Terra Preta

[Alan]

Amongst the most important historical, anthropological, archiological, and agriculture discoveries of recent times is the study of Terra Preta (or Dark Soil), a type of soil discovered in the Amazonian River Delta area.

This soil has been an enigma in and off itself for centuries and is only now becoming well known and understood (to an extent). The soil seems to be man made with agricultural purposes in mind making us rethink just exactly what natural and pristine conditions are (man made evolutionary ideas, agricultural alchemy) in a place as isolated and as previously thought (due to poor and thin soils) uninhabitable as the Amazoinian basin. There is no doubt that there were large and herto undiscovered, agriculturally advanced, civilizations just as described by Francisco de Orellana (could the golden city of El Droado actually exist? After all if you don't have to worry about feeding yourself you do have time to work on other projects! Could these high population levels and advanced agriculture have led to advanced civilization altogether? Atlantis?).

Apparently no one has yet to exactly discover, unravel, or truly understand how Terra Preta was made. We do know that it is a stable soil, more stable than any soil on earth, and that it does self replicate (living inert material? Indeed!). 1,000 years after it was deposited it is still just as fertile and active as ever, only needing to lie fallow for six months at a time (if at all, one farmer described farming the same plot for 40 years without break!).

Anyhow, there seem to be modern organic growers that are experimenting with bio-char (a fancy term for charcoal) and I have spent a good deal of my day researching all of this and providing links, currently my brain is formulating ideas about how this could work on a small farm like Bishop's Homegrown, I already have a good idea on how to create the active carbon charcoal I would need to start the process. 2009 will see trials with these methods on the small scale, I presume success, in which case the trials will grow into the large scale and eventually a soil amending traditional practice.

What follows are some of what I found on the net, the first is from NatGeo and I highly reccomend watching the replay of the program for more info:

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081119-lost-cities-amazon_2.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_earth

www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/terra_preta/Flyer%20terra%20preta%20landuse%20strategy.pdf

www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/terra_preta/TerraPretahome.htm

terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/

[Alan]

BTW, Since we are a board of co-operators really I would love to have others along for these unique experiments in resurecting a long ago dead practice? Any takers? Anybody else want to experiment as well?

[cff]

I haven't read it all yet but it has my interest = count me in

Nov 22, 2008 16:54:30 GMT -5 Alan said:

BTW, Since we are a board of co-operators really I would love to have others along for these unique experiments in resurecting a long ago dead practice? Any takers? Anybody else want to experiment as well?

[johno]

I am interested in this; have been for a couple of years. The charcoal (not briquettes) has to be formed in low oxygen conditions, and there was, maybe still is, a charcoal factory somewhere around here, I've just forgotten where to find them... But i was thinking that they might have dust they'd get rid of! That would be ideal (especially if I still had a truck...) because it's pretty difficult to reduce hardwood charcoal to fines, which is what you want. I've tried... you'd need some kind of heavy duty grinder, which I don't have. Anyway, as I recall, the idea behind it is that the more carbon there is in the soil, the more nutrients it will hold. I guess that's why they use charcoal for various filters.

As far as making your own hardwood charcoal, it's pretty low tech. Any of us who lives outside the city could do it. I'd like to hear ideas on a low tech means of reducing it to dust.

[canadamike]

I wonder if making some form of charcoal out of cornstalks that are very dry would be doable. It sure would be easier to do. And I wonder what would be the difference between hardwood and softwood charcoal for the soil.

I might be wrong, but as far as I know softwood charcoal should be less hard to crunch/powder. Pretty much all the oils have been burned up in the charcoal making process. I suspect it heats better ( that's why it is used by shopsmiths) because it is less dense and there is more inner channels for air in them in the larger cells and.....( don't know the term in english, let's say the veins).

At the temperature it is burning, I doubt there is enough residue to explain the extra heat, but I could be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

I wonder if smaller bits of it would simply not be decomposed and reduced to ''dust '' over time in the soil. I mean over a time frame that is practical and effective over a short period.

[cff]

Ok the part I don't understand is how do we get from dead charcoal to living inert material ?

[johno]

Now that I've looked through most of those links, I see that I missed a few points. One is that the special char process involves low temperature as well as low oxygen. You can do these both by misting a fire... A big one I missed was that they think there are special microbes at work in Terra Preta. My understanding is that just about anywhere on earth, you could find just about any soil microbe; some just thrive under certain conditions. My guess is that given high amounts of 'bio-char' along with the manures and compost that we already use, these microbes would just appear on their own. Worth a shot... And a technicality I missed, and really still don't fully understand, is that the char holds carbon more than being carbon?

Anyway, I still see the mechanical grinding as the major obstacle to be solved.

And I wonder, does it have to be tree-char? Maybe one could char straw bales or something to that effect if it were more convenient? Weed bales...

[johno]

Interesting how much goes on while you're reading a few links...

Yeah Mike, as I hit the post button I was already thinking corn cobs, but why not corn stalks for that matter. Just about any crop residue might work? And they'd definitely be easier to grind!

cff, The charcoal itself isn't alive, any more than soil is alive: there are multitudes of microorganisms doing the work.

[canadamike]

I just visioned the video Alan, and this corn stalk thing looks better than one hour ago, and Johno, I don't think you need to powder stuff, in the video they talked about micro-organisms doing it from larger bits.

I kind of had a hunch about this thing. having worked with woods from that area of the world, a lot of these woods are extremely dense and hard, and even the hardest rock maple is like bubble gum compared to them. I also have burnt leftovers from these woods and they keep their shape perfectly forever before giving you some sawdust, quite unlike our own hardwoods. They are so hard, for some it takes a new saw blade after one cut. And I am not talking cheap blades here. ANd I know a very good blade, even on a top of the line industrial saw can cry like a baby, believe me.

You know your wood too, Johno, so I guess you can estimate the hardships of ripsawing a 4 inches post of ipé at a 45 degrees angle...quite an expensive undertaking in blades

They actually use diamond blades to cut them. I suspect a very rudimantary set up limiting oxygen intake would be enough to ''charcoal'' them, as even when burned in an open fire the remnants look like charcoal and are definitely not all burned. I would not be surprised to learn one day that the composition of such woods is an integral part of this bio-system. After ll, there might be some molecular transformation of the chemical coumpounds that already make most of these trees imputrescible, and 80% of these trees are.

A couple of months ago, I read somewhere that somebody made the hypothesis that the potery bits may have had an active role to play, but darn, I can't remember where.

Count me in too, we are actually equiped to make a large charcoal burner, we have a couple of huge steel tanks, all the welding equipment and the know how ( pretty rudimentary, really) and the woodshop provides plenty of material to burn.

Just forget about the potery bits part of the experiment, I don't feel like asking Vivianne to throw all the good china at me... ;D

[Alan]

Nov 22, 2008 19:00:31 GMT -5 johno said:

I am interested in this; have been for a couple of years. The charcoal (not briquettes) has to be formed in low oxygen conditions, and there was, maybe still is, a charcoal factory somewhere around here, I've just forgotten where to find them... But i was thinking that they might have dust they'd get rid of! That would be ideal (especially if I still had a truck...) because it's pretty difficult to reduce hardwood charcoal to fines, which is what you want. I've tried... you'd need some kind of heavy duty grinder, which I don't have. Anyway, as I recall, the idea behind it is that the more carbon there is in the soil, the more nutrients it will hold. I guess that's why they use charcoal for various filters.


Actually, from what I'm understanding reading this, and this is just going by what has been found in Terra Preta, you would actually want small "chunks" of charcoal, which would then need to be activated by soaking with an activator (urine, compost, plant tea), the basic idea being to fill the pores with nutrient which would then later leach out into the soil. There are modern folks doing gardening using fines though, they call the method bio-char.


Posted by canadamike on Today at 7:14pm
I wonder if making some form of charcoal out of cornstalks that are very dry would be doable. It sure would be easier to do. And I wonder what would be the difference between hardwood and softwood charcoal for the soil.

I might be wrong, but as far as I know softwood charcoal should be less hard to crunch/powder. Pretty much all the oils have been burned up in the charcoal making process. I suspect it heats better ( that's why it is used by shopsmiths) because it is less dense and there is more inner channels for air in them in the larger cells and.....( don't know the term in english, let's say the veins).

At the temperature it is burning, I doubt there is enough residue to explain the extra heat, but I could be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

I wonder if smaller bits of it would simply not be decomposed and reduced to ''dust '' over time in the soil. I mean over a time frame that is practical and effective over a short period.

As far as making your own hardwood charcoal, it's pretty low tech. Any of us who lives outside the city could do it. I'd like to hear ideas on a low tech means of reducing it to dust.

Corn would be an excellent canidate, basically any carbon from plant material. We know thus far that they weren't really using much wood in the form of large trees (unless there is something we have yet to find) because they didn't have the steel required to fall trees easily and it would have been back breaking work without the wheel around.

As far as burning at low oxygen levels, if you have a wood burning stove with a thermostat damper (like in my greenhouses) you can get the wood to smolder pretty effective in a low oxygen environment and make charcoal as a byproduct pretty easily.

The charcoal they are pulling from the Terra Preta doesn't seem very degraded, probably due to low oxygen levels.


Posted by cff on Today at 7:18pm
Ok the part I don't understand is how do we get from dead charcoal to living inert material ?

Basically they were layering charoal, plant matter, degradable pottery (for air pockets perhaps?) and manures and bones in a way that was appealing to mychorizial fungus and the endemic local earthworm populations, the worms would work on the layers of mulch creating worm castings that the mycori could inhabit and reproduce in, the mycori are also excellent at growing on charcoal bits as well. The self replicating of the soil is probably explained by an ability for the worms to come and go at the site into and out of native soils adding additional microbes to the surrounding native soil which then eat the available organic material, the same goes for the Terra Preta areas themselves, since they are in a tropical area this action happens quicker than it would in an area with less humidity, of course over time the chunks of charcoal, bone, pottery, OM, and so on will also fall apart/be eaten and spread. In effect it becomes a living soil.

Charcoal could be made on the cheap in the field by using dry field residue (or wet), or by finding a source for slab wood from a sawmill, making small open piles and setting fire to them, let the heat build, you can then mist with water, cover with wet plant material, periodically smother with soil, or let smolder and occasionally turn with a fork.

I read a lot about industrialization and deep scientific insight about all this today and all it did was annoy me. The natives had no access to any of this so the most simple and logical solution should be the one used I think, also doing it on the cheap should be a requirment, local materials only.

[Alan]

To add to that, my stoves in the greenhouse hardly ever get a break in the cold months so ash and coals build up quickly, I can basically go in and take out 3/4 of the coals and put them in a metal bucket every time I fill with wood, cover with enough water to extinguish the heat, later drain the water, crush with a sledghammer (if the bits aren't small enough to my liking) add to a five gallon bucket and then activate using worm castings, compost, or.....and this will sound strange (bear in mind we are talking C:N here again).....Urine.

I can accumulate buckets and buckets of material using this method over the winter and have enough to experiment with, if it works then next year will see me experiment with larger burns of slab wood and field residue.

Basically what I'm going to do is thus:

My manure spreader is as wide as the raised beds I will make, thus I spread my worm castings in their required area using the manure spreader, then I set the disc hiller to the width of the bed, hill once, go back over the hill with the manure spreader with castings and then go over once again spreading charcoal by hand, last pass will once again be done with hiller, making a raised bed that is flat on top with sloped sides, easy to irrigate, less erosion, deep compost for deep roots. I will work these beds for 3-5 years, maybe longer, the isles in between will be seeded with a cover crop.

[canadamike]

Alan, do you have a wood chipper/shredder?. I plan on finally buying one, but it should be a good way to reduce the size of the bits.

And I whole hearthedly agree with you on this topic. All this micro-biology thing is a bit over engineered, and anyway bacterias and organisms have had thousands of years to step in. reading some of it one can be surprized they haven't tried to do carbon dating on live bacterias yet, just in case....

Quite frankly, they are absolutely not trying to understand how it was done, that part is pretty much figured out, but how it works which is not a bad idea.

As for how they did it, what kind of wood they used, small branches, large ones, animal or human dung and so on and so on, it is much much in the realm of anthropology, and since i don't live there...

There is no ipé or kingwood in my back yard and I can only use what is available here and not there, it is a good, even fascinating read that I highly recommend but of absolutely no interest for my garden since none of it can be reproduced to the last detail but for the general principles and the colonisation by the bacterias and funghis and other micro-organisms will happen here based on my own kind of local micro-bugs, and my knowing of the nickname of their grandma will be of no use, what will happen will happen as I already help these critters a lot to be happy at the farm anyway...

I agree with you. One does it because it works, like they did. Then eats the stuff then shits then does it again then eat the stuff then...

Life can be simple on the farm.

[johno]

I snagged another link from a similar thread at idig...

henandharvest.com/?p=118

And I do think it's important to make the bits as small as possible, otherwise you have to wait on the microbes to do it, and they are slow as molasses. It works with larger bits, it would work better with fines. The chipper/shredder idea sounds like the way to go, but be prepared to look like you've been mining coal! It seems like some sort of dust shroud would be in order.

[Alan]

I wouldn't give up on giving it a try Mike, particularly if you or a neighbor has a wood heating or cooking stove, it has been relatively easy for me in the past few days since posting this to save three five gallon buckets from the two greenhouse stoves, these are now having nutrients added to them

I'm going to try to accumulate enough for four raised beds, three feet wide by 200 feet long for next summer (in the method described above). I do think they are making a mistake by creating "fines" from the charcoal, it will degrade and leach nutrients faster whereas the porous surface area of larger chunks will absorb nutrients, release them slower over time, degrade much slower, and then re-absorb nutrients as they are added to the soil.

Don't be too quick to think they know exactly what the natives were doing yet, no one has been able to recreate Terra Preta and where I think they miss the point is by not trying to fully understand how it is done (minus anthropologist and archaeologist who are working to figure it out), the bio-char folks simply took the simplest part of the method, the slow release of fertilizer element, and tried to make that into a soil science of it's own, one that in my eyes is mostly doomed to fail for anything other than sequestering carbon.

Here are a few theories I have thrown out myself:

-accidental development of initial Terra preta by early natives. Using manure and slow burning plant material to fire pots which busted, successive generations of natives continued this tradition in the same area (large pot making industry?) sometimes pots would bust, fires are always built on top of old burn sites using old charcoal as smoldering material, activating a new layer of charcoal. Over time beneficial agricultural practices were developed by accident and happenstance. This would explain the presence of so many pottery shards, activated charcoal, and the manure for OM.

-Layering strata to draw in microbes and worms. Probably still by happenstance originally, un-needed material is dumped in trash pits, natives notice microbial and worm activity expanding and enriching soil, they then start to layer materials in such a way that will entice microbial life and endemic earthworm populations to inhabit and work the strata. The pot chards serve as a tilth mechanism? What are the pots made of? If they are terra cotta or ceramic then they are porous, will hold water and nutrients just about as well as charcoal?

-Perhaps expanding upon this theory we take the next step. Explaining the presence of large unbroken pots in the Terra Preta, we can look at them as a form of formulated sacrifice. Sacrificing a pot for fertility but in this case maybe there is more to that! Could it be that my second theory is right but instead in this case, they were brewing inoculate in pots which could then be sacrificed to the terra preta earth as fertility?


These are just some of the ideas that I have. Either way in the next few years I will be experimenting with these theories and watching the understanding of Terra Preta technology (notice I didn't say bio-char for a reason) expand and then becoming disseminated as it should be to the general public.

I definitely encourage all interested to experiment, particularly if the charcoal can be produced or obtained as a byproduct of other activities.

[Alan]

I also posted a similar article to my first post here on my blog site (http://homegrowngoodness.blogspot.com) and recieved the following two replies(which will come in handy for Bio-Char proponets but which has little to do with ancient technology):

Blogger Erich J. Knight said...

You Have covered the basic links,here's a few more with some duplication;


Biochar, the modern version of an ancient Amazonian agricultural practice called Terra Preta (black earth), is gaining widespread credibility as a way to address world hunger, climate change, rural poverty, deforestation, and energy shortages… SIMULTANEOUSLY!

Modern Pyrolysis of biomass is a process for Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration,10X Lower Methane & N2O soil emissions, and 3X Fertility Too.
Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration, Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.

Charles Mann ("1491") in the Sept. National Geographic has a wonderful soils article which places Terra Preta / Biochar soils center stage.
I think Biochar has climbed the pinnacle, the Combined English and other language circulation of NGM is nearly nine million monthly with more than fifty million readers monthly!
We need to encourage more coverage now, to ride Mann's coattails to public critical mass.

Please put this (soil) bug in your colleague's ears. These issues need to gain traction among all the various disciplines who have an iron in this fire.
ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text

I love the "MEGO" factor theme Mann built the story around. Lord... how I KNOW that reaction.

I like his characterization concerning the pot shards found in Terra Preta soils;

so filled with pottery - "It was as if the river's first inhabitants had
thrown a huge, rowdy frat party, smashing every plate in sight, then
buried the evidence."


Biochar data base;
terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node

I also have been trying to convince Michael Pollan ( NYT Food Columnist, Author ) to do a follow up story, with pleading emails to him

Since the NGM cover reads "WHERE FOOD BEGINS" , I thought this would be right down his alley and focus more attention on Mann's work.

I've admiried his ability since "Botany of Desire" to over come the "MEGO" factor (My Eyes Glaze Over) and make food & agriculture into page turners.

It's what Mann hasn't covered that I thought should interest any writer as a follow up article and your transition team

The Biochar provisions by Sen.Ken Salazar in the 07 & 08 farm bill,
www.biochar-international.org/newinformationevents/newlegislation.html

NASA's Dr. James Hansen Global warming solutions paper and letter to the G-8 conference, placing Biochar / Land management the central technology for carbon negative energy systems.
arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf

The many new university programs & field studies, in temperate soils; Cornell, ISU, U of H, U of GA, Virginia Tech, New Zealand and Australia.

Glomalin's role in soil tilth, fertility & basis for the soil food web in Terra Preta soils.

The International Biochar Initiative Conference Sept 8 in New Castle;
www.biochar-international.org/ibi2008conference/aboutibi2008conference.html

Given the current "Crisis" atmosphere concerning energy, soil sustainability, food vs. Biofuels, and Climate Change what other subject addresses them all?

This is a Nano technology for the soil that represents the most comprehensive, low cost, and productive approach to long term stewardship and sustainability.


Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.

Michael Pollan is well briefed about Biochar technology, but did not include it in his "Farmer & Chief" article to the candidates, but Pollan was approached by Obama's people and asked for a condensed version. He replied that if he could solve the problems of US agriculture in less than 8000 word he would have. but I'm sure Biochar will be his 8001th word.

Erich
540 289 9750


PS, Other concerns & Questions & Biochar studies at ACS Huston meeting & Grants;

Total CO2 Equivalence:
Even before the total CO2 equivalent credits are validated they should be on the product label. Once a commercial bagged soil amendment product, every suburban household can do it,
The label can tell them of their contribution, a 40# bag = 150# CO2 = 160 bags / year to cover my personal CO2 emissions.( 20,000 #/yr , 1/2 average)
www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator.html

Full carbon credit validation should easily follow the path that has garnered carbon credits for no-till practices.

But that is just the Carbon!
I have yet to find a total CO2 equivalent number taking consideration against some average field N2O & CH4 emissions. The New Zealand work shows 10X reductions.
If biochar also proves to be effective at reducing nutrient run-off from agricultural soils, then there will also be a reduction in downstream N2O emissions .


This ACS study implicates soil structure / N2O connection;
a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Paper41955.html


Biochar at ACS;
There were no Biochar studies last year , this year dozens;
Most all this work corroborates char dynamics we have seen so far . The soil GHG emissions work showing increased CO2 , also speculates that this CO2 has to get through the hungry plants above before becoming a GHG.
The SOM, MYC& Microbes, N2O (soil structure), CH4 , nutrient holding , Nitrogen shock, humic compound conditioning, absorbing of herbicides all pretty much what we expected to hear.

Biochar Studies at ACS Huston meeting;

578-I: a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4231.html

579-II a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4496.html

665 - III. a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4497.html

666-IV a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4498.html


Biochar Grants:

IBI Site;
www.biochar-international.org/policyintheus.html



CSREES Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI)
www.csrees.usda.gov/business/reporting/stakeholder/an_stakeholder_afri.html


Sustainable Agriculture;

The goals of sustainable agriculture are to provide a more profitable farm income, to promote environmental stewardship, and to enhance the quality of life for farm families and their communities. CSREES promotes sustainable agriculture through national program leadership and funding for research and extension. It offers competitive grants programs and a professional development program, and it collaborates with other federal agencies through the USDA Sustainable Development Council.

www.csrees.usda.gov/sustainableagriculture.cfm



Natural Resources & Environment (NRE), ( this seems the best fit for Biochar)
NRE programs strengthen the nation's capacity to address critical environmental priorities and contribute to improved air, soil, and water quality; fish and wildlife management; enhanced aquatic and other ecosystems; the sustainable use and management of forests, rangelands, watersheds, and other renewable natural resources; and a better understanding of global climate change, including its impact on the diversity of plant and animal life. NRE programs also demonstrate the benefits and opportunities of sustainable development, and contribute to the economic viability of agriculture and rural communities realizing the impact of environmental policies and regulations.

www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/nre/nre_all.html

November 22, 2008 6:03 PM
Delete
Blogger Anastasia said...

There is some research on biochar happening at Iowa State. I've been to a few talks about it, and am intrigued. It seems that biochar might be best paired with production of biofuels. Very interesting stuff!
I wrote about Archer Daniels Midland's vision for biofuels/biochar in a blog post, if you are interested.
www.geneticmaize.com/2008/06/from-char-to-fuel/