Vanada Shiva on Agricultural use of Oil

This is an excellent article that largely reflects many of my positions and feels as strongly about the importance of soil as I do.

The rise of industrial agriculture was a result of the low esteem and poor working conditions given farm labor that drove them from the farm and into the cities. That disappearing work force was replaced by mechanization which worked best with the various forms of monoculture. The resulting problem is the removal of flexibility and soil degradation.

A man squeezing his living out of a ten thousand acre field is not keen to pick up a hoe.

This has to and must change in a way that makes occasional labor readily available so that superior methods may be deployed. Recall that millions made a living on the tropical soils of the Amazon without metal and likely cropping less than a hectare per family. They are shown to have made a very healthy living.

I have posted on the idea of the integrated modern urban high-rise farm commune as a mechanism able to provide economic advantage to families living in close support of a farm operation. The modern world is making this concept feasible and will completely change the way the majority of humanity lives and works, while ending the disfunctionality of the historic urban solution.

Farm based fuels will be easy to produce. In particular wetland cattails are a huge source of starch (30 dry tons per acre) that can be converted to ethanol and cattle fodder.

The industrialization of agriculture will not end as much as diversify into many forms of specialist tools to handle the expanding variety of crops and animals. The human back is very limited and needs augmenting.

The advent of biochar will halt and reverse the current degradation been visited on modern farm fields by the simple medium of sequestering nutrients until used. Normal rooting and no till practices will then quickly replenish humus in the soils.

Soil Not Oil: Why We Need to Kick Petroleum Out of Our Farms

By Vandana Shiva, South End Press. Posted December 3, 2008.
Biodiverse farms offer us more food, better food, higher incomes for farmers and a defense from climate disasters.

The following is an excerpt from Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis by Vandana Shiva (South End Press, 2008).

The industrialized, globalized food system is based on oil. It is under threat because of the inevitability of "peak oil." It is also under threat because it is more vulnerable than traditional agriculture to climate change, to which it has contributed. Industrial agriculture is based on monocultures. Monocultures are highly vulnerable to changes in climate, and to diseases and pests.

In 1970 and 1971, America's vast corn belt was attacked by a mysterious disease, later identified as ''race T" of the fungus Helminthosporium maydis, causing the southern corn leaf blight, as the epidemic was called. It left ravaged cornfields with withered plants, broken stalks, and malformed or completely rotten cobs. The strength and speed of the blight was a result of the uniformity of the hybrid corn, most of which had been derived from a single Texas male sterile line. The genetic makeup of the new hybrid corn, which was responsible for its rapid and large-scale breeding by seed companies, was also responsible for its vulnerability to disease. At least 80 percent of the hybrid corn in America in 1970 contained the Texas male sterile cytoplasm. As a University of Iowa pathologist wrote, "Such an extensive, homogenous acreage is like a tinder-dry prairie waiting for a spark to ignite it."

Industrial agriculture is dependent on chemical fertilizers. Chemically fertilized soils are low in organic matter. Organic matter helps conserve the soil and soil moisture, providing insurance against drought. Soils lacking organic matter are more vulnerable to drought and to climate change. Industrial agriculture is also more dependent on intensive irrigation. Since climate change is leading to the melting of glaciers that feed rivers, and in many regions of the world to the decline in precipitation and increased intensity of drought, the vulnerability of industrial agriculture will only increase. Finally, since the globalized food system is based on long-distance supply chains, it is vulnerable to breakdown in the context of extreme events of flooding, cyclones, and hurricanes. While aggravating climate change, fossil fuel-dependent industrialized, globalized agriculture is least able to adapt to the change.

We need an alternative. Biodiverse, organic farms and localized food systems offer us security in times of climate insecurity, while producing more food, producing better food, and creating more livelihoods. The industrialized, globalized food system is based on oil; biodiverse, organic, and local food systems are based on living soil. The industrialized system is based on creating waste and pollution; a living agriculture is based on no waste. The industrialized system is based on monocultures; sustainable systems are based on diversity.

Living Soil

Every step in building a living agriculture sustained by a living soil is a step toward both mitigating and adapting to climate change. Over the past 20 years, I have built Navdanya, India's biodiversity and organic-farming movement. We are increasingly realizing there is a convergence between the objectives of conserving biodiversity, reducing climate-change impact, and alleviating poverty.

Biodiverse, local, organic systems reduce water use and risks of crop failure due to climate change. Increasing the biodiversity of farming systems can reduce vulnerability to drought. Millet, which is far more nutritious than rice and wheat, uses only 200 to 300 millimeters of water, compared with the 2,500 millimeters needed for Green Revolution rice farming. India could grow four times the amount food it does now if it were to cultivate millet more widely. However, global trade is pushing agriculture toward GM monocultures of corn, soy, canola, and cotton, worsening the climate crisis.

Biodiversity offers resilience to recover from climate disasters. After the Orissa supercyclone of 1998, and the tsunami of 2004, Navdanya distributed seeds of saline-resistant rice varieties as "Seeds of Hope" to rejuvenate agriculture in lands that were salinated as a result of flooding from the sea. We are now creating seed banks of drought-resistant, flood-resistant, and saline-resistant seed varieties to respond to such extreme climate events. Climate chaos creates uncertainty. Diversity offers a cushion against both climate extremes and climate uncertainty. We need to move from the myopic obsession with monocultures and centralization to diversity and decentralization.

Diversity and decentralization are the dual principles needed to build economies beyond oil and to deal with the climate vulnerability that is the legacy of the age of oil. In addition to reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience, biodiverse organic farming also produces more food and higher incomes. As David Pimentel has pointed out: "Organic farming approaches for maize and beans in the US not only use an average of 30% less fossil energy but also conserve more water in the soil, induce less erosion, maintain soil quality, and conserve more biological resources than conventional farming does."

After Hurricane Mitch struck Central America in 1998, farmers who practiced biodiverse organic farming found they had suffered less damage than those who practiced chemical agriculture. The ecologically farmed plots had on average more topsoil, greater soil moisture, and less erosion, and the farmers experienced less severe economic losses.

Fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture moves carbon from the soil to the atmosphere. Ecological agriculture takes carbon from the atmosphere and puts it back in the soil. If 10,000 medium-sized US farms converted to organic farming, the emissions reduction would be equivalent to removing over 1 million cars from the road. If all US croplands became organic it would increase soil-carbon storage by 367 million tons and would cut nitrogen oxide emissions dramatically. Organic agriculture contributes directly and indirectly to reducing CO2 emissions and mitigating the negative consequences of climate change.

Navdanya's work over the past 20 years has shown that we can grow more food and provide higher incomes to farmers without destroying the environment and killing peasants. We can lower the costs of production while increasing output. We have done this successfully on thousands of farms and have created a fair, just, and sustainable economy. The epidemic of farmer suicides in India is concentrated in regions where chemical intensification has increased costs of production. Farmers in these regions have become dependent on non-renewable seeds, and monoculture cash-crops are facing a decline in prices due to globalization. This is affecting farmers' incomes, leading to debt and suicides. High costs of production are the most significant reason for rural indebtedness.

Biodiverse organic farming creates a debt-free, suicide-free, productive alternative to industrialized corporate agriculture and brings about a number of benefits. It leads to increased farm productivity and farm incomes, while lowering costs of production. Pesticide-free and chemical-free production and processing bring safe and healthy food to consumers. We must protect the environment, farmers' livelihoods, public health, and people's right to food.

We do not need to go the Monsanto way. We can go the Navdanya way. We do not need to end up in food dictatorship and food slavery. We can create our food freedom. Biodiverse, organic, and local food systems help mitigate climate change by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and increasing absorption of CO2 by plants and by the soil.

Organic farming is based on the recycling of organic matter; industrial agriculture is based on chemical fertilizers that emit nitrous oxides. Industrial agriculture dispossesses small farmers and converts small farms to large holdings that need mechanization, which further contributes to CO2 emissions. Small, biodiverse, organic farms, especially in third world countries, can be totally fossil fuel-free. The energy for farming operations comes from animals.

Soil fertility is built by recycling organic matter to feed soil organisms. This reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Biodiverse systems are also more resilient to droughts and floods because they have a higher water-holding capacity, making them more adaptable to the effects of climate change. Navdanya's study on climate change and organic farming has indicated that organic farming increases carbon absorption by up to 55 percent and water-holding capacity by 10 percent.

The environmental advantages of small-scale, biodiverse organic farms do not come at the expense of food security. Biodiverse organic farms produce more food and higher incomes than industrial monocultures. Mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity, and increasing food security go hand in hand.

The conventional measures of productivity focus on labor as the major input (and the direct labor on the farm at that) and externalize many energy and resource inputs. This biased productivity pushes farmers off the land and replaces them with chemicals and machines, which in turn contribute to greenhouse gases and climate change. Further, industrial agriculture focuses on producing a single crop that can be globally traded as a commodity. The focus on "yield" of individual commodities creates what I have called a "monoculture of the mind." The promotion of so-called high-yielding varieties leads to the displacement of biodiversity. It also destroys the ecological functions of biodiversity. The loss of diverse outputs is never taken into account by the one-dimensional calculus of productivity.

When the benefits of biodiversity are taken into account, biodiverse systems have higher output than monocultures. And organic farming is more beneficial for the farmers and the earth than chemical farming. When agro-forestry is included in farming systems, carbon absorption and carbon return increase dramatically. Date palm and neem increase the carbon density in the soil by 175 and 185 percent, respectively.

Studies carried out by the USDA's National Agroforestry Center suggest that soil carbon can be increased by 6.6 tons per hectare per year over a 15-year rotation and wood by 12.22 tons per hectare per year. Since both soil and biomass sequester carbon, this amounts to removing 18.87 tons of carbon per hectare per year from the atmosphere.

Soil and vegetation are our biggest carbon sinks. Industrial agriculture destroys both. By disrupting the cycle of returning organic matter to the soil, chemical agriculture depletes the soil carbon. Mechanization forces the cutting down of trees and hedgerows.

Organic manure is food for the community of living beings that depend on the soil. The alternatives to chemical fertilizers are many: green manures such as sesbania aculeata (dhencha), gliricidia, and sun hemp; legume crops such as pulses, which fix nitrogen through legume-rhizobium symbiosis; earthworms; cow dung; and composts. Farmyard manure encourages the buildup of earthworms by increasing their food supply. Soils treated with farmyard manure have from two to two and a half times as many earthworms as untreated soils. Earthworms contribute to soil fertility by maintaining soil structure, aeration, and drainage. They break down organic matter and incorporate it into the soil.

The work of earthworms in soil formation was Darwin's major concern in his later years. Of worms he wrote, "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of creatures." The little earthworm working invisibly in the soil is the tractor, the fertilizer factory, and the dam combined. Worm-worked soils are more water-stable than unworked soils, and worm-inhabited soils have considerably more organic carbon and nitrogen than the original soil. Their continuous movement forms channels that help in soil aeration. It is estimated that they increase the air volume of soil by up to 30 percent.

Soils with earthworms drain four to ten times faster than those without, and their water-holding capacity is higher by 20 percent. Earthworm castings, which can amount to 4 to 36 tons per acre per year, contain five times more nitrogen, seven times more phosphorus, three times more exchangeable magnesium, 11 times more potash, and one and a half times more calcium than soil. Their work on the soil promotes the microbial activity essential to the fertility of most soils.

At the Navdanya farm in Doon Valley, we have been feeding the soil organisms. They in turn feed us. We have been building soil and rejuvenating its life. The clay component on our farm is 41 percent higher than those of neighboring chemical farms, which indicates a higher water-holding capacity. There is 124 percent more organic-matter content in the soil on our farm than in soil samples from chemical farms. The nitrogen concentration is 85 percent higher, the phosphorus content 10 percent higher, and the available potassium 25 percent higher.

Our farm is also much richer in soil organisms such as mycorrhiza, which are fungi that bring nutrients to plants. Mycorrhizal association makes food material from the soil available to the plant. Our crops have no diseases, our soils are resilient to drought, and our food is delicious, as any visitors to our farm can vouch. Our farm is fossil fuel-free. Oxen plow the land and fertilize it.

By banning fossil fuels on our farm we have gained real energy-the energy of the mycorrhiza and the earthworm, of the plants and animals, all nourished by the energy of the sun.

Doubling Crop Production

This item came out last summer and is a report on a field trial using biochar in Australia. Most importantly they mixed biochar at the rate of ten tons per acre. This is equivalent to any likely protocol that will be used by farming over a ten to twenty year cycle with corn or bagasse or any other natural biomass source to achieve the same result..

The yield doubled over all obvious variations on soils that are known to be somewhat infertile and even slightly toxic. This confirms the contention that all soils can likely be optimized to full optimal fertility throughout the globe. This is an astounding idea. We already know it works in the impossible rainforest environment and now we know it can be used on the unforgiving semi tropical nutrient depleted Australian soils.

Prior work supporting this contention came from the work done on zeolites by the Cubans. Zeolites and carbon are also known, if activated, as solid crystalline acids. So it comes as no surprise that enrichment with a strong dose of char will reconstitute soil biome in way that strongly supports general fertility.

I have already suggested that at the subsistence level of agriculture, char can be distributed in hills, reducing the initial dilution with soil for maximum initial utility. The char itself can be made up in a drum, if the supply is small or alternately in an earthen kiln best made from corn stover using the root pads to build the outer shell.
In large scale operations with an industrial kiln available, it is likely best to convert a small sub field each year to full terra preta status.

As I have been posting, this soil revolution will optimize every farm field on earth and lead to a possible near doubling of global production just on the lands we now use. The real payoff will be in the tropics were this method, perhaps using earthen kilns, will allow tropical soils to be fully exploited rather than present slash and burn.

There are very few places on earth where maximum fertility is achieved. I likely live in one of them. But I have walked over many hungry looking fields and have seen many areas that screamed for fertility management. One memory was driving through Germany any seeing a lone straggling blackberry vine in the fencerow. Later that afternoon, my uncle showed me his prize blackberry vine in his garden. In the Fraser Valley, black berry vines inundate the empty spaces if given half a chance producing true impenetrable barbed jungles. Yet the climate is just as benign in Germany. The only difference is a thousand years of hard cropping.

In short, even without watering the deserts, the world can handle a population of ten to twenty billion with this knowledge.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Research confirms biochar in soils boosts crop yields

New research confirms the huge and revolutionary potential of soils to reduce greenhouse gases on a large scale, increase agricultural production while at the same time delivering carbon-negative biofuels based on feedstocks that require less fertilizer and water. Trials at Australia's New South Wales Department of Primary Industries’ (DPI) Wollongbar Agricultural Institute show that crops grown on agrichar-improved soils received a major boost. The findings come at a time when carbon-negative bioenergy is becoming one of the most widely debated topics in the renewable energy and climate change community.

The Australian trials of 'agrichar' or 'biochar' have doubled and, in one case, tripled crop growth when applied at the rate of 10 tonnes per hectare. The technique of storing agrichar in soils is now seen as a potential saviour to restore fertility to depleted or nutrient-poor soils (especially in the tropics), and as a revolutionary technique to mitigate climate change. Moreover, agrichar storage in soils is a low-tech practise, meaning it can be implemented on a vast scale in the developing world, relatively quickly.

Agrichar is a black carbon byproduct of a process called pyrolysis, which involves heating biomass without oxygen to generate renewable energy. Pyrolysis of biomass results in the production of bio-oil, that can be further refined into liquid biofuels for transport (earlier post, on Dynamotive's trials). When the agrichar is consequently sequestered into soils, the biofuels become carbon-negative - that is, they take more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than they release. This way, they can clean up our past emissions. No other renewable energy technology has both the advantages of being carbon-negative while at the same time being physically tradeable.

The biochar sequestration technique is now confirmed to boost soil fertility while storing carbon long-term. New South Wales Department of Primary Industries' senior research scientist Dr Lukas Van Zwieten said soils naturally turn over about 10 times more greenhouse gas on a global scale than the burning of fossil fuels.

“So it is not surprising there is so much interest in a technology to create clean energy that also locks up carbon in the soil for the long term and lifts agricultural production,” he said.

Multiple benefits

The trials at Wollongbar have focused on the benefits of agrichar to agricultural productivity: “When applied at 10t/ha, the biomass of wheat was tripled and of soybeans was more than doubled,” said Dr Van Zwieten. This percentage increase remained the same when applications of nitrogen fertiliser were added to both the agrichar and the control plots. For the wheat, agrichar alone was about as beneficial for yields as using nitrogen fertiliser only. And that is without considering the other benefits of agrichar.

Regarding soil chemistry, Dr Van Zwieten said agrichar raised soil pH at about one-third the rate of lime, lifted calcium levels and reduced aluminium toxicity on the red ferrosol soils of the trial. Soil biology improved, the need for added fertiliser reduced and water holding capacity was raised. The trials also measured gases given off from the soils and found significantly lower emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas more than 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide):

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.