Word: preta
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...that simple? It appears to have been for the original inhabitants of the Amazon basin. In the 16th century, Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana 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...
...black that was several meters deep," says Johannes Lehmann, a soil scientist who worked in Manaus, Brazil, in the late 1990s. After he left the 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...
...Preta Bansal...
Stocky Vanique (he looks like a young John Garner) is prepared to spend two years among the Moriegos, Cara Preta and Chavantes Indians, some savage and hos tile, some half-civilized. His frontiersmen must chop out clearings for future Brazilian towns, must fight pumas, oncas (panthers) and the tamanduá, a giant ant-eating bear with a head and neck like a horse. They must convince Indians that an influx of settlers will be good. Be cause Brazil has a law prohibiting the use of firearms against Indians (TIME, Dec. 15, 1941), only the party's official hunters will...
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