Organic farming is a boutique activity incapable of producing enough yield to satisfy demand. It's a hobby for many, a premium market for the few who are near those with more money than sense, and the default system for food insecure subsistence farmers just one snafu away from disaster. But, it can be improved. The use of biochar can help it to be more productive and so less environmentally destructive.

Already I have managed to achieve surprising results. For a start, it has become clear that less water and fewer fertilisers are needed in soils enriched with biochar. Acidic soils benefit by being sweetened, earthworm populations increase and bacterial and other forms of life in the soil become more complex and balanced. There is some evidence that methane gas emissions from the soil are also reduced, as well as those of nitrous oxide, a deadly greenhouse gas that is 310 times more destructive to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

In our Tasmanian garden, this soil treatment has already produced better, healthier growth and plants that appear to be resistant to diseases and suffer fewer pest attacks.

Great. A few corrections are in order though. The reason to be pleased that fewer gases are produced, especially nitrous oxide and other nitrogen gases, is that means that the soil retains these nutrients. They are a trivial concern as GHGs since the natural carbon and nitrogen cycles necessarily produce some gases and have always done so without adverse effects. This is just how ecosystems work, how the atmosphere of the planet works. If soils are plowed and so induced to release their nutrients as they react with open air and degrade then that's an ag bad, but normal emissions from bacterial decomposition of organic matter and mineral nutrients is natural and non-problematic.

Charcoal can be made from any form of so-called waste organic matter. Our rubbish tips are full of the stuff. Major sources include countless millions of tonnes of factory and farm waste such as animal droppings, sugarcane trash and straw. Forestry and sawmill operations produce great piles of organic debris, much of which is burnt on site, causing serious pollution and health problems. Deliberately-lit forest burns are a still a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Animal droppings are not sensibly used for biochar production. They have higher value as soil amendments. Forest slash is a good candidate since it is tough stuff, high in lignin, and decomposes slowly. It tends to accumulate until wild fire clears the decks and returns the locked up nutrients to active use, releasing gases too. Converting it to biochar instead, and using the char as a soil amendment, sequesters carbon durably in a form that enhances soil.

The most dramatic results I’ve had so far are with sweet corn. I created two 15cm-deep grooves in the soil, then half-filled them with biochar mix and covered this with soil. I sowed the sweet corn seeds just beneath the surface, but in contact with the layer of biochar. I also sowed two other rows of sweet corn seed, this time without biochar, using only pulverised sheep and poultry manure mixed with blood and bone.

Two weeks later the differences were already obvious. The biochar seedlings were up and moving fast, while the rows of untreated seeds showed erratic germination. As the plants grew, I watered all of them and later mulched them in the same way. However, the biochar corn grew with extraordinary strength and final yields were at least twice that of the untreated rows. Some biochar-treated plants actually bore up to six large cobs each, because even the side-shoots (normally non-productive) both carried two cobs each.

A similar biochar experiment with tomato seedlings showed little difference in yield, although treated plants had a slightly healthier leaf colour and showed no signs of disease."

My guess is that the corn benefited more since it needs lots of nitrogen to yield well. Biochar reduces nitrogen leaching through a combination of chemical and mechanical properties. The same attributes also reduce the consumption of nitrogen by soil microorganisms. This is the reason that there are fewer emissions. It seems to be a good example of the effects discussed above whereby organic agriculture can be made more productive, and so less destructive, through the use of biochar.

Update: Onionesque

white people have one great weakness: organic food.

. . . when faced with eating food that has been processed and loaded with nitrates, sodium and saturated fat, or organic rat poison, 10/10 they will take the rat poison.

Just like with farmers markets, white people believe that organic food is grown by farmers who wear overalls, drive tractors, and don’t use pesticide. In spite of the fact that most organic food is made by major agribusiness, and they just use it as an excuse to jack up prices, white people will always lose their mind for organic anything. Never mind the fact that if the world were to switch to 100% organic food tomorrow, half the earth would die of starvation.

But white people don’t care, just so long as they aren’t eating pesticides they are pretty sure they can live forever.

It’s almost guaranteed that if some Columbian drug lord can start offering “organic” cocaine, he’ll be the richest guy ever.