[Terrapreta] biochar overview.

[Mary Lehmann]

What I found especially interesting was the logic behind the fact  
that increasing food production is not the answer to the growing food  
shortage.  It isn't even biochar's main contribution  to the world's  
oil/food peak.

ML
====================================================================

On Apr 24, 2008, at 7:53 AM, Steve Kurtz wrote:
section on Terra Preta

   Because making charcoal from biomass releases energy, researchers  
today are looking at integrated biomass energy and food production  
systems using "biochar" - the modern term for terra preta. For more  
details on these efforts, see my report for Truthout on the first  
biochar conference in 2007. There is also a good account of the terra  
preta in Charles C. Mann's book, "1491: New Revelations of the  
Americas Before Columbus."
     Biochar may be the answer that Lula is looking for. Biochar  
could be a great gift from Brazil to the rest of the world. Charles  
C. Mann notes that "it might improve the expanses of bad soil that  
cripple agriculture in Africa - a final gift from the peoples who  
brought us tomatoes, maize, manioc, and a thousand different ways of  
being human."

     Biochar is just one of the traditional agricultural practices  
that a world running out of fossil fuels and cheap fertilizer may be  
very grateful to rediscover in the coming years. The IAASTD report,  
if acted upon quickly, could jumpstart this research.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject:
Peak Food?
Date:
Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:03:51 -0700 (PDT)
From:
William Tamblyn <wmtamblyn at yahoo.com>
To:
ERT <energyroundtable at yahoogroups.com>



[Lester] Brown doesn't use the term, but it is likely that we have  
reached "peak food," the moment when world grain output has achieved  
its maximum and we will have to work very hard to keep it from  
declining.

One of the top reasons to believe we have reached peak food is that  
we have apparently reached peak oil. In his book, "Eating Fossil  
Fuels," Dale Allen Pfeiffer shows how utterly dependent modern  
agriculture is on fossil fuels, not just for the machinery that  
plants and harvests, but for the energy to irrigate fields, and for  
fertilizers. About 30 percent of farm energy goes to fertilizer, much  
of which is made from natural gas. Like oil, natural gas is becoming  
increasingly expensive as production nears peak. Without oil, we  
might not drive cars, but without fertilizer, we might not eat.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042208A.shtml
     Why More Food Is Not the Answer
     By Kelpie Wilson
     t r u t h o u t | Environment Editor

     Tuesday 22 April 2008

     With food riots across the globe in the news, the immediate  
cause of food shortages is simply this: grain prices have doubled  
over the last year and poor people can no longer afford to buy enough  
food. There is no one single cause for the price rise; it is a  
combination of supply and demand.

     Steady population growth means there are about 70 million new  
mouths to feed every year, and increasing affluence is also spurring  
more people to buy more meat. Meat is grain-intensive - it takes  
about seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. Biofuels  
are another new demand on grain stocks, and a potentially insatiable  
one. The grain used to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed one  
person for a year.

     There is more than enough grain to feed every hungry human on  
the planet, but the poor cannot compete with wealthier buyers of meat  
and biofuels. Markets are not interested in feeding hungry people -  
they want to make money, so from a capitalist point of view, the only  
solution is to increase supply in the hope that it will drive prices  
down.

     However, on the supply side, serious limiting factors are coming  
into play: dwindling water supplies and increased drought exacerbated  
by climate change; increasingly degraded land and soils; the rising  
cost of energy used for everything from water pumping to transport,  
and the growing cost of fertilizer and other inputs.

     The world wants more food - a lot more food - but the planet  
will not be able to provide it. For this reason alone, more food is  
not the answer - it cannot be the answer.

     Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author  
of the book "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization," says that  
while there have been food price spikes in the past, "This troubling  
situation is unlike any the world has faced before."

     Brown doesn't use the term, but it is likely that we have  
reached "peak food," the moment when world grain output has achieved  
its maximum and we will have to work very hard to keep it from  
declining.

     One of the top reasons to believe we have reached peak food is  
that we have apparently reached peak oil. In his book, "Eating Fossil  
Fuels," Dale Allen Pfeiffer shows how utterly dependent modern  
agriculture is on fossil fuels, not just for the machinery that  
plants and harvests, but for the energy to irrigate fields, and for  
fertilizers. About 30 percent of farm energy goes to fertilizer, much  
of which is made from natural gas. Like oil, natural gas is becoming  
increasingly expensive as production nears peak. Without oil, we  
might not drive cars, but without fertilizer, we might not eat.

     Food and fuel are intimately connected. Not only is fuel  
essential to produce food, but because food can substitute for fuel,  
the price of food is now locked into the price of oil - a price that  
is going nowhere but up.

     A Timely Report Shows the Way Forward

     Globalization has promised to lift every person out of poverty  
by growing the economy so large that wealth will eventually trickle  
down to all. But this is a false promise that ignores physical limits  
to planetary resources.

     A groundbreaking United Nations report that presents a serious  
challenge to the promises of globalization and biotech was released  
last week at a very timely moment. The IAASTD (International  
Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development) is  
directed by Robert Watson, a former director of the IPCC  
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and it shares some  
similar features to the UN Climate assessment reports.

     Most importantly, the IAASTD report says that agricultural  
systems cannot go on as they have. They are failing to feed the poor,  
wrecking ecosystems, exacerbating global warming and are far too  
dependent on fossil fuels. Just as everything about the way we  
produce and use energy must change in order to avoid climate  
catastrophe, so everything about the way we produce and use food must  
change in order to avoid a humanitarian and ecological disaster.

     Watson said, "If we do persist with business as usual, the  
world's people cannot be fed over the next half-century. It will mean  
more environmental degradation, and the gap between the haves and  
have-nots will further widen. We have an opportunity now to marshal  
our intellectual resources to avoid that sort of future. Otherwise,  
we face a world no one would want to inhabit."

     As with climate change, the solution to the food crisis will not  
be found in some miracle new technology. On the contrary, the report  
identifies a need to reconsider many traditional crops and methods  
for maintaining soil fertility and coping with drought. These  
traditional technologies need to be integrated with modern ones to  
achieve the best of both worlds. Currently there is little support  
for this approach to crop science.

     British economist Nicholas Stern called climate change the  
biggest market failure in history. The IAASTD report also indicts  
markets with failing to eradicate hunger and poverty. Watson said,  
"The incentives for science to address the issues that matter to the  
poor are weak ... the poorest developing countries are net losers  
under most trade liberalization scenarios."

     Agribusiness Reacts

     The IAASTD study involved more than 400 authors and took four  
years to produce. However, not everyone stuck with the process till  
the end. Representatives from the biotechnology industry walked out  
in protest, complaining that GM (genetically modified) crops were  
being unfairly overlooked in favor of organic agriculture. The New  
Scientist (5 April 2008) presented a point counterpoint between  
participants Deborah Keith, a manager for Syngenta, one of the  
world's largest biotech companies, and Janice Jiggins, a social  
scientist. Keith complained that the draft document was unscientific  
and that "too often it treated fears and prejudices against  
technology and business as fact ..." Organic agriculture was not  
subjected to the same scrutiny, she said.

     Jiggins' account of the process noted that traditional farmers  
at the table "took deep offense at hearing technologies ... building  
on centuries-old traditions dismissed as 'anecdotal' and of no value."

     At heart, the debate is over what is considered "scientific"  
agriculture. The discussion of biotechnology in the final report  
summary peels the "anecdotal" label off traditional agriculture and  
slaps it back on genetic engineering, saying that "assessment of  
modern biotechnology is lagging behind development; information can  
be anecdotal and contradictory ..."

     Jiggens notes that, among other problems, "the capacity to  
monitor and regulate GM has failed to keep up."

     In reaction to the IAASTD report, some commentators have leaped  
on the idea that people who are "afraid of science" are irrationally  
keeping biotech and companies like Monsanto from saving the world.

     Oxford professor Paul Collier, writing in The London Times, said  
that Europe and Japan are "befuddled by romanticism" for subsidizing  
inefficient small farms. "The remedy to high food prices is to  
increase supply," he said, and the only solution to the food crisis  
is more food produced by "unromantic industrialized agriculture."

     He also said, "The most realistic way is to replicate the  
Brazilian model of large, technologically sophisticated agro- 
companies that supply the world market. There are still many areas of  
the world - including large swaths of Africa - that have good land  
that could be used far more productively if it were properly managed  
by large companies. To contain the rise in food prices, we need more  
globalization, not less."

     Brazil - Big Ag Set Up to Fail?

     Taking a closer look at the Brazilian model shows why the IAASTD  
authors overwhelmingly rejected the big business model as a way to  
sustainably feed the world.

     Brazil's Mato Grosso region is the world's most active  
agricultural frontier. Satellite photos show the relentless push of  
soybean monocultures and cattle grazing into the Amazon rainforest.  
Forest ecologist Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center,  
says that soy agriculture in the Mato Grosso has "greased the skids"  
for deforestation of the Amazon.

     The success of soy farming in Mato Grosso is based on two  
advantages: the region's abundant rainfall and the discovery that  
heavy applications of fertilizer, especially lime and phosphorus,  
could impart impressive fertility to the tropical soils. Both of  
these assets are likely to be short-lived.

     First and foremost is the rain. Nepstad's research focus is  
drought in the Amazon. He has found that after only two years of  
drought, trees begin to die and the forest fires start. Once a  
regular fire regime takes hold, a tipping point is reached that  
rapidly converts rainforest to dry scrub. The consequence is not just  
losing the rainforest, but losing the rain. Through a process called  
transpiration, trees in the Amazon seed the clouds that water the  
fields and pastures of South America and the Caribbean. Researchers  
are finding that clouds and air currents that originate in the Amazon  
can drive weather patterns as far away as the North Atlantic. As the  
forest evaporates, so does the rainfall.

     The second factor, a reliance on heavy applications of  
fertilizer, is also bound to be a temporary phenomenon. Little noted  
in the popular press, fertilizer prices have skyrocketed in recent  
months. Reuters reported on April 16 that Chinese fertilizer  
importers have "agreed to pay more than triple what they did a year  
ago to reserve tight supplies of potash, sending the shares of global  
fertilizer makers to record levels."

     Phosphorus, like potash, is mostly produced by mining mineral  
deposits and there is a limit to global reserves - a limit that we  
are rapidly approaching. Patrick Dery and Bart Anderson looked at  
phosphorus production data in a report for Energy Bulletin titled  
"Peak Phosphorus." They concluded that the world has passed the peak  
of phosphorus production and is already in decline.

     "In some ways," say Dery and Anderson, "the problem of peak  
phosphorus is more difficult than peak oil. Energy sources other than  
oil are available..." But, they point out, "Unlike fossil fuels,  
phosphorus can be recycled. However if we waste phosphorus, we cannot  
replace it [with] any other source."

     The main way to recycle phosphorus is to reclaim it from sewage  
and animal waste. The need to do this will bring us full circle from  
modern high-tech agriculture back to traditional practices that used  
animal manure and human "night soil." Researchers in Sweden and  
Australia are already working on a new toilet design that would  
siphon off human urine to use as a source of phosphate. It would be  
stored in tanks for supply to farmers.

     What will happen to the farms of Mato Grosso when the price of  
phosphorus doubles, quadruples, and then doubles again? For that  
matter, what will happen to the fields of Iowa?

     Brazil and the New Agriculture

     It is the specter of resource limits that has led the authors of  
the IAASTD study to recommend that traditional practices be studied  
and adopted where they make sense. One of the most promising  
traditional practices that is now being studied at Cornell and other  
major agricultural research institutions has its origins in Brazil.

     Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been on the  
defensive for his government's role in deforesting the Amazon. Most  
recently, critics have attacked Brazilian agriculture for diverting  
capacity from food to biofuels. Lula has countered the criticism by  
insisting that Brazil will expand its agriculture without further  
encroachments on the Amazon. One of the best ways to do that, and  
conserve scarce fertilizers like phosphorus at the same time, might  
be to adopt a practice used by an ancient civilization that occupied  
the Amazon before Columbus.

     The practice is called terra preta, Portuguese for "dark earth."  
These dark earths are highly fertile soils that were created by  
burying charcoal along with manure and other organic wastes. Charcoal  
is a porous material that is very good at holding nutrients like  
nitrogen and phosphorus and making them available to plant roots. It  
also aerates soil and helps it to retain water.

     Some terra preta fields are thousands of years old, and yet they  
are still so fertile that they are dug up and sold as potting soil in  
Brazilian markets.

     Because making charcoal from biomass releases energy,  
researchers today are looking at integrated biomass energy and food  
production systems using "biochar" - the modern term forterra preta.  
For more details on these efforts, see my report for Truthout on the  
first biochar conference in 2007. There is also a good account of the  
terra preta in Charles C. Mann's book, "1491: New Revelations of the  
Americas Before Columbus."

     Biochar may be the answer that Lula is looking for. Biochar  
could be a great gift from Brazil to the rest of the world. Charles  
C. Mann notes that "it might improve the expanses of bad soil that  
cripple agriculture in Africa - a final gift from the peoples who  
brought us tomatoes, maize, manioc, and a thousand different ways of  
being human."

     Biochar is just one of the traditional agricultural practices  
that a world running out of fossil fuels and cheap fertilizer may be  
very grateful to rediscover in the coming years. The IAASTD report,  
if acted upon quickly, could jumpstart this research.

     Roadmap Needed

     The IAASTD report does not go so far as to provide a road map or  
an action plan, but the various private-public partnerships that are  
working to implement its goals are already finding it useful.

     Inter Press Service reports that a delegate from Costa Rica said  
"These documents are like a bible with which to negotiate with  
various institutions in my country and transform agriculture."

     Benny Haerlin, the representative from Greenpeace, sees the  
document as a blazing signpost, lighting the way. He said: "This  
marks the beginning of a new, of a real Green Revolution. The modern  
way of farming is biodiverse and labor intensive and works with  
nature, not against it."



     Kelpie Wilson is Truthout's environment editor. Trained as a  
mechanical engineer, she embarked on a career as a forest protection  
activist, then returned to engineering as a technical writer for the  
solar power industry. She is the author of "Primal Tears," an eco- 
thriller about a hybrid human-bonobo girl. Greg Bear, author of  
"Darwin's Radio," says: "'Primal Tears' is primal storytelling,  
thoughtful and passionate. Kelpie Wilson wonderfully expands our  
definitions of human and family. Read Leslie Thatcher's review of  
Kelpie Wilson's novel "Primal Tears."



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