A number of recent posts (Bio-Bubble, Grass Geekery, Lame Journalism, Rote Engagement, Ch-Ch-Ch) have criticized the perversion of enhanced agronomic methods by dark siders - advocates who lose themselves in pursuit of power. They exploit modest best practices, such as biochar, for political purposes. They have personality disorders that make them prone to exaggeration and magical thinking. Some notion will give them a thrill and they just let it run. A reference to one such victim came in on a list this morning.

Today Converted Organics announced that they are supplying to Whole Food Stores their all-natural fertilizers. They have previously announced supply to Home Depot and with these high level associations have created a market for a new line of fertilizer products that are not dependent on oil and chemicals. I believe this is a giant step in the right direction.

This is just an old fashioned anaerobic digester company that uses municipal wastes as feedstock to produce a liquid compost. It is perhaps worth consideration of another such company, California Liquid Fertilizer, that was recently busted for trickery.

The company's fertilizer was effective, inexpensive and approved by organic regulators. By 2006, it held as much as a third of the market in California.

But a state investigation caught the Salinas-area company spiking its product with ammonium sulfate, a synthetic fertilizer banned from organic farms.

The point of that post wasn't just that the organic hustle is riven with charlatans and cheats, it is that they peddled this stuff for almost a decade to organic growers who really liked it. It worked well, giving them beautiful results. In other words, there is no justification for banning ammonium sulfate from organic farms. But true believers ignore the evidence and make preposterous claims.

Our vision has long been that using natural fertilizer products will produce better and stronger plants that provide more nutrition and taste better. Countless studies have shown the validity of these claims … at the right here are actual photos from Biochar Info showing graphically the effects of one of the ammendments from our process.

The photos show the difference in growth between plants grown in plain soil and with the simple addition of the Biochar. The second photo is a comparison of growth using Biochar and NPK fertilizer vs what is most usually employed now … Chemical NPK fertilizer. What is this magic ingredient ... BIOCHAR is simply carbonaceous material that we commonly refer to as charcoal.

Yeah. It's magic. NPK is not "what is most usually employed now". Sure, NPK matters, no matter what agronomic system is used, since they are the three primary nutrients absolutely required for plant growth. There are more than a dozen other secondary nutrients required too, and growers supply them as well. They also manage soil chemistry, such as PH and CEC, to get the most benefit from the provided nutrients. It's just good business since it reduces the cost of inputs.

Using charcoal as a soil amendment is a best practice, but it's not magic. It helps maintain beneficial soil conditions in several ways such as stimulating microbial health and reducing anion repulsion in soil. The way that char is produced - such as the heat levels used - changes the way the resultant char affects soils. We don't have solid research on just how it functions due to the relative scarcity of experiments and the poor experimental design of many of those conducted thus far. For example, it is dead common for such field trials to fail to test many soil attributes and so give ambiguous results. Often it isn't clear if the char did anything but alter soil PH in beneficial ways, something that can also be done - is done - with common agricultural lime. Char also often contains significant amounts of P and K - essentially, the amount of those chemicals contained by the biomass before charring.

The key benefit of char for agricultural purposes may be its durability. It isn't consumed and doesn't rapidly degrade like other forms of carbon (i.e. compost and manure). It is, in a sense, a catalyst that improves soil chemical processes without being itself affected by those processes. This is also what makes it exciting for climate warriors. It's carbon derived from biomass and so in effect draws CO2 from the air and stores it durably in soil.

The idea of returning wastes to the fields where they originated rather than dumping them in municipal land fills is a simple good practice, an ancient practice, so long as the materials have not been poisoned by pervasive municipal toxins. It's not magic, it won't save the world, or even have a major effect. Selling such materials in bags - for big bucks - to hobby gardeners is a good business, but the amount of material involved is trivial. The amount of food produced by such hobbyists is trivial. It can be argued that it is a better hobby than some others, but it cannot be argued that it will have any effect on nation scale food production or environmental consequences worth noting. It's a nit.

Similarly, the use of garden scale char is of no significance to society. It's a good gardening practice and a good business for suppliers, but it's very small beer. The idea of selling charcoal at $6.00 for a 10 pound bag (a typical Wal-Mart price for chunk charcoal with no additives) is semi-attractive. If gardeners begin to gobble it up, competing with back yard barbecue users, then demand and perhaps prices will rise.

Real agronmic progress will require integrated systems level knowledge and practice rather than food fetishes and magical thinking. IMV char has a place in such systems. I use it and would use it even more if it was available in farm scale quantites at competitive prices.