Have you heard of biochar? It’s an ancient technique that uses our own resources to better our soil for planting and help with our environment and I was pleased to read more about it this month in Mother Earth News. The article was by Barbara Pleasant.

You can make biochar by burning woody material plus plants that have seeded in a low oxygen environment instead of dumping them somewhere.

It’s a smoky option as you dig a ditch and burn the weeds covered with some dirt BUT it helps our environment by slowing climate change, so many say. There is some debate on that issue and there is a biochar report that explains more of that.  The general gist is that it does slow climate changes as well as produce some “bio-oil” and “syngas”, both of which can be further refined into fuel but it seems that implementing biochar production on a large scale creates massive issues–which of course makes sense when you think about the process.

I suspect that in this land of opportunity that those issues could be dealt with and I hope that the scientists researching it will also find a way to see if it would be beneficial enough on a larger scale to implement more production of biochar.

How can we help in this effort? Please comment and leave your ideas.

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