Food Futures

Whenever I see reports making this slant on the future of agriculture and the apparent difficulties, I become very impatient. In my lifetime, both India and China has doubled their populations and also hugely improved the living standards of their citizens, without having to import a lot of anything.

Yet the same silly arguments were made back then. Agricultural growth is all about access to capital. The truth is that we have only begun to optimize agriculture across the globe.

For starters, let us go to the tropics. All the soils are unable to hold nutrients unless you are in former swamp turned into a rice paddy. Now we know that biochar will grab those nutrients and hold them for us. Therefore five acres of that same infertile soil can begin with hand tools and back work from a family, to produce the three sisters crop. This consists of corn on hills, beans and squash. After the corn and beans and squash is harvested, the stalks are reduced to biochar and used to rebuild the seed hills. This is done over and over again until you have a competent layer of terra preta. Add capital, and you have a thriving community.

In the meantime you have had bumper crops of dried corn, dried beans and dried squash to provide a complete diet. We are describing tons of food. This method was used in North America as far north as Montreal and Huronia on contact.

Suddenly you have a rapidly emerging successful body of former subsistence farmers everywhere. The secret is all in the biochar.

I actually cannot make this point any stronger. I was stymied for years in figuring out how to manufacture viable soils. Biochar solves it in one fell swoop and does it in a few short years if you have a crop like corn to naturally provide dried biomass. The icing on the cake came a couple of weeks ago when a researcher ran a test with rice in a pot filled solely with round charcoal and produced an optimal result. The pot was filled with roots. No one believed that this would actually work in such an extreme case.

It is not an instant solution for all soils but I expect it to be proven a quick solution for all soils. Adding carbon to the soil matrix produces a ready framework for a robust expanded root system that is a dream come true for agriculture.

I lean on corn culture because it will easily produce a ton of char each year it is applied. Once applied in the form of either rows or hills for that matter, each successive application builds up the soil inventory of carbon. In the early stages eighty percent of the soil may be left untreated until the seed hills or rows have been fully optimized. This obviously lends itself to low tillage methods besides, since turning over the soil diverts the carbon into the remaining unused soils.

However all dried bio waste is a candidate for the making of biochar if it is available in satisfactory quantities.

Projected food, energy demands seen to outpace production

Friday, June 26, 2009

By Terry Devitt

http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/projected_food_energy_demands_seen_outpace_production


With the caloric needs of the planet expected to soar by 50 percent in the next 40 years, planning and investment in global agriculture will become critically important, according a new report released today (June 25).

The report, produced by Deutsche Bank, one of the world's leading global investment banks, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, provides a framework for investing in sustainable agriculture against a backdrop of massive population growth and escalating demands for food, fiber and fuel.

"We are at a crossroads in terms of our investments in agriculture and what we will need to do to feed the world population by 2050," says David Zaks, a co-author of the report and a researcher at the Nelson Institute's Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

By 2050, world population is expected to exceed 9 billion people, up from 6.5 billion today. Already, according to the report, a gap is emerging between agricultural production and demand, and the disconnect is expected to be amplified by climate change, increasing demand for biofuels, and a growing scarcity of water.

"There will come a point in time when we will have difficulties feeding world population," says Zaks, a graduate student whose research focuses on the patterns, trends and processes of global agriculture.


Although unchecked population growth will put severe strains on global agriculture, demand can be met by a combination of expanding agriculture to now marginal or unused land, substituting new types of crops, and technology, the report's authors conclude. "The solution is only going to come about by changing the way we use land, changing the things that we grow and changing the way that we grow them," Zaks explains.

The report notes that agricultural research and technological development in the United States and Europe have increased notably in the last decade, but those advances have not translated into increased production on a global scale. Subsistence farmers in developing nations, in particular, have benefited little from such developments and investments in those agricultural sectors have been marginal, at best.
The Deutsche Bank report, however, identifies a number of strategies to increase global agricultural productions in sustainable ways, including:

* Improvements in irrigation, fertilization and agricultural equipment using technologies ranging from geographic information systems and global analytical maps to the development of precision, high performance equipment.

* Applying sophisticated management and technologies on a global scale, essentially extending research and investment into developing regions of the world.

* Investing in "farmer competence" to take full advantage of new technologies through education and extension services, including investing private capital in better training farmers.* Intensifying yield using new technologies, including genetically modified crops.

* Increasing the amount of land under cultivation without expanding to forested lands through the use of multiple cropping, improving degraded crop and pasturelands, and converting productive pastures to biofuel production.

"First we have to improve yield," notes Zaks. "Next, we have to bring in more land in agriculture while considering the environmental implications, and then we have to look at technology."Bruce Kahn, Deutsche Bank senior investment analyst, echoed Zaks observations: "What is required to meet the challenge of feeding a growing population in a warming world is to boost yield through highly sophisticated land management with precision irrigation and fertilization methods," said Kahn, a graduate of the Nelson Institute. "Farmers, markets and governments will have to look at a host of options including increased irrigation, mechanization, fertilization and the potential benefits of biotech crops."

The Deutsche Bank report depended in part on an array of global agricultural analytical tools, maps, models and databases developed by researchers at UW-Madison's Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. Those tools, including global maps of land supply for crops and pasture, were developed primarily for academic research, says Zaks. The Deutsche Bank report, he continues, is evidence that such tools will have increasing applications in plotting a course for sustainable global agriculture.

© 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Corn Gene Doubling Produces Giant Biomass

This breakthrough is good news as it allows a biomass focused growing regime in the Corn Belt. They do not share any expected yield as this is simply too new. Combined with the report today on the advance on using xylose, we see the ingredient for an emergent corn cellulose to biofuel industry that will have a low producer cost base and ample developed land to grow on.

We have never focused on maximizing cellulose production ever and this is a good stert. Other crops like hemp and tobacco should be just as amenable.

There is obviously still plenty of work to do in this field but I am now encouraged that the cost in land and space will be completely bearable. Worst case scenarios were making the ethanol fuel replacement model look impossible. We now are seeing that full biomass conversion to ethanol or perhaps biobutanol will be technically feasible. That means that cost structures and operation scales will be stable everywhere.

Once that is properly settled, then it should be one additional step to develop wood waste as a feedstock also. This would permit the proper use of wood management methods to be possible economically employed in a way that begins to maximize the tree size and quality over the decades. All our hardwood forests can become fully managed and a large section of the boreal forest also as the cattail trade expands into the forest.

Doubling A Gene In Corn Results In Giant Biomass

by Staff Writers
Champaign IL (SPX) Mar 04, 2009

http://www.biofueldaily.com/reports/Doubling_A_Gene_In_Corn_Results_In_Giant_Biomass_999.html

University of Illinois plant geneticist Stephen Moose has developed a corn plant with enormous potential for biomass, literally. It yields corn that would make good silage, Moose said, due to a greater number of leaves and larger stalk, which could also make it a good energy crop.

The gene known as Glossy 15 was originally described for its role in giving corn seedlings a waxy coating that acts like a sun screen for the young plant.

Without Glossy 15, seedling leaves instead appear shiny and glossy in sunlight. Further studies have shown that the main function of Glossy15 is to slow down shoot maturation.

Moose wondered what would happen if they turned up the action of this gene. "What happens is that you get bigger plants, possibly because they're more sensitive to the longer days of summer. We put a corn gene back in the corn and increased its activity. So, it makes the plant slow down and gets much bigger at the end of the season."

The ears of corn have fewer seeds compared to the normal corn plant and could be a good feed for livestock. "Although there is less grain there is more sugar in the stalks, so we know the animal can eat it and they'll probably like it." This type of corn plant may fit the grass-fed beef standard, Moose said.

"The first time I did this, I thought, well, maybe the seeds just didn't get pollinated very well, so I hand pollinated these ears to make sure. I found that just like the shoot, seed development is also slower and they just don't make it all the way to the end with a plump kernel," Moose said.

He explained that the energy to make the seed goes instead into the stalk and leaves. "We had been working with this gene for awhile. We thought there would be more wax on the leaves and there was. But we also got this other benefit, that it's a lot bigger."

Moose tested his hypothesis with other corn lines and the effect was the same. "We essentially can make any corn variety bigger with this gene. And it can be done in one cross and we know exactly which gene does it."

He noted that if you put too much of the Glossy 15 gene in, it slows down the growth too much and the frost kills the plant before it can grow.

One advantage to growing sugar corn for biomass rather than switchgrass or miscanthus is that sugar corn is an annual. Moose said that if it would attract a pest or develop a disease, farmers could rotate a different crop the next year.

Moose said that sugar corn might make a good transition crop.

"We think it might take off as a livestock feed, because it's immediate," Moose said. "This would be most useful for on-farm feeding. So a farmer who has 50 steers, could grow this and use the corn as feed and sell the stalks and sugar. It could be an alternative silage, because it has a longer harvest window than regular silage."

For this sugar corn plant to become commercialized, it would have to get government approval, but Moose said that this is about as safe a gene as you can get. "It's a gene that's already in the corn - all we did was to put an extra copy in that amps it up."

Jack Weatherford on Native Influence

I am reading a book by Jack Weatherford published in 1991 titled Native Roots which does a fine job of demonstrating how critical Indian technology and culture was to the establishment of Early North America. I will leave the details to Jack but one thing jumps out. The major earthen pyramid close by St Louis was the focus of the Mississippian Culture principal city known as Cahokia and joins Giza and the two Mexican Pyramids as the four largest built. At least as far as we currently know, since a number of others are in the process of been recognized.

This is the earmark of a large population base as we have discovered throughout Mesoamerica and the Amazon. The evidence has barely begun to be dug up, but the pre contact Mississippian population could compare to that of Mexico, and it should.

Again it is been consistently reported that all this was built up in the ten centuries preceding contact. The reason suggested is that new more hardy varieties of corn triggered this expansion. I am uncomfortable supporting that claim regarding the lack of antiquity of the Mississippian culture and I once again want to yell for everyone to dig deeper.

Merely twenty years ago, it was impossible to believe that the Amazon may have held populations in the tens of millions. Today it is plausible that the Mississippi could have supported millions. The problem is that the population did not use terra preta to leave a handy map of their lands and what evidence might have existed is long since plowed into dust.

We are reminded by this of the efficiency of successive plagues in wiping out native populations. A first pass will decimate a population of twenty millions down to perhaps three to four millions. A second pass before significant recovery will reduce that to a few hundred thousands. The last such die offs took place here in the nineteenth century along the west Coast and the effects were recorded. The epidemics were a generation apart, but every scourge showed up and took its share. No one had much of a chance and plenty of help was available, regardless of stories saying otherwise,

It is still hard for us to accept the scale of loss, but saying that a hemispheric population of one hundred million was reduced to well under ten million seems obscene. In the end it was nobodies fault, just as it was inevitable.

We have driven the antiquity of Amazon culture back to three to four thousand years BP, and Mesoamerica has also been found as old. We already know that the Lake Superior copper culture is as old. So although the absence of North American corn culture may be real, I do not trust it.

Developing a hardier corn variety is not challenging and they could begin in the semi tropical gulf Coast. Taking thousands of years appears to be a stretch. We will have to wait for the shovels to say otherwise.

One other thing I want to note. These cities were culture centers and their like has now been shown to exist throughout the Americas and was supported by the corn crop in the form of the three sisters self sustaining corn culture. I am not sure that these cities had a separate economic life. If not, then their dissolution could be simply on a ruler’s whim who simply wanted to start over and be bigger than his ancestors.

That means that it is a serious mistake to presume that the earliest strata of a given capital represents the beginnings of the whole culture.

Micron Carbon History Note

There has been a lot of conversation over carbon and the effect of particle size. It is clear that most have no appreciation of available surface area to the efficiency of a chemical process. We are all taught our little chemistry with soluble reagents omitting surface effects entirely.

Most people can get their minds around the idea that increased porosity means more surface area. That is a good start. What is poorly understood is that powdered carbon that can be derived from charring plant material can be presenting surface area orders of magnitude greater than that of wood char that retains a lot of its integrity.

My own experience with this is derived from work done in 1993 with some businessmen, who had contracted with a physicist who had worked in the area of artificial blood. They created a stable suspension of carbon by heating wood at a high temperature and running the resulting gases over a water surface. Gases and powdered carbon were absorbed into the water. A wait period served to allow the lights to remain on top while the heavies settled out. The active and stable center portion was drawn of. The particle size ran to a micron or less and was likely predominantly nano carbon particles. This made me conscious of the real potential of working with various products whose particle size approached this size distribution.

One of the first things that we learned was that a drop of this fluid nicely converted raw whiskey into a fine well aged quality whiskey. It also when sprayed on raw fish added ten days to refrigerator shelf life. In our case we were using it to create micro droplets of hyroluronic acid. The carbon was potent enough to grab the large acid molecules and wrap them up to form a droplet. At least that is what I think happened. We generated a stable suspension of micron sized droplets that acheived superior delivery to the skin surface. Methods such as this are very much in evidence today.

In this brave new world size is all important. Therefore it is no stretch at all to imagine powdered carbon collecting nutrients in a soil and holding them until a stronger biological agent comes along and removes it.

Therefore the best strategy for the manufacture of terra preta surely must involve the charcoaling of plant material lacking structural integrity. Corn, with its lack of woody material and annual nature and huge volume thus becomes an ideal feedstock.

It should also mean that it will take much less effort to create a productive soil if we are able to use such fine carbon powders produced without grinding.

Ethanol from Sugar

Picked up the tail end of an interview with Richard Branson on Charlie rose last night in which the discussions turned to what options are available to us in terms of displacing some part of the oil trade. Richard came down quite strongly on the short term use of ethanol from sugar as a replacement fuel. His first suggestion was to immediately eliminate the import duties on sugar into the USA. This would immediately put all the sugar producing areas back into competition and encourage rapid expansion of supply. Follow this with a rapid build out of sugar based ethanol production and we will have created a major competitive transportation fuel source.

Importantly, the Brazilians have already shown us that it is very doable. A pleasant surprise was to discover that the residual bagasse makes a highly efficient power plant fuel. So we do not have to wait for a cellulose conversion technology to use the rest of the feedstock.

I do not think that it is possible to displace all of our fuel needs by the use of sugar based ethanol, but it is certainly possible to replace some and it can be done quickly. It also directly supports tropical populations throughout the world were sugar production has been deeply depressed for decades. This produces many social benefits.

We now live in a world in which a loss of a million barrels of oil production per day will not be easy to replace from other sources and this is now becoming visibly more precarious with each passing month. Having the equivalent of that production on tap as soon as possible from an alternative source would go a long way to giving us a little elbow room.

The real difficulty is that we simply do not have enough potential sugar cane fields to make a large difference in the long haul. Once oil production has slipped by a few million barrels we will quickly run out of sugar cane fields. At least the yield is apparently several times greater than corn which is a boon. It may be even possible to replace a serious fraction of fuel demand in this manner, although my instincts are suggesting that even several million barrels equivalent would be a remarkable feat. I have not ground through the calculations yet.

The hard reality is that the great oil crisis is upon us, and there are few available options open to us to cover the gap until other fuel sources are made to work. Producing sugar everywhere possible while employing millions is rather a good idea and will keep everyone busy while the problem really gets solved.

I also cannot say this more strongly. The decline in conventional global oil production is essentially under way but this is still hidden from public consciousness. It cannot be so for much longer. The replacements that are available need lead times that are normally not experienced in this industry which means when the storm hits, everyone will be caught flatfooted. It is tragic that we are simultaneously dealing with a grave credit crisis within the US banking system and by proxy the global financial system.

It would be a relief in these conditions if there was enough room through ethanol to hold us over.

Terra Preta Commentary,Dave Yarrow,Gerald Van Koeverden,Larry Williams,Duane Pendergast

I posted yesterday’s posting on the terra preta group and got some good feed back that is helpful. Formating presents my response first before the comment and it was a bit too much trouble to get it the other way around.

_________________________________

I totally agree, but they can be associated with the time of manufacture and can powerfully indicate the principal crops. Their actual presence is actually anomalous for the region in any event, or at least corn is.

What I have been able to extract to date is the pollen evidence for corn and cassava culture. And yes large chunks of wood charcoal should retain cellular information that can support identification. The problem we have with effectively powdered soft plant charcoal is that it may not be that easy and could have been easily overlooked.

I would have screened the material and picked out the nice shiny chunks reasonably assuming this was representative of the fine powder and been totally misled. This is however a question that may be answered by a specialist in this type of identification who is forewarned. Do we have samples to hand and a specialist? Most identification of this type is focused on wood identification.

Actually, my kids have access to the UBC forestry faculty who would be able to do this type of work. They may even be able to char some corn stover in an oven to compare while we are at it.

does someone have good samples of terra preta?.

----- Original Message ----
From: Gerald Van Koeverden <vnkvrdn@yahoo.ca>
To: Robert Klein <arclein@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 2:41:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Early Terra Preta Production

Pollen evidence only tells us what plants grew in the area, not what the charcoal was made from. As you can see by the quote from a study below, scientists have the means of identifying both the age and species of the source origin of charcoal buried in the soil. Its called "soil forensics." Certainly, it must have already been done for terra pretas??

"The charcoal collections were carried out in the main massifs of present-day rainforest between latitudes 15-degrees-30'S and 19-degrees-15'S and longitudes 145-degrees-E and 146-degrees-30'E. All charcoal was collected from locations which precluded the possibility that the charcoal had been transported. Much of the charcoal retained cellular structure, and the taxonomic source was determined using an electron scanning microscope and wood identification keys. All positive identifications belonged to the genus Eucalyptus. Radiocarbon dated samples revealed ages between approximately 27,000 BP and 3500 BP with the majority of samples in the period 13,000-8000 BP."

http://www.citeulike.org/group/342/article/1306925

Gerrit Van Koeverden

________________________________

Hi David

That is good information and like yourself, I wonder if forensic analysis will help us. Thanks for mentioning the three sisters. I have a great deal of respect for the achievements of our agricultural forebears and the corn bean pumpkin cycle is one of the great crop innovations ever. The beans are nitrogen fixers and this allows vigorous growth in the corn. Pure genius. Now if the seed hill is made from corn biochar, I almost believe that we can crop anything.

Weed infestation is fought by close spaced weeding, and after repeating the cycle several seasons, we can expect the infestation to be much less. The seeds in the soil are depleted. Also the only soil turning will be caused by the removal of weeds in these original conditions. This will also reduce the exposure of new seeds.

In other words, aggressive weeding practices can work even in the jungle, as long as you are able to get back in almost every day. That also tells us the limiting factor for these early agriculturists in the Amazon. The problem will be much easier in temperate soils.

Thank you for this input. We today forget the labor cost of freshly clearing and initially maintaining a piece of land. It must be a bitter pill for slash and burn farmers to abandon recently cleared rain forest for lack of fertility.

Regards

Bob

----- Original Message ----
From: "dyarrow@nycap.rr.com" <dyarrow@nycap.rr.com>
To: terrapreta@bioenergylists.org
Cc: Robert Klein <arclein@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 7:25:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Early Terra Preta Production

thanks, robert, for keeping this important discussion alive. the
relax assumption is charcoal = wood. but we need a broader
perspective of likely feedstocks for char production.

35 years ago, living in new mexico, i learned the navajo method to
make pottery by firing the ots in a pit filled with dried cow pies --
areadily available and abundant resource in that arid climate. worked
wonderful. it was common knowledge how to close up the pit, and
create a reducing fire that yielded beautiful black pottery. of
course, before the spaniards appeared 500 years go, there were no cows
in the southwest.

cornstalks make excellent feedstock to make biochar -- or just for
cooking in the kitchen. especially tropical strains of corn, which
often grow 12 to 15 feet tall. i grew some guatamalan corn in my
backyard garden in upstate NY a few years ago in a classic three
sisters garden, and was startled how high the stalks grew.
unfortunately, before they tassled, the frost killed them.

however, my own conclusion is indigenous amazonians used more than
crop residues. fertile soil in a tropical climate erupts with an
abundant diversity of green growth. maintaining cropland means steady
efforts to remove weeds, bushes and saplings sprouting from the soil.
i doubt the indigenous growers -- mostly the women -- practiced the
kind of clean cultivation of modern farmers, where the soil is swept
bare except for the designated crop. indigenous weed removal would
have been more selective and thoughtful.

i would guess that the average amazon field produced far more weed
biomass each year than crop residue. and most of this would have been
non-woody weeds that will crumble easily into dust once converted to
char in a pottery kiln. how can forensic soil analysis identify this
non-woody biochar after 300+ years of residence in the soil?

david yarrow

___________________________________

Hi Larry

This will take a bit of trial and error to shake out properly but I can make a couple of comments. The roots can be overlapped a couple of times to get a thicker wall and better internal packing. This has to be played with in the field until we get it right. The main task is to create a thick enough wall of mud that is still porous enough to permit incoming slow airflow. This will vary with the soil type. The top of the stack can be well mudded of course.

It is a combination of slow incoming air and exiting combustion gases reducing the stover that makes this work. I suspect that slower works best as long as it is not so slow as to allow too much heat loss. It would have to be tended by a chap with a shovel to throw dirt who develops the necessary experience. Recall that a properly managed industrial system takes a good 12 hours to do its job, and then you have to wait for it to cool off.

I am skeptical about even alder since the root ball is not compact, or at least I do not think so. i never tried to pull one or if i did I was singularly unsuccessful. Corn on the other hand is a sweetheart to pull. The disc is perhaps nine inches across and the stalk with leaves is a good inch or so. It could not be designed better for a planned packing procedure. The only question is what packing plan will work best. For that we need to go do it.

Unfortunately i no longer have a corn field at my finger tips, so I need access to like minded folks to do field tests.

The main thing about corn is that we can tight pack the stalks themselves, preventing uneven burning and hotspots that would destroy a lot of product.

I am pleased that you are experimenting. There are plenty of problems with wood charcoal, but after all that work is done to make this very special product we have to actually crush it. This means the use of grinding stones to reduce tons of char each and every year to a usable powder. My sense is that this is way too hard and that it never happened that way. Corn and other soft plant residues completely eliminates this problem. And there is enough corn stover per acre to prove the value of the method the very next season.

A group of harvesters made it work the first time and it was then quickly adopted. I suspect that we will discover that this method was far more widespread that realized but used only occasionally in drier climates. It will take soil analysis to find that out but to date no one has really looked, or has misidentified any powdered charcoal seen.

A microscopic test procedure that we could trust would test that hypothesis.

bob

----- Original Message ----
From: Larry Williams <lwilliams@nas.com>
To: Robert Klein <arclein@yahoo.com>
Cc: Miles Tom <terrapreta@bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 3:04:34 PM
Subject: Fwd: [Terrapreta] Early Terra Preta Production... and a Western Red Alder fantasy

Robert-------Thanks for reposting this information. After making
charcoal with Richard Haard, I can say that it takes a lot of work to
build and manage a firing and have wondered how we could afford to
make a mound type firing with very high priced fuel or no fuel. I am
into efficiency. Richard has followed the work of John Flottvik and
has received a fine grade of charcoal as a result. With many thanks
for John's support, free charcoal is not in the cards in the future.

I fully agree that transporting organics to a distant site makes no
sense or should I say "cents". Currently, we plan to do another
firing of wood in a few months for acquiring more charcoal and to see
what we can learn about the products from a firing. It seem that we
should consider doing a field burn in the late fall with corn stalks
to learn of the difficulties of using stover material. I would assume
that freshly dug damp clayey soil is essential in the process that
you describe.

We live under some regulations concerning air quality and this may
mean that the fall timing of a test may be a problem.

Have you made stover charcoal? It would seem that the stacked roots
would need some mudding to better seal the firing chamber. I have
wondered is there is a fire proof blanket that could be used instead
of dirt if we tried a similar technic using small Western Red Alder
trees as you used the roots of the corn plants. As I write this it
comes to mind that I might be able to use a mixture of hay/ straw/
grass and clay to provide sealed surface to contain the firing
chamber. In local areas of high water tables young and old alder
trees have a flat roots mass. I might be able to use a jute mesh or
stuff the spaces between the roots with hay/ straw/ grass and clay to
assist in holding the surface together because the Alder roots are
not close knit. Using alder as the wood source would allow for a year
round firing potential... a fun fantasy. As you may be able to tell I
am writing as I work out the details.

With a stover kiln, how air tight do you think that it was? I have an
idea that it was fairly well sealed?

I much appreciate your thoughts-------Larry

_____________________________________

Hi

The persistence of charcoal is ample evidence that charcoal resists any form of chemical weathering which makes sense but needed to be proved. Terra preta proves it. It is not resistant to mechanical weathering, however,and the type of corn char that we are proposing would start of been very fine. The remaining question is whether any particles large enough to show cell structure would survive. It is very fragile stuff.

The pottery shards may do some magic, but I think that will be a needle in a haystack, as the clay would be worked on the river bank and sun dried there.

regards

bob

----- Original Message ----
From: Gerald Van Koeverden <vnkvrdn@yahoo.ca>
To: Greg and April <gregandapril@earthlink.net>
Cc: Terra Preta <terrapreta@bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 6:36:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Early Terra Preta Production

Nobody would bother hiring a soil forensics scientist who has to depend on finding perfect specimens encased in ceramics or preserved in amber in order to make some deductions...

______________________________________

Hi Duane

Not as nicely as wood, but it should be possible to take it to the high probability level while confirming the use of fast growing annuals.

Bob

----- Original Message ----
From: Duane Pendergast <still.thinking@computare.org>
To: Robert Klein <arclein@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2008 10:57:43 AM
Subject: RE: [Terrapreta] Early Terra Preta Production

Robert,

I got that the point of the eucalyptus example was simply to point that examination of the charcoal can reveal it’s source, presumably from microscopic structure. I wonder if corn charcoal is similarly identifiable

Duane Pendergast

Global Corn Culture

I have become progressively more comfortable with the production of biochar using some form of corn stack. As each new issue is addressed, the genius of the Amazonian Indians becomes more apparent and appreciated. The difficulties of providing a mechanical assist also seem readily surmountable.

I am far less comfortable using various oven designs and pressure chamber converters to achieve largely the same end with a marginally better yield, yet with an order of magnitude jump in handling costs. My best design concept of the two lung incinerator, while maximizing yield will also demand to be fed year round in order to be possibly economic. And that also applies to pyrolyzers and the like. This means that a minimal 1000 ton per day operation will require at least a 1000 square miles of supply area and all the trucking that goes with that. Tom Miles is certainly not wrong on this.

My single farm modified container will only operate for around a month during the appropriate season and very little in between. It must be cheap and I do not know if that will actually be achievable. The second lung and its controls could turn out to be commercially crippling, principally because an expensive high grade fire brick must be used.

I keep coming back to the simplicity of carefully field stacking corn stover to produce the biochar. We know that this will yield a mix of char and soil representing a twenty percent yield with only a small increase in handling effort. With equipment we can actually build windrows, even driving on top of them to compact the stack properly before covering with dirt and igniting.

The only drawback, which seems to make some folks hysterical is that we lose the volatiles into the atmosphere. Most of this is CO2, while the rest is in the form of a wide range of organic molecules, similar to that produced from a forest fire or slash and burn agriculture. The heavy end falls back onto the soil, while the lights are typically degraded sooner or later in the upper atmosphere. Methane and probably ethane even end up in the troposphere above our atmospheric circulation system.

Unlike forest fires and their like, this process sequesters a great deal of carbon. Which returns us to the whole point of the exercise. Adding charcoal to the soil appears to vastly improve and stabilize the majority of soils. Right now we do not know were it does not work.

This is because charcoal is a strong acid, yet is insoluble. That allows it to grab nutrients year after year and recycle them back to the plants. A minimum amount of maintenance ensures maximal fertility anywhere once the initial effort is made to create the soils.

I suspect that, while terra preta soil manufacturing was the dominant culture in the Amazon, that there is no reason for it to be a continuously applied system in most soils. After all we know that a season's corn production will generate around a ton of charcoal per acre which is actually a lot already. Fifty tons per acre is likely the maximum that you would ever want in the soil.

Thus doing corn with terra preta in normal field rotation is very plausible everywhere. Europe and North America are the most glaring examples that I am familiar with, and I am very sure that this will be another green revolution in both India and China. Fifty years of effort and all crop lands will be well on the way to be terra preta soils and their permanent fertility will be secure. I can tell you that from a farmers perspective, that this is almost too good to be true. Fertility has been foremost on their thoughts forever.

Even more exciting, this looks like a method to restore fertility in despoiled lands were past practice has destroyed fertility and with it the soil's water holding ability. Mesopotamia particularly leaps to mind. Why should the Garden of Eden be covered with blowing salt ladened dust and treeless hillsides.

I am hopeful that the simple restoration of irrigation, can allow a corn crop to be nursed into full growth. Remember that the root practically lies on the surface, so working the top three inches of soil with biochar should quickly restore these soils. The important question is whether the charcoal will progressively sequester the salts and as a result to gently sweeten the soils. If it does not, there are still practical options because of the soil improvement brought on. They will simply take longer to have effect.

The Amazon milieu

Sean at terra preta list (see link) posted the following note

Hi Robert,

You said this again, (and I questioned before whether you meant what you had posted before) ...

"As I posted a while back, the only practical way that the soils in the Amazon could have been created would have been in conjunction with the bio charring of corn stover."

Why do you think the Ancient Amazon rainforest had corn, circa 2500 B.C. or since? I think, like now, that there is far more "rainforest" fauna in that biome (i.e. big trees, in a jungle, like American Mahogany trees, etc.), rather than corn, or maze. Don't you? There surely is now. Is there any evidence that the charcoal in the Amazon is from corn stover? The native soils (without charcoal amendments) in the Amazon rain basin are Antisol and Oxisol soils. These are high in Aluminum Silicates (clays), low in carbon, and very low in organic material (humus) or plant nutrients. Corn will hardly grow in this kind of soil. It's kind of a chicken or the egg thing. Corn can't grow well until you plant it in "Terra Preta" soil - "Terra Preta" soil is made by amending soil with charcoal made from lots of corn?!

Do you have any evidence for your conjecture? Or, are you supposing that corn stover must be the only or main source of biomass used to make the charcoal in the original "Terra Preta" soils of the Ancient Amazon? Why do you suppose this?

Regards,

Sean

This goes to the heart of the problem facing the originators of the terra preta soils.

1 They did not have the tools to physically handle the available biomass. We actually have limitations today. Their solution was as always to use slash and burn. The burn off of the undergrowth would also kill off the larger trees which would then rot out over the next two years or so. Remember, that this is the Amazon.

2 The ash would provide the nutrients for corn and cassava culture. Without terra Preta methods, this would be exhausted in two to three years.

3 With terra preta methods applied to the corn in particular, and a continuing burn off of the field to suppress weeds and regrowth we get the resultant soils with a modest labor input.

4 I emphasize the corn because it clearly produces the several times as much biomass as any likely crop can produce, and it lends itself to the manufacture of a biochar stack. However, any other convenient waste material that could be handled by hand would also be thrown into the stack.

5 Pollen analysis has confirmed the two principal crops of corn and cassava, which ended any uncertainty I might have had.

The problem is that the only energy available to a farm family then was their own. That is the over riding constraint that we cannot avoid.

Terraforming - 1 - agricultural lands

I began this blog to open discussion on the need to progressively terraform the earth. And core to that proposition is the modification of global agricultural practice to achieve that end. It is easy to establish the objective of sequestering CO2 when the linkage to global warming is in your face, valid or not. For the first time in human history a long term weather prediction seems to be holding up.

We have discovered now useful corn carbonization in particular is going to be for pure carbon sequestration. What is just as important, this form of sequestration will also support and restore long term fertility to the soils. I do not know if this will be the whole story, but it certainly switches agriculture from an extractor of nutrients and carbon through clearing practices into a force for nutrient and carbon sequestration.

The next zone of improvement that needs implemention is the true application of agricultural protocols to woodlands in general. It has always been a long cycle economic problem that society has chosen to ignore. It seemed easier to let nature take its course regardless of the degradation visited on the land by the owners. We have spoke earlier of the need to create a long term partnership with local agencies and landowners that is mandated by legislation and funded on a very long term basis to create mutual wealth. It takes political will, yet is likely the best economic solution for all stakeholders and we can expect that the carbon content will be optimized inside of 1oo years.

Fundamentally all the lands under direct human agricultural use where sufficient moisture is available can be brought under these two specific protocols with a major improvement in fertility and carbon uptake. And they should be.