[Terrapreta] eprida char - organic?

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi Lewis,

I see you grappling with the scope of the bio-remediation project of reclaiming CO2 from the atmosphere and investing it in soils for the benefit of worldwide agriculture + providing renewable "carbon balanced" energy.

Dealing with these problems which will have such worldwide and pronounced (potentially) effects on large areas and many people is daunting at best.  It might require a change in all cultures.  It is helped by an understanding of the physical world, I think.  We can teach our children this, is about the best a species like us can do, with the solution to problems of this scope.

Humans have adapted, too, to many "world changing events" in history.  We have an ability to adapt and survive as a species, very probably.
But, Global Climatic Change can challenge the survivability of many species of both plant and animals and effect the availability of precious water to large populations, so the required adaptation may be too much for many of our humankind to survive.

I keep thinking the "sinking ship" metaphor, mostly because of the "all hands on deck" cry for help.  Quick!  We ALL need to bail carbon out of the atmosphere before the Earth sinks!  Then with GCC, where the water is rushing in on people, is the place where the people need more and better soil.  So, if everyone could make charcoal and put it in soil around them, 6 billion of us @ 1 ton per year, then with this waste management, we could remove 6 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere as CO2.  Because the charcoal carbon is locally re-deposited in locally surrounding soils, then the locals receive the benefits of having the "carbon investment" in their neighborhoods or communities.

As we harvest biomass residue, annual new growth or recent perennial growth, for use as a charcoal into soil amendment, we can harvest additional biomass residue and convert its stored energy to usable energy forms, like electric power, site heat, and gaseous or liquid fuels.
"Bio-refining" to extract organic chemicals, fuels, and energy from biomass could be the largest industry in the world some day.  If populations containing generations of people can survive from now until then, we will bloom to an estimated 10 billion people by mid-century.  Growing food to feed us all then could also be the world's first or second largest industry some day.

Individually, or even in only small dedicated groups, making any difference with these problems of GW and GCC, the environment, population growth, at all, can seem almost impossible.  But, I think 6 billion people, all acting in concert, can make a huge dent in the problems, when we cooperate.  Working in small groups is how grassroots programs probably need to start anyway, right?!  "ALL hands on deck!" seems a reasonable motto to the cause for me.

Regards,

SKB


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: MMBTUPR at aol.com<mailto:MMBTUPR at aol.com> 
  To: jimstoy at dtccom.net<mailto:jimstoy at dtccom.net> ; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
  Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 8:20 PM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] eprida char - organic?


                 from            Lewis L Smith

  I would not say that organic farming is all sustainable or, without subsidy, never sustainable. It seems to me that that is going to depend on quite a few factors, in addition to the increase in yield from using terra preta.

  In particular, there is a factor which has not come up in any of the Terra preta threads, and that is economies of scale, which can vary widely from crop to crop, and which make a lot of difference to commercial success. Two examples.

  Cattle

  My parents ran a pioneer, unsubsidized, commercial, organic beef operation for 30 years. They had a fairly steady 40% gross margin and made money often enough to stay in the good graces of the IRS. But they did not have a positive cash flow over every consecutive five-year period. This was because as inflation increased, they did not increase the size of the herd fast enough. 

  They started with five head in the early 1950's and reached a winter carryover of 325 in 1975, when my father died. I did some numbers and told my mother that if she increased the carryover to 400, she would have a positive cash flow every year, even in a year when she had to put a new roof on her biggest barn, which in those days was a $10,000 job. 

  Last year, the present operator told me that with a carryover of 400, he would just break even on a cash basis, so he had cut back to providing summer pasture for 250 head belonging to another operation. Even at that, the farm is only profitable because of multiple operations, such as very successful summer campsites on the shore.

  Another thing which has hurt is that the farm used to get [ free at the supplier's gate ] a lot of hen dressing and dairy manure, mix them together and put them on the fields, in lieu of commercial fertilizers. But now the chickens are gone, and the dairy industry is going down hill. So the farm's yield of hay has gone from five dry tons per acre to three and a half or maybe less.

  Laying hens  [ not candidates for terra preta but relevant to the point ]

  When I was a teenager, a neighbor with 2,000 birds and 20 dairy cows on a quarter section [ 160 acres ] , offered to sell me his farm and teach me the business. At that time, 2,000 birds was a small-scale [ but profitable ] operation, while 20,000 birds was a large operation. I declined, but many years later in graduate school, I "designed" a poultry industry for Puerto Rico, for a planning course. At that time, in the States, a "small" operation had increased to 200,000 birds and a large one, to one million !  And that was before Frank Perdue !  [ Fortunately the range in PR was still a lot smaller. ]

  I saw similar things happen with sugar cane, pineapple and tomatoes in Puerto Rico,
  although in each case the magnitudes varied from activity to activity. In fact, there can be a big difference with a single crop, depending on the management system. For examaple, cane managed for energy and cane managed for sugar. In the first case, one has to have on hand some giant Klass harvesters, each of which can take on a double row of cane with say 67 dry tons of millable cane per acre in each row. The sugar operation can use a smaller machine or hand harvesting.

  When we get to the economics of the different kinds of operations which might use terra preta, we are going to have to take this kind of thing into consideration.  

  One more example of how with bioenergy, one has to "do one's homework" project by project. There are not many "currently useful generalizations", except perhaps that any attempt to replace US gasoline consumption with corn-based ethanol, will drive up the price of tortillas in Mexico and the price of pizza in the USA !

  Cordially. ### 






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