Tropical Soils

In our last post, we recognized fully how the Indian cultures of the deep Amazon actually achieved the incredible soil fertility still extent to this day. This also informs us on what practical methods now become available for all tropical soils world wide. This is incredibly important.

The vast majority of tropical soils are currently farmed if at all using primitive slash and burn agriculture. And all attempts at any other form of agricultural culture collapses from soil exhaustion. Any exceptions require a huge labor and energy input for the culture to be sustained. One only needs to think of rice paddies. The other major exception is tree based mono culture which is able reach deep into the earth for its nutrient supply.

The rule is still slash and burn over vast tracts of semi accessible jungle. And population pressure has turned this into an unsustainable free for all throughout the tropics that devours the best intentions of aid givers. I have reports from the Philippines, in particular, that illustrate this very well.

In one locale, $30,000,000 in foreign aid was used to reforest huge tracts. Five years later, it was all cut down to produce cooking charcoal for local markets. In this same locale, these highland fields will produce exactly one crop before it goes back into fallow for fifteen years. And we expect a settled village life to emerge here? It is no different anywhere in the tropics.

Burning releases soluble nutrients that that are simply washed away to soil depths inaccessible for short rooted crops. The Indians used to do this in the eastern woodlands with the same tragic results. What saved European agriculture was the fact that the nutrients only migrated several inches and could be returned to the surface with a plow. Most of those soils are severely depleted after a hundred years or so and then require aggressive refertilization.

Now we suddenly have a protocol that solves this problem and has been test driven for hundreds of years in the worst possible conditions in the central Amazon. And the only modification we need to slash and burn is to add a wood chipper and a movable Carbonizer.

One would start by using the produced carbon to prepare a field representing perhaps around ten percent of the area cleared.

The whole field would then be cropped, including as much corn as possible. Again the stubble will be carbonized and placed on the prepared field. The rest of the land can then go back into fallow while the carbon enriched field is operated primarily as a corn field with the ongoing recarbonization.

It should be clear after five years how well this is working out and what are the best ratios to use in the initial field preparation. One then proceeds to convert over the balance of the land in phases to this new culture.

The main point that clearly comes out of this is that the labor is already in place to do this with a modicum of instruction. After all they do cut the brush and trees down in the first place before it is burned. Adding the simple step of gathering and chipping is hardly a chore compared to cutting this stuff down in the first place. And there would still be ample debris left to fuel the normal burn on these fields.

One aspect of the labor issue should be mentioned that is very much in corn's favor. That is that the root ball of a mature corn plant is very shallow and in a prepared growing bed, child's play to pull out. Thus if machines are not available to harvest the stalks, a crew of workers can clear a field easily. That is why I realized that the ancient Indians only had to lay up windrows twenty feet apart. It requires minimum walking and the use of hands only. Even children could do this while the adults threw on dirt. A few days work and your family's field is ready.

What we have is an amazing corn culture that facilitates the sustainable development of all well watered soils and potentially sequesters around a ton of carbon per acre per year. Fine tuning will ultimately minimize if not even eliminate the need for chemical fertilization since most such fields will be augmented by wasteland carbon carrying nutrients drawn up from deep soils.

We have also discovered how to feed another ten billion people while improving the biosphere.

Corn culture's bright furure

The one thing that emerges from our analysis of the implementation of carbonization for soil enhancement is the crucial fit of corn into the general process. This actually comes as a bit of a surprise.

My expectation for plant waste on cropland was very low. In fact, for virtually every conceivable crop, the waste production is at best around one ton per acre. That goes for straws of all kinds. Other types of plant wastes are best plowed back into the field. Carbonization would reduce this down to a couple of hundred pounds.

Corn however produces up to twenty tons per acre which can be carbonized down to a ton of material. In other words, we can count on corn theoretically delivering a ton of carbon into the soil every year. This comes straight out of the atmosphere in one growing season.

It is immediately possible to understand how the black soils in the Amazon were created over hundreds of years. Corn stalks produced the raw material rather than local wood supplies. The farmers likely windrowed the drying stalks in one direction creating a long bundle, perhaps three feet across and the length of the field. These windrows would be twenty feet apart.

This would be tightly packed. The farmers could then shovel on a layer of dirt to seal in the stalks. thereupon the windrows would be ignited and allowed to burn through, carbonizing and reducing the material. After it had cooled down, or more likely at the beginning of the next growing season, the windrows would be pulled apart and spread back over the rest of the field.

This was well within the constraints imposed on the indigenous inhabitants who lived there. The only surprise is that it was never adopted throughout the Americas where similar but lesser soil leaching problems existed in some form or the other. It could be simply that they never linked this directly to soil fertility.

So we have a principal crop that happily sequesters one ton of carbon every year and a modern efficient carbonization process in our incinerators that is easy to use. And the majority of the nutrients are returned to the topsoil in a slow release form. Combining this with an integrated woodlot management system that draws additional nutrients from deep in the earth and we may even achieve 100% sustainability for all former woodland and tropical soils The fact that this was done in the middle of the Amazon for hundreds of years is a pretty good affirmation.

This is actually a pretty amazing discovery. We have a protocol thats fits with established agricultural practice seamlessly and provides for the efficient management of wastelands in direct support of this practice. And it can be mandated and implemented by governmental agency with an expectation of eventual profit by way of a share in wood sales. It also appears to be workable in all but the most arid ecosystems where we should not be anyway until we can harvest water from the athmosphere.

We can also predict that the farmland can achieve a much higher rate of utilization than currently considered feasible. In practice this will not happen since we need other crops and we want to also enhance the soil with other material. However, using a technique that largely prevents the nutrient load from been quickly lost to depth is a major improvement that permits the creation of richer soils over time.

Most farmers will view a yield gain with the elimination of chemical fertilization as an impossible objective. This protocol says otherwise.

Total carbon sequestration potential

We can now revisit the potential sequestration issue. We had already recognized that global arid lands had the potential to hold 500 billion tons of carbon. Now that we recognize that ordinary crop land can eventually hold fifty tons of carbon per acre, it becomes very clear that agriculture alone can eventually absorb over a trillion tons of carbon while supporting a human population of fifty billion. This is likely all the geological carbon that we will ever burn so the ecological equation becomes nicely balanced.

Our only problem is to simply use what we already know to make sure it happens.

One other thing that I have alluded to needs to be addressed. That is the charcoaling or simpler charing of crop waste.

The indications are that this will become a major mechanism for the maintenance of crop land fertility, while also suppling an outlet for disposing of wood waste from adjacent woodlots. The principal tool will be a burn chamber that is setup for the handling of crop waste which is easily and normally collected at harvest time.

Current protocols use straight burning or mulching into the soil. Each is clearly flawed. Burning simply releases all the carbon back into the atmosphere for no soil benefit and the nutrients are released as highly mobile solubles that are swiftly leached away. Mulching, while clearly superior has two drawbacks. The most serious is that the breakdown process often merely releases the bulk of the carbon into the atmosphere because of a lack of sufficient nutrients. Again it is also fairly fast with the same problems of leach loss. More critically, much of the stubble is difficult to work into the soils in the first place. In other words a better way would be very welcome.

Sequestering the nutrients annually in carbon char prevents leaching and the carbon itself will actually take years to break down. On top of that, it should be possible to mix the char with crop fertilization for better management.

The one glaring crop that just screams for this type of farm practice is corn. A field produces between 10 and 20 tons of stubble per acre, which is huge. Reducing that to a ton or two of Biochar would be the best thing that happened to the corn business. Corn borers would be eliminated and the only nutrients lost would be in the corn itself. Since corn growing has always been recognized as very hard of the soils and in need of heavy fertilization, this could be a major turn around.

The real power of this protocol is that both carbon and nutrients are delivered into the working crop bed and held there until used. That means that nutrients lifted up by deep rooted plants are been placed on the surface and kept there. This virtuous cycle will create rich fertile soils everywhere and will eventually hugely reduce if not eliminate the need for any chemical fertilization.

carbonization

I recently became aware of the huge extent of ancient carbon sequestration in the jungles of the Amazon. This is a major eye opener. Certainly, it was hinted at in practice world wide, but to find a locale in which it became practice over hundreds of years is a major breakthrough.

Firstly because it was used on soils that are impoverished solely due to incessant rainfall. The only alternative was traditional slash and burn agriculture.

Secondly, it sustained huge population densities through intensive cropping. The promise of the tropics was realized over centuries of experience.

Thirdly, it becomes possible for us to study these soils in order to comfortably predict outcomes globally. A thousand year long field test beats a thousand man years of theory any day.

This also very neatly resolves one of the problems faced by model farms worldwide. That is, what is the best way to deal with wood waste in particular and agricultural waste in general.

This explicitly informs us that low temperature carbonization is the preferred solution.

Complete incineration is achieved at 600 degrees. Carbonization occurs between 300 to 400 degrees. And the product is sterilized and charcoal like. Obviously, modern practice will do a superior job of temperature control to provide a uniform product.

It is fundamental to the future of modern agriculture that woodlands are operated in conjunction with traditional husbandry. Making carbonization the principle method for elimination of cornstalks and straw and waste wood is hugely beneficial to soil maintenance.

Our model farm can now become an ongoing carbon collector and carbon sink, with carbon been added to the soils in a form that postpones release for hundreds of years.

This means that instead of woodlands retaining a natural load of an average fifty tons per acre and operated fields dropping down to seven tons per acre through normal cropping methods, we can project a system that will ultimately store perhaps as much as thirty to fifty tons in the fields. Recall that the black soils in the amazon were remarkably thick as a result of this practice.

This method needs to be globalized.

Solving global warming through Agriculture

My previous posts focused on the conversion of deserts into an economic agricultural model using modern technology. That served the principal purpose of directing our thoughts to a clear thought experiment without letting ourselves and our audience been sidetracked by non critical issues.

More simply put - One acre of managed farm land can equal several tons of sequestered carbon and one acre of managed woodlot can equal around fifty tons per acre of sequestered carbon. This is around two to three pounds or about one kilo per yard.

We now confront the problem of the current agricultural paradigm. Why convert the desert when we do not have our own agricultural house in order. And once again, the problem continues to be a lack of a viable economic model. How do we fix this?

Virtually every farmer focuses his productive energies on crop production with an annual cropping cycle for simple economic reasons. At the same time, he commonly has tracts of waste land under his care which operates as a wild wood with limited input.

The reason for this is simple. There is no way to capitalize this investment so that there is a way for the farmer and society to benefit. The reason is simply that the time frames involved are far outside those of private capital. This has been the state of affairs for thousands of years with often disastrous results.

It is my contention that this can be completely changed by a wasteland management program.

Such a program would have the following characteristics:

1 A contract would be entered into that would be perpetual in nature between the newly created government agency and the individual landowner.

2 The land owner would contribute the right to manage the wasteland portion of his holdings under a general land management plan but retain title encumbered by a codicil as to fifty percent of the harvestable timber in favor of the new agency. The wasteland is effectively alienated from the crop land.

3 The agency, been able to plan harvesting into the distant future, can then underwrite the management costs over decades. These will obviously include planting and some direct maintenance costs and record keeping. It can also demand compliance, backed up by its direct claim on title.

4 The farmer then finds himself in the position of been able to augment his farm income primarily in the off season.

5 Additional augmentation will occasionally occur because of particular tree species, but the intent should be to avoid a mono culture type framework.

6 Woodland grooming will produce a great deal of waste wood annually. And since natural rotting is an unsatisfactory way of disposal, charcoaling can be implemented as the woodland develops.

It is very clear that a well developed woodlot will contain around fifty tons of carbon. If nothing else were to be done, that is were it could stay. Not a bad outcome at all.

However, we have learned that taking the extra step of charcoaling the waste wood, perhaps augmenting it with fertilizers , then folding it into the adjacent soils under tillage, will sequester the carbon for hundreds of years while providing a slow release source of nutrients. This was the basis of remarkably successful native agricultural methods in the Amazon.

In practice, the farmer is able to use the waste wood by charcoaling, as the center piece of his soil remediation program. This is a major break through in agricultural practice. Over the long term(many decades if not centuries), the combination will maximize the productivity of both woodland and cropland.

It is also easy to see that this method will eventually continue to sequester around a half ton of carbon per acre of woodland on an annual basis for centuries until it reaches a stable consumption/ production balance between farmland and cropland. We cannot predict were that may be, but would not be surprised to find that cropland is capable of holding several tons of additional carbon in this manner.

The fact that the farmer is able to gain the additional tangible profit of enhancing his soils will make him an enthusiastic partner.

A nominal business plan on a per acre basis drawn up in current dollars may look a little like this:

Agency cost - C, Wood Production - W , Agency dollar account - $

First decade C - $5,000, W - 0 , $ - ($5,000)
Second decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - ($2,000)
Third decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - $3,000
4th decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - $3,000
5th decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - $3,000
6th decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - $3,000
7th decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - $3,000
8th decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - $3,000
9th decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - $3,000
10th decade C - $2,000, W - 5 , $ - $3,000

By the third decade, it is reasonable to expect that the operation will generally carry itself. The model will need to be tweaked to ensure that all parties remain happy once that point is reached.

At this time all these numbers are based on guesswork and certainly should not be relied on.

Technical support and manufacturing for charcoaling equipment must also be worked out since the traditional methods used in the past are hardly satisfactory.

This technique can be implemented globally, although it will be best started in the areas of maximum development were a tradition of land title is well embedded and economic predation is not practiced.

Carbon equation

We all need some base numbers to work from.

On average, whatever that means, an acre of mature forest contains about fifty tons of carbon. The figure will go well over one hundred tons in special circumstances, like the Amazon. About two thirds of that carbon content will be held in the soils and one third will be contained in the trees themselves.

What is not so obvious, is that deforestation results in a drop of two thirds, through the elimination of the trees(one third) and soil quality reduction(one third). It appears that crops do not require the sames mount of soil and lose what is not used. Historically, this soil loss has been blamed on bad agricultural practices, which has a certain merit. After all, if you are dumb enough to raise goats and pigs who destroy the sod, you will eliminate a lot of soil in a hurry. However, traditional cattle husbandry is very supportive to soil maintenance. This suggests that most of this lost topsoil is lost into the atmosphere because it is simply not needed.

The obvious conclusion is that simple restoration of natural forest cover were practical is a very good start on solving the global warming problem and something every local government globally can attend to with their own resources. After all, it takes mostly labor to rebuild a woodland.

That leads us to the next question. How many acres of land globally are grossly under utilized, primarily due to the unavailability of ground water?

The lands in question cover the temperate zone and the tropics. The northern arboreal forests are actually maxed out and have seen little human interference and are simply unsuitable for any form of crop growing system.

We are describing Western North America, including the Basin and Range region, North Africa including the Sahel, all the Middle East and all Western China, Australia and a small parts of South America and Southern Africa.

Recall that trees grown on mountain slopes support valley bottom agriculture.

Globally, it is accepted that we have 46 million square kilometers of which 15 million square kilometers are defined as desert, half of which is the Sahara. At least half of this is reasonably accessible to early exploitation and development

Knowing that each square kilometer contains about 250 acres, we can state that a square kilometer of forest land will contain around 12,500 tons of carbon.

Therefore, if all the arid lands were to be forested, the earth will be able to sequester at least an additional 575 billion tons of carbon. We currently are producing between 3 to 5 billion tons per year. Over the last 100 years we have saturated the environment's ability to absorb this carbon and we are now storing the overage in the atmosphere.

This obviously has to end, and the only way it can end properly is to build out the forests to absorb the ongoing fossil fuel economy.

Curiously we can burn all the available fuels for 200 years and in the process completely reforest the earth while moderating the climate. The economy can even stay on a carbon based transport system thereafter by the expedient of converting carbon waste back into oil which is a very convenient energy storage mechanism.

In other words, this may all actually turn out to be a good thing.

Arclein