Philip says, in response to the assertion in the previous post that "To get it [increased production and sequestration of carbon in soil] started you need manufactured fertilizer and a system to retain the increased production it brings", that "Obviously you don't absolutely need manufactured fertilizer, but for most of us, it is an essential option."

True enough, but it is required for the agronomic system as a whole, which was the point I was working. There may be instances where fertilizer can be avoided and get by, but the system as a whole cannot do so. I think this is important to understand since there is a lot of happy talk about not needing it, and a lot of grumpy talk about those who do use it. This is nonsensical. The system cannot function without it now, and if there are hopes of increasing organic matter productivity it is needed even more.

The reason that I called this "bootstrapping" is that the need diminishes as the soil improves, if it improves. More of the nutrients in the soil become plant available and fewer are lost to leaching or become locked in the soil and so unavailable to life. When coupled with agronomic methods designed to increase nutrient production by soil microorganisms - chiefly nitrate fixation by bacteria but also phosphorus transport etc.- manufactured fertilizers become ever less necessary, though without a closed system there will always be a need for imported fertility of some sort. There's no free lunch, and no perpetual motion machines.

These realities underpin some of my objections to the various marketing standards based on production methods. They make no agronomic sense and do not encourage best practices for the system as a whole, though this is precisely what is needed. I get it that people have unreasonable fetishes and that it's fair and square for businesses to cater to them for the price premiums that can be garnered. But we should understand that such fetishes do not often encourage good agronomic practice.

I think this matters a lot. Organic, for example, is a tiny part of total production. It doesn't matter much at all what goes on with organic. What matters is what goes on with mainstream growers, the ones who work almost all of the land and produce almost all of the food and fiber. It is their methods that have global impacts. They use most of the manures, composts, rock dusts and all other sorts of soil amendments, and they will be the ones whose use of biochar - if it becomes common - will have system significance.

For example, I imagine a grower hauling a tandem trailer load of stover - just a portion of his production - to a pyrolysis plant, and instead of dead heading back to the farm he picks up a load of biochar impregnated with ammonium made from the off gases of pyrolysis, and perhaps fills his tanks with biodiesel also made from those off gases. It's not an even trade - he'd have to pay some too - but his net costs for the year might be lower and grow ever lower as his land improved.

This isn't entirely fanciful thinking since there are a couple of such biochar plants in progress. They make more sense than ethanol plants for the system and nation, and they make more sense for the environment too, though that is a by-blow of the improved agronomic system.