Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] Charcoal Still Dubious

From: Joel Gruver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 03:42:44 -0400

Hello folks,

I have been too busy in the lab (is it really already 3 am ??) to weigh in on recent discussion of charcoal as a soil amendment.

My perspective after looking at quite a few articles about carbon black (aka charcoal) in soil science journals is that:

1) many soils contain significant quantities of carbon black 

2) carboxylic acid groups on fine pulverized carbon black are an important source of cation exchange capacity in some soils

3) carbon black is very resistant to biological degradation but promotes plant and microbial productivity by increasing soil retention of both inorganic nutrients and less resistant organic substrates

I think the recent denunciation of charcoal on SANET has been excessively harsh and simplistic... however recent articles in popular literature about Terra Preta and charcoal as a soil amendment have waxed on so romantically that I can't blame anyone for skepticism. 

I encourage the charcoal skeptics and enthusiasts to read the review article at the following link: 

Ameliorating physical and chemical properties of highly weathered soils in the tropics with charcoal - a review

http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/BiolFertSoils%2035,%20219-230,%202002%20Glaser.pdf

Joel

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lion Kuntz" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 3:12 PM
Subject: [SANET-MG] Charcoal Still Dubious

> I looked at the four links provided. They appear to me to be
> worshipping a mystical quality about charcoal which is
> unwarranted. Justus Von Liebig founded the chemfarming paradigm
> by raising plants in sterile inert matrix and adding measured
> amounts of additives. From this primative beginning came the
> knowledge that living flesh is made up of the ordinary elements
> and 18 of them are needed for plants and 23 of them are needed
> for animal flesh.
> 
> Carbon is an important one of these. Generally it composes 50%
> of the dry matter of flesh It is so essential that the two
> branches of chemistry are defined by the presence/absense of
> carbon compounds. "Organic" chemistry is determined by the
> presence of carbon compounds.
> 
> From your quoted article...
> > " Furthermore, the organic matter in the dark earths is
> > persistent since we
> > find these elevated carbon contents even hundreds of years
> > after they were
> > abandoned.
> 
> Even after hundreds of years the carbon has not be untilized,
> thereby removed, from these soils. Carbon would, on first
> approximation, be merely a catalyst, if it is even involved at
> all in these "fertility" examples. Maybe it is just inert,
> useless, and the fertility is caused by another factor?
> 
> The facts of the matter is the soil ecology of the Amazon is in
> general remarkably fertile. It generates a multi-tiered
> rainforest which excells for biomass production and is ten times
> as productive for biodiversity as temperate forests.
> 
> In a rule, fires occur globally, depositing charred biomass
> every 20 years on every spot on the planet. The Amerinds used
> fires to keep vast stretches of prairie from being colonized by
> trees. "Hundreds of years" of fertility is not often associated
> with fires. In the very recent past, burning fields was a
> customary farming practice on an annual basis, but it did
> nothing to prevent the dustbowls, let alone produce hundreds of
> years of following fertility. Farmers who burned off the crop
> residues still dumped lots of fertilizer every year on the same
> acres.
> 
> 
> The first question you need to be asked is: What problem are you
> trying to solve? 
> 
> 
> Adequate fertility is not a mystery. Perpetual fertility is not
> a mystery -- in fact those same Amazon rainforests have been
> thriving for tens of millions of years without a break, before
> human habitation, before anybody added any charcoal to the
> forest.
> 
> It is possible to ruin forest soils, including Amazonian soils.
> 
> As a member of a LIVING species, one would hope that you would
> recognize that LIFE has some value. There's a bunch of dead
> planets in this solar system -- if they have any life it is in
> secret pockets, and is nothing very impressive except to
> xenobiologist.
> 
> The magic of earth is not chemistry, but LIFE. Fertility is
> associated with complexity of LIFE. Plants and livestock are
> enmeshed in a web of LIFE. These realities have a complexity
> which cannot be reduced to chemistry alone. It may be that the
> complexities of life are beyond human understanding -- legions
> of microbiologists, biologists, zoologists, botanists,
> etymologists, parasitologists, ecologists are still working out
> life cycles and relationships, still struggling to reduce down
> to fundamental laws the complexity. It may be the human brain
> was never wired in such a way that the totality of the data can
> fit comprehendably.
> 
> This search for simple answers: just add NPK; add charcoal; may
> be the psychological defense to mysteries so profound they are
> taboo to even contemplate.
> 
> If you want simplicity, take my advice and buy the books I
> recommended. Plant your best seeds in soil heavily enriched with
> good compost and take your prize-winning results to the fair for
> a blue ribbon. That's simplicity, and it is proven to work by
> people who got into the Guiness Book of World Records.
> > How to Grow World Record Tomatoes: A Guinness Champion Reveals
> > His All-Organic Secrets
> > by Charles Wilber
> > AND
> > How-To-Grow World Class Giant Pumpkins
> > by Don Langevin
> 
> Show me a PhD with a Guiness Book entry or a blue ribbon at the
> fair.
> 
> If "simplicity" is unsatisfying to you, and you want more
> complexity, then read my webpage on the ROOTS OF FERTILITY...
> http://www.ecosyn.us/ecocity/Ecosyn/Flowchart.html
> 
> Until all them legions of microbiologists, biologists,
> zoologists, botanists, etymologists, parasitologists, ecologists
> finish their work, this is a good synopis of knowledge which
> will not let you down. It will keep your soil fertile for
> thousands and thousands and thousands of years, because it
> already did so, in the Amazon, in the tropics, in the temperate
> zones, long before man walked the earth.
> 
> It doesn't depend on mystical magic ingredients -- it depends on
> the knowledgebase of what is already reported in by those
> legions of microbiologists, biologists, zoologists, botanists,
> etymologists, parasitologists, ecologists still struggling for a
> deeper knowledge than you need to grow corn or potatos.
> 
> 
> --- Frank Teuton <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> > John, and others following this thread:
> > 
> > The potential importance of charcoal, or certain types of coal
> > extracts, as
> > soil amendments, is highlighted by research into the Terra
> > Preta phenomenon:
> > 
> >
> http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/terra_preta/TerraPretahome.htm
> 
> > " Furthermore, the organic matter in the dark earths is
> > persistent since we
> > find these elevated carbon contents even hundreds of years
> > after they were
> > abandoned.
> ...
> > http://www.energybulletin.net/1337.html 
> >
> http://www.discussanything.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-68405.html
> > http://www.bidstrup.com/carbon.htm 
> > 
> > Any intelligent discussion of the use of charcoal in creating
> > sustainably
> > fertile soils needs to reference and discuss the whole Terra
> > preta concept
> > and research, it seems to me.
> > 
> > Frank Teuton--still awaiting Joel Gruver's promised review of
> > the literature
> > on composting versus fresh application of organic residues;
> > charcoal would
> > be somewhere well before compost on an ascending scale of
> > least to most
> > labile carbon, methinks...
> 
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Sincerely, Lion Kuntz
> Santa Rosa, California, USA
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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