[Terrapreta] O-tillage

[Nikolaus Foidl]

Dear Jim!

I grew up in small scale agriculture where black soils where the common
thing around and organic matter content was always above 4,5%. Every spring
taking the shovel and burry some heavy loads of cow dung 40cm deep in the
Garden soil and then work it over. What a growing and microbial live. But
that was hobby and nobody could live on it. Today I try as a R& D
responsible in a 24.000 ha Farm to get back to low chemical and low
intervention farming as long as productivity goals of the production are not
in jeopardy. Daily I deal with RR varieties which allow even more herbicides
to be applied as well with so called BT varieties and all the other "
miracles" industries is coming up. In this environment of solving everything
with chemistry its not easy to ask for reasoning and long term thinking, to
force production activists which are driven by the futures of Chicago and
not the earthworm count per m2 in the field to think twice what they are
doing. You fight against costs and not in global approach of a more
universal benefit. The sourrounding economic environment is drilled to
produce always cheaper at the cost of labor and environment. Sometimes you
get the impression although we already lost the war in agronomy we still
keep fighting battles.( the enemy is homegrown and ranges from pests to
diseases, from high chemical costs to destroyed and weekend soils and every
day more greedy companies from Agro banks who get your blood to machine
selling companies and seed and chemical companies)
It is a pressure cycle which at the end has the environment and our future
as the real victims.
In our trials weeds are responsible for up to 35 % of the productivity
losses and once in the cycle of killing weeds and reducing them into very
hardy and selected weeds it is nearly impossible to get a way out to a
production without herbicides. Margins are not big enough to survive 5 years
in a row loosing 30 or more % of productivity.( tropical agronomy without
subsidies) We are looking with wetting agents and fulvic acid and humic acid
to keep functionality of the herbicides by lowering up to 50% the dose per
ha. Next step is to develop on farm sugars and proteins which can complex
herbicides without lowering there function but once reached the soil serve
as attractants for bacteria and fungi which can decompose rapidly the
remaining herbicides. Then the question is to restore a very rich community
of fungi, bacteria and yeasts using charcoal as a vector for transport and
save growth and as sink and source for the needed minerals and organic
building blocks biologic live needs. To lower costs per ha we are trying to
develop a banded application of chemically and biologically charged charcoal
which still represents a 30 ton equivalent application per ha.( just in the
bands below the seed deposition lines) To the charcoal is added same amount
of milled (2mm diameter) clay bricks to improve the ability to form
aggregates. Biologic wetting agents and waste sugars from a lemon fabric
will help in the start up of this operation.( the citric acid and the fulvic
acid serve as a chelating agent for micronutrients out of sands with high
content of feldspar) We have already a working unit ( since 10 years)
producing Mycorrhiza( 100 metric tons of infested earth each year) as well
we produce some 35 tons of beauveria spores and some 2 tons of trichoderma
spores per year. In the near future we plan to have our own EM production
specific for our soils in place using several different locally isolated
strains from the group of photosynthetic active  bacteria's and algae's,
nitrogen fixing bacteria's  as well beer yeast and several useful strains of
fungi.

In all this charcoal has a vital role. We will produce, starting in January
some 20 tons a day. ( pressure kiln at 10 to 35 bar working pressure). The
pre trials we did with some 150 tons of ambient pressure produced charcoal.
I will keep the list posted once we have the first big scale results.
You see paradigm shift is overdue.

Best regards Nikolaus