[Terrapreta] Is charcoal cost effective for farming?
Sean K. Barry
sean.barry at juno.com
Wed Mar 28 11:49:41 CDT 2007
Bob,
I think you might be pretty close on the numbers for that potato farm. I think it would be well worth an experiment, if the guy is interested. You said he is a grower "specialty" potatoes? Is he an "organic farmer"? He may be concerned about whether charcoal is an approved input for an "organic" farm.
One thing I have heard from organic farmers is that "yield" is a dirty word. They are more interested in "quality" of the output and making sure inputs are "organic approved". One guy told me yield increases are the bane of farming in general in the USA. According to him, yield increases drive prices down, yield increases are tied to industrial agriculture, heavy use of industrial fertilizers and larger equipment, bigger farms, etc. Keeping up with obtaining larger and larger yields makes farmers dependent on subsidies (to afford more fertilizer, more land, newer equipment, competing with the big boys, etc.), and do it all when they are getting less and less for each bushel of output. He said chasing yields is a vicious cycle, which has driven many individual farmers out of business and they lose there farms to huge industrial farming conglomerates, because they can't any longer compete.
But, if we merely mention yield increases and stress "quality" improvement, reduced costs for fertilizer, reduced labor cost and equipment operating time (having to apply the fertilizer), and potential for less "fallow" time on the field, then I think we could have a winner for a guy like your "potato" farmer friend. I think it would be very important that the farmer make sure the leaves and stems plant waste from the potato plants be incorporated back into the soil every year.
Charcoal in the soil will help the micro-organisms hold the nutrients. Charcoal by itself doesn't hold onto the soluble nutrients. It can hold water and aid cation exchange capacity of the soil (this makes nutrients more available to plants), but without the soil microbes locking up the nutrients in their own molecular structures, the soluble plant nutrients (nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), magnesium, calcium, iron) will wash away, just like industrial NPK fertilizer does. It's the soil organic (<- this is the microbes) carbon that holds nutrients, not just regular old carbon (charcoal).
SKB
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Niederman<mailto:rniederman at cegworldwide.com>
To: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 12:55 AM
Subject: Is charcoal cost effective for farming?
Sean,
Do you know what the typical return for a farmer who raises crops or animals on a per acre basis? What do farmers in Kansas get for an acre of corn? Or wheat? Or Rice? Or pastured sheep, cows, or goats?
Do you know what the increase in output would be using charcoal? Would it be 10- 40% over time considering decreasing costs for fertilizer over time?
If we knew these numbers we could figure out what charcoal would have to cost in order for the farmer to make a profit using it.
I know a farmer who raises specialized potatoes on 80 acres of ground. He only uses 10 acres at a time because the ground has to rest for two years between planting because potatoes take so much out of the ground. These are very high end potatoes that he sells for $ 2.00 per pound, mostly to high end restaurants. He gets 100,000 lbs. out of 10 acres so about 10,000 lbs per acre. If he sells wholesale he gets $ 10,000 per acre. If he put 2 tons of charcoal per acre into his land, it would cost him about $ 600 per acre the first year. If his yield went up by 10% it would more than cover his costs. Some people report that yields go up by 40%. If this were true, he could easily put in 4 tons per acre and make a killing. And he might not have to wait 2 years to use his ground again. Maybe the ground could recover after 1 year. This would increase his income by 20% on top of the 10%-40% it was already increased due to higher yield. It's possible that this farmer could improve his revenue by over 50% for an invest that is about 1 %. It sounds like a good deal to me. Am I missing something?
Of course this guy may be very unusual. I don't know the typical return on farmed land. Perhaps there s a farmer out there who can help us out on the economic picture here and put this in perspective.
Bob
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Sean K. Barry [mailto:sean.barry at juno.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 9:02 PM
To: Robert Niederman
Cc: terrapreta
Subject: Re: Cost of charcoal amendment to soil.
Hi Bob,
I think the best way to make the charcoal inexpensively is to use LOCAL (no or little transport cost) WASTE (free or maybe even get tipping fees to take it away) biomass materials. Then make it in a fast, high pressure, low temperature, air (lambda) controlled pyrolysis reactor (down-draft gasifier). The reactor should be portable and simple. Application of the charcoal should be simple and integrated with application of fertilizer. A pressurized biomass gasifier (pyrolysis reactor) can deliver the highest yield of charcoal from any biomass and it can work with higher moisture content feeds. But, it delivers exhaust gases with the lowest BTU content and requires precise air pressure/flow controls.
There is heat from the exothermic reaction and BTU containing off gases (H2, CO CH4) coming from any pyrolysis reaction. These could possibly be used for electric power generation or heating applications. The value of these potential energy sources depends a lot on things like; reactor insulation from heat loss, how the actual pyrolysis "charring" occurs, gas cleanup, choice of generator shaft drive mechanism, and application of any sensible heat, etc. It is a fruitful area for entrepreneurial research!
Potential revenues from providing these sorts of energy conversions/uses, which would occur with pyrolizing biomass to make charcoal could add value to the charcoal production process and allow a potentially lower sale price for the charcoal.
SKB
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Niederman<mailto:rniederman at cegworldwide.com>
To: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:22 PM
Subject: RE: Cost of charcoal amendment to soil.
So, Sean,
Is there a cheap and sustainable way to make charcoal? And could we dry out animal waste from large dairies and ranches and make it into charcoal cost effectively?
Bob
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From: Sean K. Barry [mailto:sean.barry at juno.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 5:25 PM
To: Robert Niederman; terrapreta
Subject: Re: Cost of charcoal amendment to soil.
Hi Bob, Ron, et al.
I've heard of $10/ton prices for charcoal too, as Tom Miles mentioned, but never a quote. I have received a quote for 10 tons of bamboo charcoal for $5000, but that was shipped in a 20' container from Asia. Bob, what you mentioned was 15 cents per pound, so $300 per short ton. Tom Miles also mentioned $260/ton. That seems an average price. As for rate of application ... 1.4% being something like 16 tons/acre springs to mind. But, I have also seen 4 tons/acre. I think it's a crap shoot until you know more about what else needs to go in with that amendment and how the soil/plant growth responds.
Christoph Steiner seems like a guy who might better be able to shed light on this subject. I think the anthropological evidence speaks to another mechanism. It's not an industrial effort where tons of charcoal from an outside source are applied onto a field once and then everything is go for better crops. The ancients layered this stuff down, year after year, a few millimeters up to maybe a centimeter a year. They charred first the jungle trees, then the plant wastes that were left standing after cropping. They amended the soil with all kinds of stuff; fish and animal bones, pottery chards, probably human, and animal wastes. Charcoal was an ingredient in a compost of a sort that they concocted. The creation of Terra Preta, may have come from simple observation of what happened to the dump sites they left to be grown over by vegetation.
What I would take from this is that the most cost effective way to put charred biomass into soil is to do it simply with local available WASTE biomass. Do it year after year and brew the stuff until it gives the fertility performance you want. Impatience will never get at a solution to the magical soil enhancing capabilities of Terra Preta. It's going to take time and practice.
Carbon sequestration through charcoal amendment to soil (a carbon negative activity) may need to occur faster to ameliorate the effects of fossil fuel burning (the carbon positive vice), but no one can expect that applying $1040-$6300 worth of paid for charcoal to to every acre covering 10% of all arable land will be cost effective if we try to do it immediately using industrial might.
Christoph Steiner said this earlier today and I agree, "To save the Earth we need to change our global and nationwide nutrient
(food) cycles and our consumer habits. This is one step to balance nutrients and carbon. The use of charcoal for soil amelioration can help to balance carbon in the atmosphere."
Charcoal amendments to soil alone cannot make Terra Preta. Nutrient management is also essential. Food wastes cannot go the way they do. They too need to go "into the mix" to make Terra Preta. We might need a way to have all people and foodstuff animals go crap into and throw all their biological trash into the fields we grow are food in, along with filling them annually with the charred crop wastes from each growing season. This "Terra Preta" magic might only work where the growing seasons are back to back, like on or near the Equator? It could take years to figure out how to make it work. Patience will be required.
I say this with great pause, because I see the impending CO2 emissions debacle as requiring rash action. We need to suck up 100 years worth of fossil fuel CO2 emissions to right the planet to the way it was at the end of the 19th century. We can barely even grapple with negating the 6 gigatons per year rate of carbon positive mess. It's a huge mess. I've said Terra Preta has great potential to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, but to roll back this 6 gTon/yr rate of CO2 emissions, at 16 tons/acre, we would need to cover ~400 million acres a year with charcoal! To even approach that its gotta be cheap, cheap, cheap to be able to do that and its got to pay for itself (unless we get the greedy fossil fuel mining interests to be REQUIRED to help pay for the mess we've all gotten ourselves into).
SKB
SKB
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Niederman<mailto:rniederman at cegworldwide.com>
To: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 5:03 PM
Subject: RE: [Terrapreta]http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf
Sean,
Do you have any idea of the cost per acre of placing charcoal into the soil? I checked with a firm that delivers mesquite charcoal manufactured in Mexico. They sell it by the truckload for 15 cents per lb. A truck holds between 38,000 and 42,000 lbs. So one truck load costs around $ 6,300. We would need to test this out to see if the economics make sense from the farming point of view. If you plow 20 tons of charcoal into an acre do you get back more than $ 6,300 over and above what you would get back if you didn't plow that in? And if it takes several years to cover the expense, how many years would that be?
We ought to try this out on several acres of good farm land and see what happens.
Bob
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Sean K. Barry [mailto:sean.barry at juno.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:16 AM
To: Robert Niederman
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta]http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf
Bob,
I think you are right on point again. There needs to be a beneficial incentive to sequester carbon by putting charcoal in soil.
If (When!) it improves soil quality or reduces the cost of effective husbandry over the land, in a measurable way, then great! Farmers will eat that up. Add to this the possibility that ANYONE (not necessarily just farmers) could receive a CASH benefit in the form of a sold carbon credit in a carbon trading market, if they sequester carbon by putting charcoal into the soil, then there will be an enormous incentive for ANYONE to practice this. Somewhere out there, one or more of the 6 going to 10 billion of us will see a way that the charcoal can benefit agriculture. We (the ancient Amazonian people) have already done it. We also have a penchant for making history repeat itself. So be it. Let's grease the skids on this one, because the world needs to be carbon negative much sooner than later.
Regards,
SKB
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Niederman<mailto:rniederman at cegworldwide.com>
To: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 12:38 PM
Subject: RE: [Terrapreta]http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf
Sean,
I agree with you about carbon sequestration. The real trick is to make the practice of placing carbon into soil sustainable. People won't practice this for long unless they see some benefit to themselves or others outside the benefit of burying carbon. If they see that it dramatically increases crop production, this would be a great motivator to continue the practice and make it self sustaining. Those who do it receive a tangible benefit. Those who don't do it, don't receive a benefit. This difference should lead more people toward the practice. I believe in self interest as a great motivator!
Bob
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org [mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Sean K. Barry
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 8:40 AM
To: Ron Larson; thomas.beer at clorox.com
Cc: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org; tharaka pilapitiya
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta]http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf
Hi All,
Rhisiart and Tharkara speak to a interesting point on source biomass for charcoal, I think. Tharkara is wishing to make charcoal from rice husk, because he has a great abundance of it available. Rhisiart speaks to local sources in his most recent post.
...
1) That it is made with cheap, simple, techniques that anyone can learn and apply at home, on any patch of ground to which they can have access.
2) That it produces almost miraculously rich, long-persisting fertility in the soil, even starting from pretty barren substrates.
3) And that it sequesters very substantial amounts of atmospheric carbon, in inert form, into the soil for - as far as anyone can discover - thousands of years, at least.
Long-term, massive atmospheric carbon sequestration AND spectacular soil fertility enhancement are clearly both eminently practical, using nothing more than simple 'peasant' techniques and equipment, whenever we start copying the ancient pioneers of the Terra Preta black soil of the Amazon in our gardening and farming. Potentially, hundreds of millions of practical, small-scale food-growers everywhere could be doing this any time that we want to start.
...
It seems to me that simple local methods and local raw material biomass sources are an important practical reality, if putting charcoal into the soil is a goal. The qualities of a soil, once amended with charcoal, may be changed and improved upon with further amendments of natural or industrial fertilizer, compost, microbial inoculants, or even just time to "stew". The greater value of charcoal in soil today, in 2007, is its potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
The world average temperature is increasing exponentially due to human activity burning fossil fuels, which now releases 6 gigatons of CARBON in the form of CO2 annually and increases the global warming blanket by 6 gigatons of CARBON every year. With third world expansion in the use of fossil fuels an glbal population expansion, this 6 gigaton number is growing fast. The whole world needs to do something fast too, and with a big thrust towards going carbon negative activity.
I want to make this very important point yet again ...
Whether "Terra Preta" can actually improve soil quality or not, it can very effectively sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
So, as long as the charcoal made and put into agricultural soil does not poison the soil and make it unable to grow crops, then I think it can be used to attempt to make "Terra Preta". I think putting any charcoal into any non-agricultural soils is just plain obviously a good carbon sequestration practice. We can call it "UN-MINING" of carbon and it really ought to receive carbon credits in a world-wide carbon trading market.
Regards,
Sean K. Barry
Principal Engineer/Owner
Troposphere Energy, LLC
11170 142nd St. N.
Stillwater, MN 55082
(651) 351-0711 (Home/Fax)
(651) 285-0904 (Cell)
sean.barry at juno.com<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>
----- Original Message -----
From: thomas.beer at clorox.com<mailto:thomas.beer at clorox.com>
To: Ron Larson<mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>
Cc: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org> ; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> ; tharaka pilapitiya<mailto:tharaka.pilapitiya at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta]http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf
As a guy that has worked with charcoal for many years in Kingsford, I can tell you that different raw materials AND different operating conditions give different characteristics in chars. Hardwood is different than softwood, and even different species (oak, poplar, mesquite, hickory, pine, ash, fir...etc) have different characteristics. We have done work with rice hulls in the past and the characteristics are very different from other chars made from different types of biomass, but this is to be expected. Different biomasses and different operating conditions make different chars. So, it seems that we should be characterizing the properties that we want from the finished char, then working backwards to specify the operating conditions and the species (or mixture of species) that give the characteristics (in the finished char) that you want.
It seems that we should start by defining what are the desired finished characteristics of the chars, and put some science to the advocacy. Char is not magic, it is produced like any other chemical reaction... with heat and time and pressure and moisture and reactants. Char can be produced to whatever characteristics that are appropriate, we just have to decide what is the target, then do some science around the effects of the characteristics on crop yields.
Thomas Beer
Manufacturing Technology
Clorox Services Company
3900 Kennesaw 75 Parkway, Suite 100
Kennesaw, GA 30144
770-426-2419
770-426-2428- FAX
770-364-1079- Cell
"Ron Larson" <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
Sent by: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
03/27/2007 11:44 AM
To
"tharaka pilapitiya" <tharaka.pilapitiya at gmail.com>, <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
cc
Subject
Re: [Terrapreta] http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf
Tharaka:
It was interesting to read the article you provided. Thanks. However, I think we still need more proof that rice hull charcoal is better than other types of charcoal - as only one type of charcoal was reported in this article. I hope you can convince these researchers or others to try various types of charcoal.
I would be interested in hearing from anyone on whether they believe all the following comments on pages 2 and 3 by the article's authors ring true relative to charcoal advantages re rooting (and an extension to non-rooting situations). Or are there other different explanations?
The higher number of visible roots and longer roots
of the cuttings grown on carbonized rice husk may be
attributed with its better water holding capacity and
drainage. Under such favorable condition, the plant
was provided sufficient air and oxygen for cell respiration
during the rooting process (Frenck and Kim
1995). The moisture in smaller pores served not only
for metabolic activities but also provided sufficient
humidity to avoid excessive transpiration (Karlsen
1997) and destructive temperature fluctuation that
may happen in the rhizosphere (Klapwijk 1987).
Aside from water holding capacity and drainage, the
better root initiation and formation seemed to have
relation with darker environment provided by carbonized
rice husk. Compared to other treatment media,
black color of carbonized rice husk may contribute to
darker rhizosphere environment. In this situation, the
root promoter (e.g. auxin) may be translocated and
accumulated at the basal part of cuttings where root
initials appear and these induce faster cell division
and differentiation for root formation (Moe 1988).
----- Original Message -----
From: tharaka pilapitiya<mailto:tharaka.pilapitiya at gmail.com>
To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 11:06 PM
Subject: [Terrapreta]http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf
Hi SKB,
Rice husk the EVER BEST charcoal, pls reffer the abstract.
http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf<http://www.pustaka-deptan.go.id/publication/as072065.pdf>
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