[Terrapreta] Google Alert - terra preta

[Kevin Chisholm]

Dear Loulou gold wrote:
> I think that we should simply note it as a significant disservice to 
> the movement and let that message fly. The troll bait is to respond 
> directly. We should not be so foolish.
Well, lets just see what he says...

I think he is saying" "... that there is a lot of work getting waste 
wood ready for charcoaling, even with a saw or axe, and a person could 
not earn a subsistence living selling charcoal into the agricultural 
market. On the other hand, if he could make money on a co-product, he 
might be able to subsist. However, he would do better if he sold his 
charcoal into the fuel market...."

Is this a fair assessment?

If so, then I feel it would be a reasonable view, and is not troll bait.

There is a lot of charcoal being made throughout the world annually. Do 
you know of any instance in the world where people are prospering by 
selling charcoal into the agriculture market?

Best wishes,

Kevin
>
>
>
> On Dec 12, 2007 9:02 AM, Michael Bailes < michaelangelica at gmail.com 
> <mailto:michaelangelica at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I am resisting an intense urge to reply to this.
>     The list might like to let fly ?!
>
>      *terra preta*
>
>     Subsistence Charcoal
>     <http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/12/subsistence-charcoal.html>
>     By arclein(arclein)
>     I must say that the *terra preta* group on bionet.org
>     <http://bionet.org> has continued to steadily increase its
>     traffic. I have recently been bombarded with nearly 40 messages a
>     day and I have over 1000 messages that have gone unread. *...*
>     Global Warming - http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/
>     <http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/>
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>         Tuesday, December 11, 2007
>
>
>           Subsistence Charcoal
>           <http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/12/subsistence-charcoal.html>
>
>
>     I must say that the terra preta group on bionet.org
>     <http://bionet.org> has continued to steadily increase its
>     traffic. I have recently been bombarded with nearly 40 messages a
>     day and I have over 1000 messages that have gone unread. Most of
>     the action has been around various efforts to pursue aspects of
>     pyrolysis in a modern setting.
>
>     I have seen no alternative to the corn culture earthen kiln
>     approach that I have proposed a few months back.
>
>     Since then we have seen film on the production of subsistence
>     charcoal in Africa and it is very instructive. Firstly, in the
>     modern world, everyone can get their hands on an axe and a simple
>     saw. This makes it easy to hack everything down and to cut it up.
>     Making this woody waste into charcoal is quite another matter.
>
>     It fails to pack well but the charcoalers are still able to create
>     pits and to throw dirt on the burning pile to suppress the flames.
>     This obviously will produce some charcoal, but the yield must be
>     terrible. what is clear though is that the produced wood charcoal
>     is poorly charcoaled at best. We see people carrying bundles of
>     charred sticks and bulky bags of char. It makes great fuel. It is
>     almost impossible to use as a soil additive.
>
>     Whatever lingering thoughts that I may have had in support of the
>     charcoaling of wood for soil remediation can be laid to rest. Only
>     a modern industrial grade charcoaler might be able to produce
>     suitable material.
>
>     Subsistence farmers
>     <http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/12/subsistence-charcoal.html#>
>     could not even begin to make wood waste work for them. They needed
>     a helper crop. That was provided in the form of corn to the Amazon
>     Indians.
>
>     I also think that wood charcoal was always too valuable as a fuel
>     as is true today in Africa, to ever be crushed and folded into the
>     seedbed. In fact a man load of charcoal probably weighs a hundred
>     pounds and needs be carried miles back to town. That one hundred
>     pounds needed about one ton of source material to be cut down and
>     stacked and covered with dirt while burning. Maybe they did twice
>     as good in terms of yield. However it worked, that man load of
>     charcoal took two days of labor input at the least.
>
>     There is simply no way that such a production model could be used
>     to produce terra preta. And the Indians did not have steel tools.
>
>     FROM:
>     http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/12/subsistence-charcoal.html
>
>     -- 
>     Michael the Archangel
>
>     "You can fix all the world's problems in a garden. . . .
>     Most people don't know that"
>     FROM
>     http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/permaculture.swf
>     <http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/permaculture.swf>
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>
> -- 
> http://lougold.blogspot.com/
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