Finger Lakes Biochar

Lake Erie looks more like a smoothie than a lake this year!

Holy Toledo! Who would have thought that a city on the Great Lakes would suffer from a lack of potable drinking water? But that is exactly what happened over the weekend in Toledo, OH (population 400,000). The cause? Algae blooms. The cause of the algae blooms? Excess nutrients. The source of the excess nutrients? Fertilizers and manure from farms and lawns (just to be clear, the manure is from the farms!).

Sadly this nightmare scenario seems to be more and more common with some estimates claiming that up to 30% of larger water bodies in the US being impacted. The heavy rains we’ve experienced this summer are definitely a contributing factor too.

So how exactly might biochar help reduce this from happening around watersheds? It’s not really all that complicated. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that biochar is great at holding onto nutrients and other substances. Specifically though, farmers could mix biochar into their manure spreaders which will not only hold on to the nutrients longer, but it will probably make the neighbors happy by minimizing ‘l’odeur du poo’. Established lawns are a bit trickier. It’s not really advisable to top dress biochar as it is likely to be carried away in the next down pour. For farms and lawns that boarder water bodies, constructing a trench close to the water and filling it with biochar would go a long way towards keeping excess phosphorous from damaging water bodies.

But there may be an even better way to actually reuse the nutrients instead of having it merely accumulate at the water’s edge. A few years ago Charchimedes and I dreamed up a type of permeable sock filled with biochar which could be used in a trench. The filling could be replaced every so often once the biochar has reach capacity for nutrient holding. It could then be put to better use as a fertilizer elsewhere on the farm.

Algae blooms are not the only problem wreaking havoc on lakes. Aquatic weeds such as Milfoil or Water Chestnut are the bane of a growing number of lake communities, not to mention the fish whose oxygen is being stolen by them. Various methods of control are being used with varying stages of success. Herbicides can kill it off but the N & P decomposes into the water and available oxygen is taken up during decomposition. Mechanical control is in the form of a kind of aquatic lawn mower that looks more like a steamboat. I visited the shores of Lake Ontario to watch one of the mechanical harvesters in action and its pretty amazing to see. Once the boat is fully loaded down with its catch of noxious weeds, it converts from an aqua creature into a terra bound one and then dumps its load of wet weeds onto the nearest farmer’s field. That might be a welcome addition during drought periods but I have to believe it’not the ideal scenario. Converting that biomass into biochar seems a much smarter use of it. Not only will this prevent any further nutrients from seeping back into the ground water, but it will convert the carbon into something that could be used around the lake to adsorb excess nutrients and toxins thereby preventing further infestations. An all-around better ‘soilution’, don’t you think?

I’ll take biochar over nasty plastic beads in my cosmetics any day!

Have you heard of microbeads? Tiny bits of plastic used in cosmetics. Loved for their exfoliating abilities. Hated for their environmental impact. Their negative impact has gotten so bad (read costly), that states are now beginning to ban them (yeah Ilinois, come on New York!). The properties of the microbeads that the cosmetic industry like include 1) cheap and 2) large surface area.

Not surprisingly there seems to be some collective industry moaning about how hard it is to find something to replace the miracle microbeads. Yet even scientists warn that substituting them with certain natural and biodegradable ingredients such as sugar or walnut shells, which take up oxygen during decomposition, will cause unwanted environmental problems.

Enter biochar (bet you could see that was coming, right?). Biochar can easily be milled down to the required size (~1mm) and it has plenty of surface area. If it does make its way into the Great Lakes and beyond, all the better! Some very interesting research out of Taiwan actually shows that feeding biochar to fish is pretty beneficial (see pages 7 – 8 …hat tip to fellow biocharista Frank in Taz for sharing this). Even if the fish don’t eat it though, the char should sink to the bottom harmlessly, or maybe it will take some nasty chemicals with it! Regardless it will safely sequester carbon all the while.

But back to its use in cosmetics, for a moment. Biochar or charcoal has been used in soap for quite some time. I had a local soap maker make me up a batch of “Char Wash” which I have used for years. It’s great stuff. Other products that you can find microbeads in include facial and body scrubs & peels, and toothpaste. I’ve even seen it used in nail polish. Can biochar be used in these products too? I would answer with a resounding yes. (Well maybe not the nail polish.)

If any of the big cosmetic companies would like a few samples of different types of biochar to test in their products, just give me (or any of the biochar makers out there) a shout! I’d be happy to send them a selection…

Biochar as a substitute for….salt?

As time goes on the number of different materials that biochar is being used as a substitute for is definitely on the increase.  This is absolutely necessary if we are to build a healthier, more sustainable bio-based economy. Originally the focus for biochar was on soils where it can be used as a substitute for lime, vermiculite, perlite and other soil amendments (e.g. coir, peat moss, etc.). The next big thing was activated charcoal (AC), also called activated carbon. Since biochar is basically in the same carbon family and generally less expensive to produce than AC, focusing on the many uses of activated charcoal, from remediation to water filtration, seemed a logical market to target for biochar.

More recently biochar has been tested in livestock feed where it could possibly replace relatively harmless materials such as diatomaceous earth (DE) which acts as a binding agent for toxins, or it could replace environmentally harmful materials such as anti-biotics which are used to boost feed conversion ratios and prevent illness (see more on that here). Reading up on other uses for DE, I learned that it can be found in tooth paste, anti-caking agents in feed, cat litter, and paint.  It can also help reduce food intolerances. Biochar can, and in some cases is already utilized for all of those. However as the price of food grade DE is pretty much on a par with biochar, the price advantage argument isn’t necessarily going to propel biochar forward in these markets just yet. As organic as DE is purported to be though, it is still a mined product which brings with it all the unavoidable negative environmental impacts that mining operations imply, not to mention the carbon footprint of shipping it to the manufacturer, then consumer, then landfill. Biochar has definite advantages over DE when it comes to environmental benefits and impacts.

Let’s go back to food for a moment though and see where else biochar just might be used as a substitute. Recently I was reading up on recipes for homemade play dough (like many of you I’m sure!) and found a salt dough recipe. [I promptly made some which looks well, horrible…more work needed on that.] Anyway this got me curious as to the role of the salt in dough, something which wasn’t all that easy to discover I will tell you. However I did find one bread blog which described salt’s impact on bread:

• Salt affects dough texture, making it stronger and less sticky.
• Salt reduces oxidation of the dough during mixing. Oxidation causes the degradation of carotenoid pigments in the flour that contribute to flavor and crumb color.
• Salt regulates yeast activity, causing fermentation to progress at a more consistent rate.
• Salt affects shelf life. Because it attracts water, it can help keep bread from staling too quickly in a dry environment.

The blogger goes on to say that the most noticeable impact is on taste (color me not surprised on that one). Based on my small experiments with tasting biochar, I seriously doubt it will be able to compete with salt in the taste arena. However I think biochar could give salt a run for its money on some of the other functions. And if it could also help with reducing food intolerances, perhaps it could alleviate some of the issues an increasing number of people have with wheat or other grains. Heck people add all sorts of ingredients to breads and brownies, both legal and illegal, so why not try adding biochar – it could very well be better for your body than salt. [If you do try this, keep well hydrated as charcoal can adsorb a lot of water and cause unintended stoppages…]

How many of these other 46 uses of salt could biochar be used for?

I’ve just returned from an amazing trip to Costa Rica where I met more people working with biochar than I know working with biochar in the entire state of New York (outside of researchers of course!). This shouldn’t really surprise me as Costa Rica is known as being very eco-centric (though some of the natives I met said that attitude doesn’t necessarily extend to agriculture) and they have been making biochar in one form or another for more than 20 years as I wrote about previously.

The Estufa Finca project has been hard at work providing grass roots education to rural farmers, immigrant laborers and others on how to make biochar using clean cook stoves (see picture). I was lucky enough to meet some of the folks they’ve trained and work with including an Agroforester that chars much of the debris from his permaculture forest and uses is around a wide variety of trees. He also makes biochar soap and toothpaste from it which of course I had to purchase to add to my collection (who knows, perhaps I’ll even try the toothpaste one of these days!). I also met an organic cacao/chocolate producer that converts forest and cacao debris into biochar and uses it around their ‘finca’. I didn’t find any ‘Charcolate’ there, but who knows, maybe someone has tried making this somewhere (anyone?)! I even found jewelry made from biochar (see ‘joyas de biocarbon’ pic) which was a first for me.

The sheer amount and diversity of underutilized biomass in the country is mindboggling. The other thing that boggles the mind is the craziness of the weather and its impact on soils and plant life. Visiting during wet season was perhaps a bit ‘deluge-ional’ in retrospect but it also opens your eyes to the vast amount of soil that washes down their streets, rivers and mountainsides with every heavy rain. [I swear they use snowplows to remove some of it since you would see a steep cut-off of soil all along sidewalks.] What really surprised me though is that for the first time in recent memory, Costa Rica has been suffering fairly substantial droughts during the dry season to such an extent that all water was shut off for 2 days at a time in one part of the country.  Such is the face of climate change in the tropics.

With all that soil eroding goes an awful lot of chemicals. I learned that per hectare of crop land Costa Rica uses more pesticides than any other country on earth (can I get a ‘yikes’?)! We even had a crop duster fly over our car and dump its load of god knows what right over our heads. I held my breath, rolled up the windows and then laughed at my own naiveté. As if that would help!

Not surprisingly, this scenario seems to me to be a prime opportunity for biochar. All that vegetation converted into biochar could help reverse the impacts of soil erosion and adsorb some of the pesticides to prevent them from contaminating ground water.  If and when biochar is accepted as an official carbon offset product, it could also provide substantial help to Costa Rica in achieving their 2021 target of becoming the first carbon neutral country in the world!

Biochar Optimization Framework

Later this month I’ll be visiting one of my favorite places on earth: Costa Rica, a nation highly focused on sustainability. Not surprisingly Costa Rica has some very interesting biochar initiatives that have been going on for several years which I am hoping to check out while I am there.

I am also excited to be talking to some AgroEcology students about biochar during my trip as well as visiting coffee, cacao and banana plantations. I was pondering how best to talk about biochar to an audience that most definitely understands their local crops, climates and challenges far better than I ever will, but may not know much about biochar and its potential benefits. And thus the Biochar Optimization Framework was born. The basic idea is to understand constraints and then determine if and how biochar might be able to mitigate those constraints.

Much of the research and promotional focus for biochar often seems to be on its ability to impact yield. With a growing population, this is obviously critical for food security. But the reality is that there are a lot of different growing constraints which biochar can potentially impact. In some cases these constraints may be more pressing than improving yield especially in those cropping systems where yield is deliberately constrained to ensure higher quality harvests. Given that I thought I’d try to figure out a way to understand the various things that growers are dealing with and also provide a framework for figuring out where biochar might be able to provide benefits.

Growing Constraints

Using this framework I’ve sketched out how this could be applied to vineyards in the Finger Lakes but what I think would be really interesting and useful is to create similar biochar optimization frameworks for different crops in different soils and different climate conditions. So that’s my self imposed mission for the Costa Rica trip: see how well this little tool works in getting a solid understanding of how the right kind of biochar might be able to benefit different types of agriculture.  I’ll blog about my findings from the land of chocolate, coffee and bananas.  Can’t wait!

Pura Vida!