Word: biochar
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...wrote home describing the remarkably fertile lands he had discovered there. In the 19th century, American and Canadian geologists uncovered the reason: bands of terra preta (dark earth), which locals continued to cultivate successfully. Research revealed that the original inhabitants of the region had added charred wood and leaves - biochar - to their lands...
...Amazon in 2000 for a job at Cornell University, N.Y., Lehmann started wondering what would happen if farmers today could make their own terra preta. He has found one answer in a field trial in Kenya, where 45 farmers achieved twice the yield in their corn crops with biochar than with conventional fertilizers...
Epidra, a private firm in Athens, Ga., is exploring larger-scale applications, such as pyrolysis systems that can produce both enough energy to power a tractor and a biochar tailored to improve particular soils. "If you're going to grow food, you have to do it responsibly," says Bob Hawkins, Eprida's project manager. "And one way of doing that is to use it to generate sustainable energy." A prototype can turn a ton of ground peanut shells into 600 lb. (270 kg) of biochar, with energy as the bonus...
...Biochar's ability to sequester CO2 has given new urgency to such research. "Reducing emissions isn't enough - we have to draw down the carbon stock in the atmosphere," says Tim Flannery, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a consortium of scientists and business leaders linked to next year's United Nations Climate Summit. "And for that, slow pyrolysis biochar is a superior solution to anything else that's been proposed." Cornell's Lehmann is even more emphatic. "If biochar could be massively applied around the globe," he says, "we could end the emissions problem in one to two years...
...everyone agrees. "Biochar isn't a silver bullet, not by a long shot," says Dominic Woolf, a researcher at Swansea University in Wales. "You have to look at the big picture: pyrolysis itself produces carbon dioxide emissions, and you have to consider that when you try to determine biochar's capacity for sequestration." Lehmann says he welcomes the doubts, and notes that addressing them requires "investors willing to take the risk." Which is where chicken farmer Frye, with his small biochar operation, comes in as one of the few people out there actually making a business of it. With...