Author Topic: Biochar - carbon rich product - increases crop yields!  (Read 137 times)

Online Calimachon

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Biochar - carbon rich product - increases crop yields!
« on: February 08, 2012, 12:23:02 PM »
http://www.peoplefund.it/oxfordbiochar/

Quote from the above site:

Biochar is a carbon rich product of the slow burning of plant material with little or no oxygen. It is organic, increases crop yields, breaks down pesticides, suppresses methane and nitrous oxide (two aggressive greenhouse gases) and sequesters carbon. It can be produced from agricultural crop waste such as straw, waste wood and any other carbon-based organic material that would otherwise be disposed of by burning, composting or adding directly to the soil.

Unquote

This looks like an interesting project and the idea of going through this website is that ordinary people like you or me if we can afford it fund the project in the hope it will help us one day.  I particularly like 'green' issues like this and I only really fund smaller projects because I would not be able to afford anything else.

Another quote from the site by Chris Goodall:

"Biochar is potentially very important. The evidence is growing that it can both increase yields on some soils, reduce the need for expensive artificial fertilisers and cut losses in drought."

All good stuff if it works!

Cali :)
"Life gives to all the choice. You can satisfy yourself with mediocrity if you wish. You can be common, ordinary, dull, colorless, or you can channel your life so that it will be clean,vibrant, progressive, useful, colorful, rich". Spencer W. Kimball (Calimachon is not a Mormon nor is she in any shape or form religious but she thinks this applies to all humans and more so to a Humanist!  :)

Offline Mark Forskitt

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Re: Biochar - carbon rich product - increases crop yields!
« Reply #1 on: February 08, 2012, 07:10:39 PM »
Returning carbon to the soil is almost always a benefit to soil condition and hence crop health and yields. Gardeners and farmers have done it for time immemorial with composts, manure, vraic etc.  It matters not the source  of the carbon as long as it  is from living material.