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farming agrichar enriched soil in Australia |
How would you like to use a farming or gardening method which is incredibly rich and abundant - up to 300%, sometimes even 800% greater yields - without any chemical fertilizers whatsoever, gets richer and more fertile season by season and year by year, conveys supreme good health on the consumers of its products, gets rid of all organic household wastes, is free of insect pests, and if all this were not enough, contributes substantially to end Global Warming. |
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Indeed, if widely used, it can remove all the excess carbon from our atmosphere.
Too good to be true? Incredible as it may sound, there really is such a way of farming and gardening - a tried-and-true way that has been practiced for thousands of years, but has just been recently re-discovered.
Origins of Terra Preta Farming
Several thousand years ago - no one really knows how long ago - the Amazon Indians created what is, hands down, and in every which way, the most wondrously productive agriculture. It beats the very best we can produce by a country mile and seven ways from Sundays. It is 300% more productive than our very best modern efforts - and this without any chemical fertilizers, equipment, and application costs.
It came about by simple necessity. They had discovered agriculture, had become settled and consequently, and soon faced two major problems; that of poor soil, and of accumulating garbage and human wastes. They solved them simply and naturally, in what turned out to be the most incredibly productive way of farming and gardening.
They simply dug a deep ditch and, starting at one end, filled it in progressively with their household and personal wastes, covering it with a layer of soil as they went along, until the whole ditch had been filled in again and covered over with soil. Then they started another ditch alongside the first, and so forth, and so forth, until the whole plot was essentially a covered compost field. And we all know how well and luxuriantly things grow on the compost heap. And then they started over again at the beginning.
In this manner, they created what has now become known as "Terra Preta" soil ("dark soil" in Portuguese), an incredibly rich, fertile, beautifully friable and supremely productive soil. Some plots are 8 feet deep and at least one plot is formally known to have produced abundant crops for 40 years without any fertilizers whatsoever.
The difference from a simple 'deep' compost soil is the presence of charcoal and pottery shards in the Terra Preta soils. The charcoal comes from two sources. From burning forest plots in a slow, smoldering way to clear land for growing their crops, and from the remnants of cooking fires.
Given the lush growth of tropical Rain Forests, one would think that the soil in these forest is extremely rich, but the opposite is true. The presence of abundant light and energy in the form of heat, plus abundant water create such optimum growing conditions that any decaying plant and animal matter is taken up again immediately by new growth. This intense cycle of decay and growth makes the accumulation of nutrients in the soil impossible. Another problem is that heavy rains regularly flush away many nutrients.
The Amazonians solved all of these problems with their Terra Preta agriculture.
Ending Global Warming
Now then, here is the global warming aspect. In 2004 English scientists discovered a piece of charcoal which is 420 million years old. It was not fossilized, but crumbly, and left black marks when dragged across a surface. And since charcoal is almost pure carbon, this makes a cheap, excellent and safe method of storing carbon for hundreds of millions of years. And in ordinary active soils, charcoal is known to persist for 50,000 years.
As charcoal is created by burning wood with barely any oxygen (pyrolizing), it creates very little carbon dioxide, and a lot of almost pure carbon in the form of charcoal. This is the way it works: Let's say 1,000 kg of carbon have been stored in the wood of some plant material. When it is pyrolized, 400 kg of carbon are returned into the atmosphere, and 600 kg. of carbon is trapped in the remaining charcoal. It is a very simple, supremely effective and extremely cheap way of storing carbon safely and simply for hundreds of millions of years.
Since burning down forests to create charcoal would be an unmitigated disaster, a far better way is to pyrolize, first of all, all waste wood and woody wastes, and then fast growing woody crops, such as Bamboo, grown on non-forested, even marginal land (Bamboo is a grass). Giant Timber Bamboo can grow between one and two feet in 24 hours - and incinerating it in charcoal producing kilns has the potential of removing all the excess carbon out of our atmosphere, cheaply, effectively and at extremely low cost.
And of all people, a bunch of power engineers are extremely exited about "Terra Preta" farming and gardening, for three reasons. One, charcoal is a cheap and highly effective way of removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it safely for many thousands of years in the ground in "Terra Preta" farming, or for hundreds of millions of years in abandoned mines.
The second reason is that "Syngas" is a byproduct of pyrolizing wood - or of much ordinary garbage - and that the heat generated by the pyrolizing process can also be used to produce energy via steam turbines.
| The third reason is, of course, that "Terra Preta" farming is such an incredibly abundant way of growing our food. It's a win-win-win situation which is as close to ideal as it is possible to get. No wonder these engineers are giddy with excitement. They are now feverishly working on designing and testing low emission charcoal producing burning facilities, perhaps with the co-generation of steam, from the heat, for making electricity [see
"RETHINKING BIOCHAR" - Environmental Science & Technology - August 1, 2007 ]. |
farming jet black soil - Photo:
Kent State University |
Terra Preta Farming
To get back to our "Terra Preta" farming, charcoal performs several crucially vital functions in the soil by storing nutrients, providing carbon, and purifying the soil and water. Charcoal chunks, rather than dust, appear to be the most effective size. The "Terra Preta" soils also have their own unique and distinct populations of beneficial bacteria.
The pottery shards appear to be equally important, and most likely, for maintaining structure and air spaces in these soils. For our purposes other means of maintaining structure and air spaces in the soil are readily available. Among them walnut and other nut shells, bark or wood chips, and so forth.
It remains to be told that fish, seaweed and kelp meal fertilizers will provide the complete range of the 72 natural nutritional trace elements - as present in the seas - in all produce, which will keep us supremely healthy in every respect, so much so that it has the real potential of keeping us completely disease free, like the Hunzas, for all of our lives. For all the details see
SUPREME HEALTH in these pages.
And as for the insect pests, there is no better completely organic 'pesticide' than the "Jumping spider", indigenous, tiny, little spiders which - rather than building spider webs - actively, mercilessly and tirelessly hunt insects from dawn to dusk. And one application is enough. You will have them forever. And you don't have to lift a finger to get rid of insect pests, and better yet, you will never need to buy and apply poisons to your food again. See A POISON FREE AGRICULTURE in these pages.
Finally, to further enrich your soil season by season and year by year, shear your weeds at one inch above the ground, so that they will grow again, and lay the shearing over as a mulch in your vegetable rows. You also get the wonderful multitudinous benefits of a lovely organic mulch, totally free of charge.
Most people think that weeds rob the soil of nutrients and water. This is not true. Weeds in fact contribute to the fertility and friability of soils. Like all plants, they too absorb nitrogen from the air, either directly or indirectly via bacteria, fix phosphorus with the help of mycorrhyzal fungi, and preserve moisture in the soil by shading it. And all this is added to the soil, along with lots of organic material, with their decay.
The simple fact is that weeds have created our biosphere. Seaweed and land weeds absorb carbon dioxide, release free oxygen, and thus created, along with the plankton of the seas, the oxygenated atmosphere of our planet. And land weeds - such as lichen and moss which can grow on stone - have colonized what were once totally barren continents, and created the lush, vibrant and teeming biosphere in which our kind has arisen and evolved. Weeds are simply the single and most powerful natural resource of this Earth.
And any concern about polluting the land with organic household, animal and human wastes is unwarranted. Experts have estimated that there were about 60 million buffalos on the Western plains before the Europeans arrived and all but wiped them out. Buffalo weigh up to 2.000 lbs. and taking a very conservative average of 1,500 lbs each, this equals the biomass of 10 people weighing 150 lbs.- or the equivalent of 600 million people, about double the present population of the US. The point is that the excreta and wastes of 60 million buffalo (or the equivalent of 600 million people) on the limited range of the Western plains did not pollute the land. To the contrary, the land and water was considered pristine by all concerned.
Not even considered here are the equally huge numbers of Elk, Deer, Moose, Mountain Goats, Mountain Sheep, Wolves, Cougars, Rabbits, Prairie Dogs, Rats, Mice, Birds, Bugs and teeming myriads of other creatures, all of which left their excreta on the land, and all without the slightest ill effects. The fact is that Life had worked out the waste problem endless eons ago, and for every bit of waste there are creatures who consider it, in many cases literally, manna from heaven. There is a creature or a plant for every bit of waste, down to the last delicious molecular morsel, which returns it, pristinely - like the wonderful stuff of finished compost - into the tide of Life.
All we need to do is to let these creatures and critters live, and do their work.
It remains for adventurous and dedicated farmers and gardeners - who want to substantially reduce their costs, substantially increase their yields and grow supremely healthy produce - to experiment a bit and work out the best proportions of charcoal and what is in effect deep ditch composting.
Finally, and in summary, here we have a proven and time tested natural organic agriculture which is capable of providing 3 times our present numbers (18 billion people) with healthy, wholesome food from the same land area as now in use, eliminate our sewerage problems, remove all the excess carbon from our atmosphere - and all this without any chemical fertilizers and agricultural poisons, their equipment and application costs - and which is not only permanently sustainable, but gets richer and more fertile season by season and year by year.
We can have a thriving, permanently sustainable agriculture, abundant healthy food - and no Global Warming. All we need to do is - do it.
Next, an Acres USA interview with Charles Mann, prominent science and technology writer.
Resources:
Running a Google on "Terra Preta" yields 760,000 entries, among them:
Cornel University's
Terra Preta de Indio
DIY Terra Preta Soils Double As Carbon Sink
Magic biochar: recycles, fertilises and sequesters
A 'black magic' CO2 fix
The Good Black Magic That Could Save the Earth
Making charcoal in the backyard
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