[Terrapreta] New Article

[Tom Miles]

See: http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/haardcharagclimate031008

 

 

From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Richard Haard
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 2:16 PM
To: Terrapreta
Subject: [Terrapreta] New Article

 

I have just authored a new article for our quarterly farm native plant
catalog. Under separate cover I sent a copy of the pdf file to Tom to place
in files section. The article title is Charcoal, Agriculture and Climate
Change

 

In the article I was quite inspired by the approach used by Folke Gunther in
his writing and power point show. My 1700 word essay is my own view of the
issue and I hope distributing this will help to get this terra preta
movement under way. 

 

I am concerned that since terra preta as an open source movement its
recognition as an agricultural practice will be slow to appear. The
governments and the NGO's who will be the mechanism to make this practical
application of charcoal in agriculture are responsive only  to the business
development model used in developing capitol intensive machinery and trade
secret additives and are  better at competing for the attention. Yet here we
have a technology that was widely used 1000 years ago.  As advocate for this
application of science Dr Lehmann has stated  terra preta nova (as Slash and
Char)  is ready to put into the hands of farmers yet what is happening is
governments and NGO's are waiting for the  use of charcoal in agriculture to
appear in general practice. It is a catch 22 situation.

 

It seems to me the terra preta movement and connected carbon sequestration
is waiting for a 'Google type' movement that brings in 'the client' rather
than a classical market development approach where the appliance or the
patented/trade secret application penetrates a target market. It seems that
charcoal as a open source agriculture technology is at a disadvantage when
it would have a strong advantage if it were protected such as a software
application.

 

Rich Haard, Bellingham, Wa. 

 

 

 

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