biochar! what’s ancient is new again (who needs fertilizer?)

part 1 of the 'vibrant soil = vibrant life' series

Considering the exorbitant rise in the cost of fertilizer over the past few weeks due to war in the Middle East, this old post is now more relevant than ever. I originally wrote much of this in 2008 for our local newspaper, then upgraded that in May of 2022. I’ve upgraded it again for all of you newer readers.

From May 14, 2022.

Welcome back you rowdy bunch of free thinking, freedom loving, wild and crazy guerilla gardeners and farmers.

pivot

Considering the state of affairs in the world today it seems timely to broaden the scope of TSH. Don’t get me wrong. I like to think that the previous 72 articles that exposed the breathlessly elaborate lies and misdirection that the big pharma/tech/media cartels have tried to impose upon us over the past two years were needed. While I feel it’s important to remain informed about all of the shenanigans being imposed upon us by these psychopaths, I think it’s equally important to know how to bypass the phony infrastructure upon which they would have us be dependent, one they own as a means to control us and enrich themselves - all to our loss of freedom, health and wealth. For far too long we’ve been forced to dance to the tune these elites play. But we can free ourselves from the slavery of their dystopian world by producing our own food, water, textiles and housing.

Additionally, we’ll be considering how to decentralize in ways that keeps our money circulating in the local economy to help support local mom and pop businesses. Doing so increases the chance that our money will find its way back in our pockets within our local marketplace. The corporate model does not want that to occur. It wants to pull money out and put it in their distant, centralized, corporate bank, never to be seen again in the local economy.

Regular readers will have noticed that the pivot began two weeks ago when I brought up the topic of prepping for potential food shortages and how chickens can play a role in those preparations. Those of you who are thinking about getting chickens or have recently acquired some may want to read last weeks piece (May 7, 2022) where I took a deeper consideration into the keeping of chickens.

In addition to considering other small livestock breeds that can be raised on small parcels of land or large backyards, we’ll be looking into textiles, natural building, rain water harvesting, local economies and alternative financing. But today I want to begin a series of articles that go to the very core of so many of our modern health issues, one that defines the primary reason why 54% of Americans now suffer from some form of chronic illness. This is something very few consider when thinking about health issues… the soil beneath our feet.

downward

Across most of the world today farm soils have been terribly depleted by modern farming practices. Tillage for monocrops may be profitable for Big Ag, but it’s death to the soil, which translates to slow death for those who eat food from that depleted soil. Across millions of acres of farmland around the world, the constant tillage and application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have killed the foundation of soil fertility, the soil biome.

Soil is a dark, quiet environment. It despises disturbance. It’s happiest and most fertile when it’s covered with plants and thoroughly permeated with roots, mycelium, mycorrhizae, worms, grubs, nematodes, microbes and millions of other soil fauna. Modern agriculture and it’s tractors and the implements they pull and the chemicals used are the antithesis to all of that.

Monocropped cotton near Safford Arizona.

Water pumped hundreds of miles uphill from the Colorado River used to irrigate cotton near Phoenix Arizona.

As a modern cotton farmer in Safford, Arizona once told me, “The soil just holds up the cotton plants. We mine the soil to grow cotton.” Those vast cotton fields along the Gila (pronounced heela) river near Safford were once home to one of the most magnificent riparian habitats in the South West US, a habitat that supported a complex forest of native trees, shrubs, grasses and forbs. The abundance of nutrient dense food produced in that lush, native ecosystem, along with the native fish in the Gila river, once supplied much of the food needed for the tribes of Native Americans that lived along that river, and did so for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the white man a mere 200 years ago.

That richly diverse, native habitat was mindlessly ripped out 100 years ago to grow a perverse monocrop of cotton, the most water greedy crop in the driest state in the US, Arizona. Since that time, those deep alluvial soils have literally been mined to death. The result is that today nothing will grow in those cotton fields without huge inputs of energy intensive fertilizer and excessive amounts of water drawn from the Gila River. It’s because of this shortsighted means of fiber production that the Gila River now runs dry through much of Arizona.

If you’ve ever wondered why cotton sheets and clothing don’t hold up as well as they did 50 years ago, its due to the same issue that lies at the root of our nutrient poor food… the death of soil and the ensuing loss of important soil micronutrients. In the same way food crops cannot produce robust, nutrient dense harvests when grown in depleted soil (and cannot properly support the health of people who eat them), cotton plants cannot produce a strong, robust fiber when grown in depleted soil.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that in order to survive over the long term, we need to move away from what appears to be a quick and easy solution: The centralization of food production by the imposition of gargantuan, corporate tractors and energy intensive fertilizers, many of which are made from oil taken from the ground and turned into fertilizers in the war-torn Middle East. The reality is, that’s a resource intensive, soil killing approach that benefits only a handful of people at the top of the pyramid scheme. This is the approach elites have been promulgating in ag schools across the land for the past 100 years to ensure they continue to profit from that misguided agricultural system.

We’re talking fundamentals here folks. How do we most efficiently return the fertility of our farm (and backyard) soils to the levels they were at prior to the arrival of the white man? What natural resources can we use that will help us achieve this goal without the need for more wars, further depleting dwindling resources and causing more pollution?

To answer that question we need to consider what the soil needs to perform its beautifully elaborate dance with sunlight, soil flora and fauna and CO2. The answer is simple… organic matter. In every case of depleted soil around the world the primary missing component is organic matter. Organic matter is the foundation of all life in the soil and without life in the soil there can be no complex fertility. This explains why lands that are rich in vegetation also typically have rich, dark, loamy soils - a sign of abundant organic matter.

Of course, restoring soil fertility levels that took millennia to develop is going to be a challenge. But it’s possible. However, we need to abandon Big Ag to pull it off. Big Ag wants to pull CO2 out of the soil and put in the air. To replenish our soils, we need to do the opposite. As we’ll see, this has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with fixing our soils.

We’ll delve deeper into some more esoteric aspects of this issue as we go along in this series. Today I want to talk about one thing that everyone can now do that would have been very difficult to do just 10 years ago… I’m talking about how to use biochar to speed up fertility and maintain it long term in the soil.

The following was one of a series of columns called “The Almanac Of Sustainable Living” that I wrote for our local newspaper in the summer of 2008. It’s been updated for this posting.

If you haven’t heard about biochar, you’re in the majority. It recently [just prior to the original publication of this piece in 2008] came into existence as a term describing the use of charcoal as a means to greatly improve long term biological activity in the soil. However, the use of biochar as a natural soil amendment is ancient. I first came across terra preta (that’s what Brazilians call it - black earth) early in 2007 while reading the book “1491” by Charles C. Mann. If you haven’t read that book, I recommend it.

Mann conducted detailed research into what the North and South American continents were like prior to the arrival of Columbus. Turns out the Americas were not the empty, primitive places that we’ve been taught. In fact there was a civilization living in the Amazon 6,000 years ago that was doing something so advanced that scientists are still trying to understand it today. Instead of slashing and burning the rain forest as is done today to clear a plot of land for farming, this ancient culture turned the forest into charcoal and then buried that charcoal in the soil along with all their spoiled food, stock bones, stripped carcasses of game animals, human excrement and pottery shards. This occurred across vast sweeps of the Amazon basin. Yup, it was a very highly evolved culture.

Ensuing generations then grew crops in that medium for hundreds of years without ever having to add any further amendments. Today, 6,000 years later, some of the biocharred soils that were rediscovered in the first half of the 1900’s have been intensively farmed since then, without any additional inputs to increase fertility. And this doesn’t include the hundreds or possibly thousands of years it was farmed by the people who created it, let alone the thousands of years that have passed since it’s creation, during which time that soil has supported some of the most magnificent tropical rain forests on earth.

How did those supposedly primitive people determine that biochar had these incredible properties? No one knows.

This becomes even more astonishing when one understands that the typical crop life span of a plot of Amazonian land that has been slashed and burned is only 2 or 3 years. This is because, in the parts of the Amazon that have NOT been biochared, most of the soil nutrient base is in the above ground biomass. Slashing and burning that biomass to ash sends most of the nutrient resources into the air as smoke. What little nutrients are left in the ash get quickly used up by farming and/or leached away by intense Amazonian downpours. However, converting that biomass into charcoal only consumes about 50% of the biomass as smoke, while the remaining 50% becomes charcoal to be buried in the ground where it will remain stable for many thousands of years, perhaps even tens of thousands of years. The life span of this material is one of the many things researchers are now trying to determine.

But that’s not the amazing part. Charcoal is incredibly porous. The surface area of a lump of charcoal the size of my fist would be the equivalent surface area the size of a tennis court. Apparently there is something about the combination of this porosity and the charcoal itself that creates a fine habitat for countless beneficial microbes which set up housekeeping in the charcoal, converting crude organic matter into nutrient dense, readily available resources. There is something else about charcoal as a nutrient holding substrate that allows those nutrients to be doled out in an optimal, judicious way. Not even the intense rains of the Amazon can leach out nutrients once they’re locked up in biochar (or the intense watering of backyard gardeners?). However, plant roots and their accompanying mycorrhizae, mycelium and other soil micro fauna love this well aerated, carbon based, nutrient dense medium, and flourish within it creating a veritable paradise of fertility.

the CO2 conundrum

(I should preface this next section by saying I’ve never seen any proof that CO2 has anything to do with global warming. Research shows that in the past CO2 levels have been far higher than they are now. However, we are now learning that there is a lot of hard to deny evidence that geoengineering has a lot to do with global warming.

Having said that, we can’t ignore the fact that burying charcoal in the ground sequesters CO2. In fact, it’s a “net negative” sequestration due to the fact that plants that are then planted into biochar enriched soil will grow faster and will utilize even more CO2 from the atmosphere in the process of photosynthesis. We’re talking super growth here. This is how we replenish the soil.)

Imagine if we were to remove from the earth the modern detriments to all biological health (including humans), primarily, toxins and EMF’s. The combination of an atmosphere enriched with CO2, combined with soil that’s enriched with CO2 in the form of biochar, could conceivably result in paradise on earth.

What about the smoke given off by making charcoal - the other 50% of the biomass? Even with the smoke produced by making biochar it’s still a “net negative” form of sequestration because when a batch of biochar is buried in the soil, its benefits will sequester far more C02 than was generated by its smoke. Plus, it will last far longer than the time it takes for the sequestered biomass to be replaced. Additionally, if the next generation of biomass is turned into charcoal, then a compounding effect begins. It’s like rolling over CD’s to maximize gains on interest (so I’m told).

As interesting as this compounding of sequestration is, perhaps the most amazing aspect is that the gases (smoke) can be captured and converted into biofuels such as alcohol or diesel. It seems we can have our cake and eat it too. Before the advent of electricity, our great grandparents used kerosene as a lamp fuel. Kerosene was often distilled from the gases (smoke) created by the production of charcoal, which was used to fire wood burning stoves.

One of my cob hornos. I used this one to make the biochar I put into one of my gardens.

I spent several weeks in May of 2008 making biochar in my outdoor earthen horno, crushing it by hand and applying it to my garden. I’m not going to dress up the process - it was long, hot and dirty. It requires a large, outdoor, wood fired oven and a plentiful source of dry, preferably local, native wood. All of the char I made was derived from mesquite wood taken from my farm property. At some point in the future I may describe the rather complicated process of making char, but for now I think most readers will want to purchase their own (coming up).

If the char is placed directly into the soil, depending on how fertile your soil is at the onset or how much you amend your soil with compost, mulch, animal and humanure, it may take several years or more before the biochar becomes fully charged with nutrients. However, the process of nutrient charging your char can be greatly enhanced by mixing the char into fresh batches of compost - a good option for small gardens, but, labor intensive for large ones.

Although I’m a proponent of no-till farming and gardening, because it only has to be done once, there is something to be said for tilling-in a one time application of compost/biochar mix.

An easier, less intrusive option is to put your chickens to work. This works well for large gardens and can be scaled up for very large operations.

Here’s how I did it. Spread the appropriate amount of biochar across the garden area (calculate capacity to a depth of 8” - coming up). Then spread a 4” layer of well aged compost/manure over top of that, then spread a thick layer of mulch (organic straw works well, old hay or leaves) over top of that. Plant your garden into that. At the end of the growing season let your chickens into the garden for at least several months, an entire winter or however long it takes them to thoroughly work the area over. This is when the magic happens. By the next spring the biochar will be on its way to becoming nutrient charged from the manure/compost/mulch/chicken regime. It will also begin to work into the soil. But you’re not done. Do the manure/compost/mulch/chicken regime for at least 3 years, more if you can pull it off. After 3 years your original application of biochar will have become charged with nutrients and sufficiently incorporated into the soil, all without the need for laboring over compost piles and using disruptive tillage techniques.

I’ve used this program not only for garden vegetables but also for forage crops I grow for the chickens, goats and bees.

Additionally, I use regionally available 3/4”- volcanic rock, which has many of the same porosity attributes as biochar. Volcanic rock also has a very nice profile of trace minerals which soil microbes love to utilize.

If you’re interested in using biochar you can buy untreated lump charcoal (made from hardwoods) used for barbecuing (do not use treated briquets). It must be broken into 1/4-” pieces to maximize the surface area. If you have a big garden this could be quite expensive as it needs to be applied at a rate of about 2% to 9% of the volume of soil (new sources coming up). Here’s the formula for biochar application: Calculate the square footage or square meters of your garden and convert that into square inches or centimeters and multiply by a depth of 8” (or the equivalent in metric) to come up with a cubic measurement. Using a 4% ratio… 4% of 8” x 100 sq. ft. = 115,200 cubic inches divided by 4% = 28,800 cubic inches divided by 1,728 = 16.6 cubic feet.

Cornell University is the leading institution in the U.S doing research into biochar. They recommend starting out with 2% and adding more later if needed. There is no hard information on the optimal amount. As of my last check, the highest known historic ratio in the Amazon was 9%. My guess is that the optimal amount needed will vary depending on your soil type, its PH and climatic conditions.

Recent research has found that biochar was also used in the ancient civilizations in North America.

Good news. Since I originally wrote that in 2008, the biochar industry has taken off. There are now numerous sources for buying biochar online, as well as numerous sources of kilns for making your own char, including equipment that can capture the gasses and turn them into fuels. This link will take you to the USBI page for all of these resources. Biochar is now sold by the bag, which in the US typically comes in a measurement of cubic feet or cubic yards. It’s a burgeoning cottage industry whose time has come.

Apparently, due to my earlier positions within the American Bamboo Society and early articles I wrote about how fast-growing bamboo can sequester CO2 faster than any other woody perennial, I found myself in one of the 87 seats at the virtual table of the world-wide International Biochar Initiative (IBI) in 2007. We submitted recommendation’s that were used to compile a set of Sustainability Guidelines for biochar production, later drafted by IBI. The US now has its own organization.

Because much of the worlds farmland has succumbed to erosion and loss of fertility due to mindless modern farming practices, the positive implications for biochar are far reaching. The creation of what amounts to a very long term soil fertility will change agriculture as we know it. The addition of chemical fertilizers to the soil will no longer be needed. The widespread adoption of the biochar program described above will mean wars in the Middle East will no longer disrupt farmers around the world and drive up the cost of food for everyone in the process. Even so called “organic farming practices” that utilize gargantuan, fuel guzzling, soil killing, resource depleting machinery, will become antiquated.

I see an agricultural future that’s so decentralized, so local, and so hand crafted that it lies in your backyard.

Seize it.

Be free.

If you appreciate solution oriented articles regarding problems that few are tackling, please consider becoming a free or a paid subscriber. Thank you to those of you who support my work.