30 replies to this topic

[weedRampage]

I object to biochar on two grounds.

The first objection is that it is just a continuation of current farming practices that seek to utilize the farmland as a hydroponic medium. Hydroponics is a wasteful and polluting form of farming.  Any claim that using biochar is restoring the natural system is totally bogus. This is a crude forcing of the land to produce in total disregard of nature. 

 

Secondly and most importantly there are those who seek to exploit a bad situation for personal gain. If biochar gains any sort of credibility as a carbon sequestration method then we will be seeing mining companies ploughing coal dust into farmland to claim their carbon credits. The farmland treated thus will be polluted with lead and mercury for ever. 

 

A viable biological system produces tonnes of everything with no inputs. 

[weedRampage]

That said biochar does increase the water retention and nutrient exchange of a soil and make it more productive.

 

I have just made a decision to be against wholesale adoption of biochar as a solution because.....

well because a bag of biochar is claiming to supplant me in my area of expertise. 

Years of study and practical experience have put me in a position to define what soil structure is,

where it comes from,

why it is important,

and so on. 

I look forward to there being more of a critical mass of people working to develop the "new agriculture" and I 

feel like unfettered enthusiasm for bags of stuff is diverting attention and resources from what I personally 

want to achieve. 

 

One of the gems I got from a lecturer was...

"Organic farming produces half of the worlds food but its not a viable system"

hmmmm...

He then goes on to tell the young son of a farmer "Your family will have to sell their farm

because there is no way to reverse the decline of your agricultural system."

This is the type of wisdom being dished out in the universities. 

In all of the highly populated areas of the world they have been farming organically for 

thousands of years. 

One hundred years of the petroleum miracle has created temporary windfalls for some,

environmental destruction for many more, and senseless loss of generational knowledge.

 

It is a process that is still going on, fuelled by an expansion in monetary credit. 

Rather than bothering to invest time and energy learning the traditional farming

practises that are semi organic and sensibly conservative the next generation of

farmers are being sold into failure by the chemical companies and the banks.

Management is not about throwing truckloads of cash around. 

[Halcyon Daze]

Can you tell us more about your work and ideas/theories weedRampage, sounds really interesting

[SallyD]

I object to biochar on two grounds.

The first objection is that it is just a continuation of current farming practices that seek to utilize the farmland as a hydroponic medium. Hydroponics is a wasteful and polluting form of farming.  Any claim that using biochar is restoring the natural system is totally bogus. This is a crude forcing of the land to produce in total disregard of nature. 

 

Secondly and most importantly there are those who seek to exploit a bad situation for personal gain. If biochar gains any sort of credibility as a carbon sequestration method then we will be seeing mining companies ploughing coal dust into farmland to claim their carbon credits. The farmland treated thus will be polluted with lead and mercury for ever. 

 

A viable biological system produces tonnes of everything with no inputs. 

So what's the logic behind biochar use and the parallels to hydroponics ?

I agree that modern agriculture is in many ways synonymous to hydroponics but I don't see biochar being an accesory to that. Large scale agriculture will almost always rely on NPK and the biochar is seen as a way to make those nutrients more cost effective so they actually use less.

Biochar - especially on acid soils can improve the PH of the soil, correct the soils CEC, act as a wetting agent, improve nutrient cycling, supply carbon and revitalise the soil food web. All those factors greatly reduce the need for fertilisers of any kind.

What if the biochar is used in an organic system that's managed responsibly ?

[weedRampage]

Yes like I said I totally agree that it improves the growing potential of the soil in a lasting way but in an artificial way.

The soil and the communities of plants, fungi, bacteria, collembola, nematodes, acari and algae are a living thing that is

not something you can put in a bag. Every aspect of our biosphere was intentionally created by some organism or another.

If the stromatolites had not created our atmosphere of oxygen the air would be full of heavy metal hydrides and most things

would mutate and die before they had a chance to evolve any structures of use. Organisms everywhere are battling unbelievable

odds to create the right balance of clean air and water and micronutrient availability. 

The soil is from 5-10% Iron but Iron availability is the limiting factor in all biological systems. A fungus creates a large complex molecule

just to capture a single atom of Iron. The solubility of iron is so low that it reminds me of the recipe for homeopathics, one atom/molecule

in a sphere the size of the orbit of Jupiter. 

 

What I am saying here is that all of the things that biochar does are done better by biological systems for free. 

If you farm without utilizing the biological system then you will just have a dead, energy and inputs hungry system.

There is a lot of big money going into researching the potential of biochar and I am glad to say that the science has

prevailed. Even carbon sequestration in farmland, which was being pushed by the big corporate farmers of the U.S. and 

australia, was knocked back at Kyoto because everyone saw it for what it was, an attempt by these companies to turn

any future carbon credits scheme into their own slush fund. 

 

When oil is finally too expensive to carry on the wasteful madness of the past century then the monster companies that

have grown around it will start to die. I wouldn't expect them to go without a fight though. 

[SallyD]

I see where you are coming from, but labelling biochar as synthetic is a bit of a stretch. The way it's made commercially is artificial for sure, but charcoal is a natural part of most ecosystems. Almost every part of the earth has fires at some stage so charcoal is a natural component of most soils.

Biochar collected naturally after a bushfire and then charged for several months in a compost heap enhances the life in the soil and gives fungi and other microbes a place to live. I've found it to very beneficial to the soil food web. In my experiences it is great addition to a soil being managed exclusively with biological methods.

 

What I am saying here is that all of the things that biochar does are done better by biological systems for free. 

If you farm without utilizing the biological system then you will just have a dead, energy and inputs hungry system.

 

It's hard to fault the first part, but I think it comes down to economics, for a large scale farm making the transition to biological inputs biochar is a very cost effective long term source of carbon with the added benefit of buffering soil PH. Compost and lime/dolomite (on some soils) are needed in massive amounts and need to be applied regularly. It takes a chemical farmer several years to get his soil management back on track so biochar is possibly the most cost effective measure for the first 5 years of the farms transition from chemicals to biological inputs.

 

Certainly the modern system of chemical agriculture taught at universities is dead, energy intensive and relies on a perpetual input of the big thee NPK, but it doesn't have to be that way. William Albrecht did many experiments on soil fertility in relation to human and animal nutrition and his system was so refined he could predict what illnesses would prevail on the basis of soil tests that the food the animals or people ate was grown on.

 

His ideal soil was far from the modern concept of ideal soil and once corrected was for the most part self regulating and relied on minimal input. His philosophy was to get the soil chemistry right and the biological profile will correct itself. Dr Carey Reams (a good friend of Albert Einstein)  was from the Albrecht school of thought and he stated many times that soil (particularly compost enriched) can have too much energy, he classified soil energy in ERGS.

Edited by SallyD, Yesterday, 08:23 PM.