Biochar and Fertilization

There was an extreme and inane attack on biochar published today on an English site called eGov Monitor that totally amazed me with the vehemence of its misinformation. The title gives a clue where it’s going: International Biochar Conference Uses False Claims to Promote Dangerous Technology in the name of Climate Change Mitigation. Dangerous Technology? Do they have any science to support that? No, of course not. Their most damning claim is that:

The IBI board members are well aware that science does not back their claims.  We were advised by the chair of the board, Professor Lehmann, that there are no long-term experiments to suggest that biochar actually sequesters any carbon in the ground or that it makes soil more fertile.

Well of course not — there have been no long-term studies, because biochar has only recently been brought to the attention of modern civilization. We can’t bring back the Amazon Indians who used biochar thousands of years ago — they’re dead — sorry! I can see why this might cause some to be cautious — but that is no excuse for a pre-supposition that this is ‘dangerous technology’ or any of the other perjorative descriptions in this article, which have no foundation in scientific evidence, but smack of the ‘more people die in hospitals, so hospitals are bad’ sort of reasoning.

The diatribe begins with such claims as:

They claim this is a “carbon negative” process, and that the charcoal improves soil fertility and carbon sequestration. Unfortunately, their claims are unfounded …

Well, as Lehmann has been the first to admit, we have not experimentally proven that carbon always remains in the soil for centuries — in fact the U. of Uppsala study suggests that in boreal forest conditions most of the carbon may return to the atmosphere. Well, most of the planet is not boreal forest, and even if the carbon-sequestration estimates are over-optimistic, the demonstrated benefits to soil fertility (short term) and reduced water pollution are unrefuted. Meanwhile, there is zero evidence from hundreds of studies, that biochar is in any way detrimental to the soil. So how is it ‘dangerous’?

The heights of ignorance are revealed when quoting an organization called ‘Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environmental Coalition and Global Forest Coalition’, which is credited with the non-sensical:

Biochar proponents are speaking about enormous amounts of biomass, which will require hundreds of millions of hectares of land being converted worldwide, as well as removing large amounts of agricultural residues and forest produce which are essential for maintaining healthy soils and biodiversity. In the name of ‘climate change’ mitigation they want to greatly speed up agrofuel expansion, which is already a leading driver of deforestation, other ecosystem destruction and forced removal of indigenous peoples.  This will accelerate global warming. To suggest that any massive new demand for biomass plantations will help stem climate change is a very dangerous false solution.

What land needs be converted to what? Biochar recommendations usually involve normally wasted biomass, such as rice hulls or corn-stover. The biomass is rarely from ‘forest produce’ — only the conversion of slash-and-burn to slash-and-char meets that criteria, and saying that will cause deforestation is beyond belief. That climate change is in quotes suggests that the author doubts the existence of global warming, which suggests he/she is a creationist in God’s hands, and out the purview of us Earth dwellers. Equating biochar with the poorly defined ‘agrofuel’ is sheer nonsense — biofuels are mostly distillation based today, requiring valuable high-sugar crops — while biochar producing fules are hydrogen based, and would use crop residue and organic wastes.

The complaint further on in the article that some companies are trying to patent biochar is certainly of concern — but that has nothing to do with the potential benefits of the technology. Biofuel production is one way to produce biochar, but it can also be produced in highly efficient small-scale retorts that burn the expelled gasses, rather than capturing them for fuel production. If greedy capitalists prevent biochar from being freely adopted as a means of fuel production, that does not prevent agriculturists from using it to improve their crop production, and to reclaim marginal lands, while incidentally reducing water pollution and lowering fertilization costs.

There is no evidence that biochar has any negative effect on soil — beyond the possibilty that it increases weed production (well duh, nobody told it the difference between a weed and a crop plant?) Weeds are one potential source of material for biochar production, so that is far from a fatal flaw.

If biochar turns out to have less than the hoped-for effect in regard to carbon sequestration that only means it is needed more than ever, to help farmers cope with the changing environment — to turn marginal soils into productive fields, to reduce the need for irrigation and fertilizers, to increase crop production under ever-more-difficult environmental conditions. To prevent starvation.

Dr. Rachel Smolker from Global Justice Ecology Project warns that this is yet another scheme for profiteering off of the crisis of climate change.

Oh, so climate change is real? Well so is biochar. As an archaeologist, I know it can last millennia in the soil, though I have no way to measure the percentage of original charcoal that survives that long. Dr. Smolker needs to get her head on straight, and stop worrying about someone making a profit — better for all if biochar can be profitable as well as beneficial, that is what will drive its adoptation.