[Terrapreta] New Article

[lou gold]

Hi Richard,

Your thoughts are marvelously provocative -- really got me thinking.
I have a somewhat different take that I would like to share.

I think the "google example" is more in the "open source" (freeware) model
than you suggest. What they did was to open up a service (search) to all
free of charge. Yes, they don't give the source code for the algorithym or
access to the inner workings of the program but they opened a whole new
world for free. This generated traffic and traffic generated the demand for
other services like advertising, etc which were held as proprietary and
generated a fortune -- no, many, many fortunes.

If I were to carry this model into terra preta, I would say the first step
is to open it to all -- massively subsidize the production of agrichar and
give it away. Then let the peripheral services appear for charge --
packaging, distributing, etc of the char and sale of the products growing
from a more fertile earth. In other words, create an infrastructure of
abundance and let everyone benefit.

Where's the rub? I'm afraid that both the existing petro- and agri-
industries are formatted to profit from scarcity. Their depleting
technologies GUARANTEE higher and higher demand and lower and lower supply
of both fossil fuel and productive soil. This, as we can see in the daily
news, is both a formula for the perfect storm and for record profits.

Do you really want to build terra preta into this "proprietary model"? Let
me humbly suggest that, if this happens, terra preta may never be able to
deliver its full promise. Why not? Because profit is fundamentally rooted in
scarcity and not in abundance. I believe that you are correct in
understanding that the movers and shakers of agri-business are not advancing
terra preta. Do you see a beneficial and benign way to get them to do so?

Thank again for stimulating me to write this.

hugs,

lou

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Richard Haard <richrd at nas.com> wrote:

> 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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>



-- 
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