more valuable compost that includes humus.

Please, take another look at the document I composed for the seminar entitled “Humus in the Tropics,” (I think!) it is a long document, but it will give you a better idea of the value of introducing humus into your customers soil. You could excerpt parts of it to make an argument for using a slower process to fulfill your contract, should you decide to use an anaerobic process to produce a compost high in stable humus.

I would suggest the following:

Source as much non-toxic organic waste as you can. If it is contaminated by microbes, O.K. but if there are chemicals…no need to go on. I don’t know what you might have in the way of dense organic matter there that could be charred. It may need to be shipped to you, preferably already charred. Get as much vegetative waste as you can and as much high sugar waste as well, such as fruit and vegetable skins left over from processing. Manure will probably be the easiest component for you to find nearby. It may be fairly high in sugars. Chicken manure is high in Nitrogen, but lower in sugars than cow manure, for instance. But, it is good to add to the mix.

If possible, reduce the biocharr to a powder, or at least finer than chunks. Put everything through a chipper shredder, adding a little of everything before starting back through the ingredients again; rough organic matter, soft organic matter, fruit and vegetable, fish waste, biochar, manure, bone meal…whatever you have. But, if you will be trying to produce a consistent product, make sure you add only what you are sure you have a steady supply of. Course sand would be a good addition to keep the materials loose. The dark earth soils of the Amazon are high in sand, due apparently from the scooping up of river muck during the dry season for its fertility.

Brewers waste would be a good addition as it would give you plenty of yeast in the mix. This will use the sugars to produce alcohol, which will turn to vinegar (ascetic acid). When you begin to smell the batch turning sour, cover it with an impermeable layer or put into a chamber to go into an anaerobic phase. It is this slow anaerobic decomposition which will produce the best compost; although it will take months to compost instead of the weeks it would take for a highly aerobic process. All the nutrients will remain in the biomass, absorbed by the biocharr and also by the large amount of humus which will have been produced by the anaerobic process.

Although worm manure is called lumbrihumus here in Latin America, it is not humus. Humus is produced by anaerobes over months of time, while long chain carbohydrates are exposed to their amazing glue like excrement. It does not glue the chains together. It actually causes chemical bonds to form., producing extremely complex carbohydrate molecules which are quite resistant to decomposition. Humus remains stable in soil for up to hundreds of years. Charred material remains stable in soil for up to thousands of years.

Charred material holds on to nutrients tighter than does humus. The two together are much more efficient as nutrient sinks for crop production. Acting in unison, they are vital for maximum production. But, whatever the soil amendment used, if the producer keeps disturbing the soil, production will not be at its maximum. The continual destruction of mycchorizal mycelia is common in modern agriculture, unless no-till is being used, Even then, fungicides and herbicides take a heavy toll on these fungi.

The other ingredient which is found in all the dark earth soils of the Amazon basin is pieces of fired clay. (in the form of broken pot shards) Fired clay is an even better chelating agent than charred material. When you notice the white film on the surface of flower pots, you know that mineral salts have been deposited in great quantity. But, there is much more inside the pot; in the micro-pores that form as the clay expands during firing. These fill with mineral salts as nutrient laden water passes across from one surface to the other. This can be duplicated in an anaerobic compost if fired clay is present. Somewhere in Europe there are mines that dig up clay bits that are quite similar to fired clay. These would be a great addition, if not too expensive. Broken pots or roof tiles, or ground used brick would work, if available. Though the compost should function well without the clay.

Raised beds are the best option in the field, built with your black earth, high organic matter soil incorporated with the native soil and covered by a thick layer of mulch, With tied ridges every five to six meters along these contoured beds, the producer can harvest 100% of the rain that falls, instead of the 7 – 8% that enters traditionally plowed soil.

Terra Castings

This was posted on the terra preta forum recently and I have lost the attribution. What is interesting is the observation of orchard health and a remaining layer of leaf mould.

Anyway, we are reminded of the power of the earth worm in processing and making soil. Integrating that with biochar becomes common sense.

We already know that it takes at least a full growing season for the benefits of biochar to be fully established. We may now know how to deliberately speed it up.

An earthworm with a diameter of an eighth of an inch travelling an inch an hour (I am guessing here) can process a cubic inch in about sixty four hours. That suggests that a single worm can process most of a cubic foot in a year. It is also a good bet that the earthworm heads for soil that has not been disturbed recently in order to work fresh ground.

Put in that perspective, the earthworm is actually our most important single tool for processing soil and should be actively encouraged.

Terra Castings?

I have recently learned of the use of chitin in worm composting to select for fungi that decompose chitin (insects exoskeletons). Crab or lobster shell can be used, or the shells left behind by mantis, cicadas and locusts.

Though the process is patented, there is no law stopping me from doing this at home.This greatly intensified my interest in worms! Killing larval stages of fungus gnats and root aphids with worm castings!

So I'm thinking about worms, and the use of them for fighting disease and it occurs to me the healthiest orchards I've been in left the leaf litter on the ground. Worm food, complete with any and all problems the leaves may have incurred the previous season.

I'm also looking at bio-remediation, utilising bacteria and fungal symbionts to accelerate the 'organic properties' of badly abused land. This I believe can be enhanced by char amendment, and if the char addition contains the symbiotic bacteria fungi etc needed for enhancing soil biology, it could make it a one step process.

So out comes the mortar and pestle, and some nice char which is pine hardwood and avocado pits gets ground to dust and added as carbon for the worm farm.

Results will have to wait, and it's just me in my yard.

But others could try this. I imagine it will only take a small amount of these castings to make big changes to soil structure.

Of course, the castings need to be good. That is, displaying the range and speciation desired for soil restoration. Bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes. These castings can be tilled in or spread, and also used in compost teas to 'breed' multitudes of micro-herd in a short space of time for soil and foliar application.
With worm castings said to retain 10 times the nutrition of compost it makes sense to me to process char in worm farms and then apply it.

My hope is that this will alleviate the nutrient drain seen in some soils as the char will be 'full'. Also, the setting up of correct biology for organic systems. Terra Preta does not require fertiliser, mulching and compost should be all that is required, recycling the lands wastes, very minimal addition. Soils that don't require inorganic fertiliser have a complete soil food web.

So, instead of loading the char with fertiliser, inorganic or organic, I'll load it with a microherd full of chelated ready to go organic nutrients.

Can also merely change the worms diet to alter nutrient profile of the castings.

Alkaline Soils and Charcoal Success

I had a brief correspondence with Dr N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy from India on his trials on alkaline soils which I am copying here.

I think that sizing is not a particularly critical factor, except for convenience. This is a bit of a surprise as I would have expected that fine grained powder would maximize the overall homogeneity of the soil. What appears to be happening is that the root system responds to the presence of the charcoal even at some tangible remove. This clearly suggests that while fines are likely preferred in special cases, they are not at all necessary.

My reading on the terra preta soils showed that the majority of carbon was very fine grained as would be expected from a corn stover. This also accounts for the high percentage of carbon in the soil. There never was a reason to quit adding carbon.

On the other hand, using wood charcoal is obviously totally feasible with a preliminary screening to create an easy to spread product.

One of the concerns with fresh charcoal is that there is still sometimes a residue of acids that seem to slow integration into the soils. It seems that alkaline soils would naturally offset this particular temporary effect.

The important observation is that from fields that were essentially barren, he is abruptly getting good results. This gives us a simple protocol to reverse alkaline damage to soils. I do not know if the source of the alkalinity is actually removed over time but we now know that it may no longer matter.

The take home lesson is to take your poorest field and get it treated with a dressing of charcoal, however obtained. You will quickly gain confidence and the results will be very pronounced. So far, absolutely no special nonconforming soils have been discovered, but the real test will come when someone tries this out on a salt rich soil. I am not optimistic regarding those conditions but it may still be possible to make something work even there were common sense says no.

One thing that I should comment on, that is not too obvious is that the effect of powdering causes the surface area in contact with the soil to climb exponentially. A simple grind has a huge increase in the availability of active contact. Taking the grind down to the nanometer scale generates a massive increase in effectiveness. The problem is usually that it is not cost effective to reach this scale and I suspect that the biology quickly surrounds the particle, perhaps then inhibiting the effects.

The corn char derived terra preta likely demonstrate this effect when compared to far coarser wood derived charcoals. A soil containing 15% finely powdered as in the terra preta should do far better than our wood based soils of the same carbon percentage.

Dear Robert Klein,

In the alkaline soils, I got very good results for two seasons. The soil condition has improved and expected to get better results in the next 4 years. The charcoal located within a depth of 8 inches, breaks during ploughing and other activities done in the farm. Regarding using powder charcoal / lumps of charcoal, I prefer lumps of charcoal for the following reasons. A part from the reason mentioned by you.

- The recent report clearly shows that the roots prosper about a piece of charcoal.

- Lump can provide better environment

- Lump is heavy so less chance of moving due to wind or water away from the field

- Adds texture to the soil

- Soil microbes and soil fungus would find convenient place in a lump of charcoal and can live as a community.

There could be many more reasons.

With regards,

Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy

On 6/24/08, Robert Klein <arclein@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hello Dr Reddy

I am curious how your experiments have been working out on alkaline soils.

As an aside, you are using wood charcoal obviously. Can you get it to break up in the soil when you hoe the ground?

I am thoroughly convinced that the amazonians used corn stover primarily for their biochar and that would have yielded a finely powdered carbon. Check with me if you want to know how this was done.

The recent report clearly shows that the roots prosper about a piece of charcoal. I actually knew that from my own boyhood. Whoever thought that that would be important?

regards

bob klein(arclein)

Global Agricultural Expansion

This is an excellent overview from Agri-News out of Ontario (my boyhood stomping grounds) of the rampaging expansion of the global economy and its direct impact on agriculture. The slack has obviously been taken out of the system and the period of intense investment has begun. As you read through this, keep in mind my many postings on terra preta.

All the evidence to date suggests that implementing the terra preta protocol will permit a wind down of the usage of chemical fertilizers by the mere fact that they will be held in the soils and at worst recycled there while not escaping to the sea.

While I have been emphasizing the carbon sequestration aspect, since that is closest to my readers’ hearts, I personably am much more excited by the remarkable fact that the soils created in the Amazon are fertile and productive 500 years after their creation with no addition of modern chemicals. This is in an environment were non terra preta soils are only good for perhaps three years.

Obviously, the prime farm lands throughout China and India is a natural for turning into terra preta, as are all the tropical soils that get enough rainfall to permit the production of high volume crops such as corn, sugar cane and cassava.

As I posted earlier, the areal extent of the Brazilian terra preta culture was similar to that of China and India. Obviously the entirety of the Indonesian Archipelago and large swathes of tropical Africa are wide open to the development of a similar agricultural regime. Astonishingly we are addressing the infertile tropics with this protocol.

Of course, it will be first implemented fully where industrial scale farming is taking place and the financial resources are available. Curiously, terra preta is best practiced first by the subsistence farmer (earthen kiln) and the agro industry farm (industrial kiln). The folks in between will need special equipment built for them.

Interesting times ahead for world farming

By Nelson Zandbergen - AgriNews Staff Writer

MAXVILLE Along with its growing wealth and population, China has picked up a thirst for milk and an insatiable hunger for meat and other agricultural products.

On a globe where grain stocks are already declining because of crop failures in Australia, surging Asian demand for all sorts of foodstuffs will have implications not only for Canadian farmers, including dairy producers but serious consequences for the planet as well.

Ted Bilyea, keynote speaker at the 42nd annual Dairy Day conference here Feb. 14, reprised a sobering message he had also delivered at the Dairy Farmers of Ontario AGM a month earlier. Fittingly, his presentation took its name from the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."

And interesting times are precisely what’s ahead for world agriculture and the environment, according to Bilyea, a retired executive vice-president of Maple Leaf Foods and current co-chair of the Canadian Agri-Food Marketing Council.

With earth’s population expected to hit nine billion by mid-century, "virtually all of that growth is going to occur right there," he said, showing an overhead image of Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

As incomes rise in China and India, large segments of their populations are shifting away from the starchy Third World diets typically ingested by the planet’s three billion people living on $1 a day or less.

"Half the people in China are making $2 a day, and three quarters of the people in India are making $2 a day," said Bilyea, emphasizing the importance of this milestone. "Between $2 and $9 a day is when people eat more animal protein, vegetables and edible oils. And after $10, people buy more processed foods."

He maintained that the planet’s "interdependent" agricultural industry will face even more pressure to "intensify" production to meet the demand of the 53 per cent of the world’s population in China and India whose countries have only 29 per cent of the arable farmland.

East Asia alone, including the Korean peninsula, has 31 per cent of earth’s population but only 14 per cent of the arable land, he noted, while China itself has 100 cities of a million or more people. "And those cities don’t grow any food," he observed.

As its GDP rises, China already imports "a lot" of food to meet demand, he said, adding pointedly that there was a lesson to be taken from the fact that Chinese imports are going up "even despite high tariffs."

To further illustrate growing Chinese prosperity, he noted the recent opening of Starbucks 500th outlet in that country "on their way to 8,000" and remarked that those cups of coffee aren’t retailed at a cheaper price than in the west. In larger urban centres, demand for very high-end consumer products such as those offered by LVMH already exceeds the Canadian market. "We’re relatively down market here compared to Shanghai."

Addressing the audience of 150 milk producers, he commented, "These people want products we’re producing, so it’s going to affect you one way or the other."

Aided by official Chinese government policy promoting milk consumption as well as domestic production Bilyea displayed a billboard image of a Chinese child gazing up at a milk-swigging athlete demand for that commodity is "soaring at the rate of one New Zealand dairy industry per year due to urbanization and rising disposable income," he said.

Intensification

Meat and milk production is ramping up in the Third World (particularly South America) to meet the growing global hunger for those products, and Bilyea painted a worrisome picture of the impact on the planet.

Backed by a slew of charts and statistics, he questioned how already high animal population densities in Asia could go even higher into the future. In China, the related pollution has already led to massive phosphate-fed algae blooms visible from outer space. Drinking water contaminated by agricultural and industrial activity is also responsible for "rapidly rising mortality rates in rural China," he said.

That country also lacks bio-security controls, creating the potential for even greater animal to human disease transfer, according to Bilyea.

Meanwhile, 26 per cent of the "ice free terrestrial surface of the planet" is used for the grazing of livestock. Pasture accounts for 70 per cent of the deforested areas of the Amazon, with the implication that ever more of the South American jungle will disappear with the rising global appetite for beef.

Who will produce the wheat?

Compounding the planetary challenge, China has been switching its available farmland 10 per cent of which is now contaminated by pollution, according to the Chinese government into labour-intensive crops things like fruits and vegetables and out of land-intensive crops like wheat, according to Bilyea. Since 1985, Chinese wheat and coarse grain production has dropped 70 million tonnes, "equivalent to the entire Canadian harvest," he said.

At the same time, worldwide demand for wheat has begun growing at a robust two per cent a year, up from the usual 1.2 per cent, he noted. The situation has created not only record high commodity prices but the real prospect of shortages.

"Consumption has outstripped production seven of the last eight years ... We’re all counting on a bumper crop this year and next. If we don’t get the bumper crop, people are not going to eat, because the product does not exist."

Ethanol contributes to global warming

From a global perspective, demand for grains is "not ethanol-driven," said the speaker, though he did identify ethanol production as an environmental problem.

Referring to an article produced by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen last year, he declared, "We now know that ethanol produced from crops that require nitrogen fertilizer contributes to, rather than abates, global warming."

He added, "The more corn and ethanol we use, the warmer the environment will get ... so we’re subsidizing global warming."

Reliance on nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides to feed the planet was one of the major points of the presentation, and the speaker suggested mankind must figure out a way to double food production without a corresponding "unsustainable" increase in those inputs.

Reducing pesticide use falls in line with the demands of consumers anyway, he suggested, showing a 2007 statistic in which only 66 per cent of U.S. shoppers were confident in the food purchased in grocery stores.

Regardless of the science, "what that shows you, is that people don’t want to eat residues," he advised the audience.

Concern over safety and the environment can work to the advantage of domestic farmers, according to Bilyea, who pointed to the example set by the European Union, where the long established Green movement and farmers worked together to achieve a ban on Brazilian beef.

"As of Feb. 1, there is no more Brazilian beef going to Europe. The Europeans shut them off," he said. "Consumers are really interested in sustainability."

Terra Preta Postings - a list

This is a list of posts dealing with terra preta in particular and is meant to help you navigate through the development of my thinking. There are other posts apropos to the subject, but this should get you through it.

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/06/carbonization.html

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/06/corn-cultures-bright-furure.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/06/total-carbon-sequestration-potential.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/06/tropical-soils_26.html

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/07/discussion-with-ron-larsen-on-terra.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/07/human-labor.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/07/those-amazonian-soils.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/07/pollutants-from-carbonization.html

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/07/nutrient-accumulation.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/07/uniqueness-of-corn-culture.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/07/amazon.html

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/08/heat-distribution-and-terra-preta-soils.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/08/getting-job-done-biochar-on-modern-farm.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/08/tom-miles-comments-on-biochar.html

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/08/mel-landers-and-jackie-foo-on-field.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/08/methane-and-pottery.html
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/09/glopbal-corn-culture.html

Again you will see the evolution of my thoughts. It may be best to read backwards so that you always know were I end up.