Biochar for Sustainable Agriculture and Renewable Energy Create Healthier Lives

The promise of renewal energy sources and agriculture enrichment from biomass go hand in hand for the greater good: healthier lives. 

Biochar, as described by leading soil scientists Johannes Lehmann and Stephen Joseph, is the carbon-rich product obtained when biomass, such as wood, manure, or leaves, is heated in a closed container with little or no available air(1).  

Biochar is one byproduct of burning biomass and has been the subject and pursuit of recent studies, startups, and political debate growing around the USA, mostly in the last few years. Biochar has been identified as a soil nutrient similar to the composition of the rich, black soils found in the Amazon region, often referred as Terra preta.  

Sparking interest among farmers and gardeners, biochar helps to retain nutrients and water to create more fertile soil. According to Lehmann in a published Biomass Magazine article, “It [biochar] has a greater surface area, has a greater ability to hold onto nutrients to make them available to the plants, and it is also one to two magnitudes more stable than compost.”

Beans at 5 weeks: Pictured left, without biochar; pictured right, with biochar. Courtesy of Landscape Ecology in Hawaii, as published on the International Biochar Initiative website, biochar-international.org.

On the other hand, burning biomass to produce energy is pursued primarily as a renewal energy source. Add in the production of biochar as a byproduct then it not only becomes beneficial for sustainable agriculture, but it is also proven to mitigate climate change.  

Decaying biomass releases CO₂ in the atmosphere and plants reabsorb it.  Burning biomass through a prescribed pyrolysis method effectively produces biochar, which can store half of the carbon, as experts say for centuries, when it is applied to the soil. Reducing carbon emissions through healthier plant growth also furthers the cycle of carbon absorption.   

The emergence of mass-to-energy sources to produce renewable energy in combination with benefits for sustainable agriculture is the subject of a new system to be installed in Greenville, North Carolina at High Ridge Farms.

At the center of this biomass production enterprise happens to be the notable Seinfeld actor, John O’Hurley, whose company, Energy-Inc. , is taking the hog farm waste stream into a waste-to-energy system and converting it into healthier alternatives of renewable energy to power the hog farm, and which will have residual biochar to put to good use. 

“Hog waste is apparently the worst air polluter because of methane and the residual effluent,” O’Hurley said. The hog biomass is the antithesis of a bad story turning for the better.

Why is renewable energy and biochar so important to our society?  To fight climate change, save money, and save agriculture. The air we breathe and the food we eat is more sustainable, and let’s say, palatable.

(1)  Johannes Lehmann and Stephen Joseph, eds.  Biochar for Environmental Management: Science and Technology. Earthscan. London, England. 2009.