Nice to come across this thoughtful thumbs-up in Gristmill's
Feeding the World Sustainably from 24 Apr 2007:
Quote:
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...recent work on charcoal as soil amendments may allow us to go further -- sequestering significant amounts of carbon and building soil to a far greater extent. However, there are significant limitations we need to watch out for here. Just as conventional chemical fertilizers add nutrients without building soil structure, charcoal agriculture build soil structure without adding nutrients. So you want to limit the percent and type of agricultural waste you convert to charcoal for this purpose -- especially avoiding nitrogen rich materials. Additionally, charcoal making is usually very air polluting. There are charcoal making methods this is not true of, but they are expensive, especially on the small scale you want to use for conversion of agricultural wastes. None of this is insurmountable. Rodale is working on incorporating charcoal agriculture into its no-till farms. It just should not be seen as a quick fix that can avoid the need for emissions reduction.
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