A 3000-year-old Practice May Revolutionize the Future of Farming
The next revolution in agriculture and greenhouse gas reduction may be a 3000-year old farming practice of adding biomass charcoal to the soil. The practice was re-discovered by archeologists who were studying a site in the central-Amazon basin. Some 1500 years earlier the indigenous tribes had enriched the soil using charcoal from animal bone and tree bark. The soil remains today some of the richest and most fertile soil yet found.
Scientists from the American Chemical Society have begun a five-year study of the use of biomass charcoal for soil enrichment in order to understand its impact on fertilization, soil carbon changes, crop productivity and any impact on the microorganisms in the soil.
The practice holds promise for several reasons:
- Soil need only be fertilized once with this method and the effect lasts for hundreds to thousands of years.
- The resulting agricultural method is carbon-negative since the enriched soil traps and holds carbon in the soil, which may offer significant benefits to decreasing global warming from agriculture and reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
