The Biochar Debate: Charcoal's Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility

by James Bruges

The Biochar Debate is the first book to introduce both the promise and concerns surrounding biochar (fine-grained charcoal used as a soil supplement) to nonspecialists. Charcoal making is an ancient technology. Recent discoveries suggest it may have a surprising role to play in combating global warming. This is because creating and burying biochar removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Furthermore, adding biochar to soil can increase the yield of food crops and the ability of soil to retain moisture, reducing need for synthetic fertilizers and demands on scarce fresh-water supplies. While explaining the excitement of biochar proponents, Bruges also gives voice to critics who argue that opening biochar production and use to global carbon-credit trading schemes could have disastrous outcomes, especially for the world's poorest people. The solution, Bruges explains, is to promote biochar through an alternative approach called the Carbon Maintenance Fee that avoids the dangers. This would establish positive incentives for businesses, farmers, and individuals to responsibly adopt biochar without threatening poor communities with displacement by foreign investors seeking to profit through seizure of cheap land. The Biochar Debate covers the essential issues from experimental and scientific aspects of biochar in the context of global warming to fairness and efficiency in the global economy to negotiations for the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 2010

Reviews

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear, concise and hopeful

Before I had read this book I had not even heard of biochar. But then I am a city boy. And therein lies a tale of today's world. Too many of us are city boys and not enough of us have any real understanding of where our food comes from and how.

Biochar is the result of the pyrolysis of biomass, including trees, leaves, grass, and everything that grows. Biochar is also made from the waste products of animals. The method is to heat the "feedstock" (the biomass) to a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. The result is charcoal which ideally is used, as the subtitle of the book has it, to build soil fertility. Biochar--"finely crushed charcoal used for soil enhancement" (p. 107)--does this by returning minerals and especially carbon to the soil. Because of its porous nature biochar is excellent for dry soils because it can hold water in the soil. Mixed with manure and compost, biochar is an ideal fertilizer and has been used as such by indigenous people the world over for thousands of years.

Mixing biochar into soils is also a way of sequestering carbon. When biomass is burned without the presence of oxygen the carbon in the biomass does not combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Consequently there are two main advantages of using biochar: one, it helps the soil to be more fertile, and two, it keeps carbon from getting into the air as carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas. To the extent that the biochar stays in the soil, the production and use of biochar reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: the plants that are made into biochar drew the carbon dioxide out of the air for their growth. According to author James Bruges biochar can stay in the soil for literally hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

Bruges has observed the use of biochar in many places in the world and especially in India. This book reports on his experiences. Central to his experience is that the production and use of biochar works wonderfully well in an environment of smallholders in agrarian communities. If biochar becomes part of a cap and trade process, Bruges warns, land will be given over to industrial farms growing a monoculture in order to get carbon credits. This would be a disaster for small farmers and would result in higher food costs.

There are a number of other problems with implementing and maintaining a biochar culture. Bruges explores these difficulties and offers solutions. Clearly biochar is just one method in our effort to return the world to sustainability. Heaven knows we need all the help we can get.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Joe Beeson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. States it is just a brief on the subject so understand the brevity of some of the arguments. Lots of thought provoking discussion and lots of interesting ideas. order of magnitude better than "biochar solution"

[Diane Kistner · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've never heard of biochar, I would give this introduction four stars. I gave it three only because it does not include instructions on how interested persons can experiment with making biochar themselves. Instructions, however, are prevalent on the Internet. Biochar is, after all, an emerging science that has not gotten a strong toehold yet. Bruges successfully presents the case that it should be one of our top strategies while cautioning against making the same mistakes we've made with letting oil- and money-hungry agribusinesses drive our food growth and choices to human and other species' detriment.

In all the climate gloom and doom today, much of it more understatedly real than manufactured, four ideas positively excite me and give me hope: (1) bills like Georgia HB 842 (which, if passed, would permit families to grow their own food and raise their own small livestock, such as hens, to feed themselves), (2) permaculture, (3) mycelium running, and (4) biochar. Combining all four approaches in small urban and suburban homesteads--as well as in rural areas, where it's being done already--is a strategy for sustainability and curtailing runaway climate change that we need to be implementing NOW. Being able to provide ourselves and our children healthy food, exercise, collaborative survival skills, and a vision for a future working with, not against, Mother Nature, is of priceless value. Not to put too dire an edge on it, but it may be the only way our species can avoid extinction.

"The BioChar Debate" discusses what biochar is and how it can be best used for carbon sequestration. Bruges is not an alarmist, but it is difficult to read this book without becoming mightily alarmed about the course we are on--especially if you also read Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It. Biochar is carbon NEGATIVE: it actually removes carbon (from carbon dioxide) from the air and sequesters it in the ground, all while improving soil fertility. How nice it would be to be able to go to one's local Lowe's and pick up a bag of charged biochar as simply as one now purchases Black Cow. Hopefully, some enterprising soul has this in the works as we speak.

After reading this book, I started scouring the internet for YouTube videos on how to make your own biochar and sources for stoves to use for that purpose; some are mentioned in the book. But James Bruges cautions us that, as with any endeavor, balance is critical. If biochar becomes just another means for huge agribusinesses to make a lot of money at the expense of thriving ecosystems and the local food movement, it will not live up to its promise and could even be destructive.

Bruges condenses earlier scientific works on biochar into a readable format for lay persons, and it's definitely a good read for anyone new to the subject. The Science chapter will open some eyes on how the climate-change naysayers are manipulating the data to make it look like we don't have a problem when we most undeniably do. What I came away with after reading this book is that it certainly is not going to hurt anything for individuals to try to make biochar for incorporation into their yards and gardens, and if enough of us did it, it might make a huge difference in the trajectory of environmental degradation that we ARE going to experience over the coming years. Best of all, biochar can begin to help recover seriously depleted soils and, with the aid of mycelium, even reclaim some of our stripped, poisoned lands.

Finally, a word to the wise: It's time to stop taking grocery stores for granted. Start learning about permaculture, organic gardening, and soil diversity now. Even if you don't "believe" in climate change, believe that the heavily fossil-fuel-subsidized food we now depend on will either run out or become so prohibitively expensive you won't be able to buy it. Sooner, not later. It's already happening now.

[Jessie Haas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent overview, and there's not much out there on this for a popular audience. Think we're doomed? Think again. Biochar has the potential to cool the planet, increase crop yields, alkalize acid soil and mitigate drought. And it's an ancient American Indian technology. Those of us praying to all cooperative spirits on global warming need to thank the Ancestors for Biochar.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should have read the subtitle --- over 50% of this book is about climate change without even touching on biochar. The bits about biochar were easy to read, but I wanted a lot more, especially some information about applying biochar to backyard gardens.

[Fernleaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise and positive book looking at a way to make drastic improvement to the climate crisis through the use of a simple technology. Biochar has multiple benefits, the most important of which are: providing a carbon sink and improving agriculture.