BIOCHAR INITIATIVE

Using Biochar To Increase Food Production

by David A. Nuttle

About 200 years ago a tribe in the Amazon Basin were in the process of slash-and-burn farming by cutting forest to create a new plot for farming. This was a process repeated every 3 or 4 years due to heavy tropical rains leaching the plant nutrients from existing farm plots.

The unknown tribe discovering biochar made a large pile of logs, limbs, and brush from new slash-and-burn efforts. After this biomass was dried, they set the entire pile on fire. The burning top 1/3rd created a fire-cap that denied oxygen to the lower 2/3rd of this biomass pile. As a result, the bottom biomass entered a pyrolysis process to char this biomass. This process forced removal of biogas & bio-oils to leave thousands of small cavities in said biomass.

Subject tribes were already adding wood ash, from such burn piles, to provide limited fertilizer benefit to soils. Thus, it appears they added the biochar created to their new farming plot. The soil microbes in this plot took up residence in biochar cavities. This helped microbes to multiply and produce plant nutrients required by crops planted each year. By this means, these new farming plots remained fertile producing high crop yields year after year.  When the tribe realized this benefit, the making of biochar continued by this tribe and was adapted by other Amazon Basin tribes.

Given proven results of biochar it is now being promoted, on a global basis, as a viable means for farmers to end the annual purchases of expensive commercial fertilizers. In 2023, NPI assisted several smallholder El Salvadoran farmers with very poor soil fertility and low crop yields on their farms. We helped them make biochar from donated coffee bean hulls and trained each in adding this biochar to their farm soils. As a result, their farm soil fertility dramatically increased as did crop yields as a result of this effort. NPI also adds biochar to its greenhouse grow-bed soils to provide required plant nutrients. The U. S. has millions of acres of insect-killed timber that could be made into biochar for export to such farmers to help with the global food insecurity issue. 

To learn more about the benefits of biochar, see USBI's Biochar Learning Center website (https://biochar-us.org/us-biochar-initiative).