A great new 11min video has been released to the BNNZ YouTube channel. Stephen Newman has been featured in a CharChitChat interview and was a guest speaker in the last BNNZ members lounge (23July)
Kaipara Regenerative Farming Group ( / 584997046632415 ) and City to Farm composting project – video copied from https://www.citytofarm.co.nz/for-rura…
Here is the link to the BNNZ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@biocharnetworknz2447
Episode 12 – Greg Hart, Mangarara Farm
Well-known regenerative farmer Greg Hart joins Dylan to talk about his 20-year journey away from fossil-fuel-dependent farming and toward a tree-filled, biochar-boosted system. Greg shares how silvopasture, on-farm slaughter, and charring of bones are helping cycle nutrients back into his land — plus his plans for an agrihood to bring more people back onto the land.
I had planned to provide this report in the June AllBlackEarth newsletter but Firefox was not talking nicely with MailChimp and my poor old brain couldn’t cope with the deadline pressure so here it is as a PDF report.
Dylan, BNNZ admin has produced some nice content covering his time at this years National Fieldays:
20 Jun 2026 Char Chit Chat – biochar and more from New Zealand Dylan’s first face to face podcast with an update from Phil in Ashhurst about what he is up to (S1E2 featured Phil). We had just returned from Hamilton with John after Fieldays 2026 and I was spending two days staying with Phil on my way to Wellington. Phil has been at this property, soon after arriving from the States, for 21 years. It was great to have a tour of his permaculture influenced block of around 1 ha in size. Captioned photos on blog post: https://passionatepermies.wordpress.c… some of what was on show: (link from the image above for more details)
Char Chit Chat – biochar and more from New Zealand Episode 8 with John explores his recent discovery of biochar for his compost and his method of making it in a stainless steel bucket. This takes some work to do, but in a social context such as hanging out with his grandchildren, is way more like constructive play and not really work at all. John has embedded himself into the community in various ways along the Kapiti Coast, living in Paraparaumu, working in Raumati and hanging out at the community gardens in Paekakariki, especially when the char-b-que is fired up and cooking some sausages! He talks about his sustainability work and his passion for biochar really shines through. John created a video of his Biochar Bucket method after our interview: • biochar bucket burn 2 and there are some photos of him enjoying his biochar burns: https://passionatepermies.wordpress.c… Listen on your favourite podcast app and how about leaving a comment on here or the podcast app you use? it’d be cool to hear your thoughts… An introduction and overview of Biochar: https://www.sces.org.nz/biochar The national biochar association in NZ: https://biochar.net.nz/ (BNNZ)
Scoop has picked up our PR on the Fieldays (thanks Phil). I’ve sent it in a few directions so will share here when/if it gets some more airplay.
BNNZ needs help with public engagement over the four days. Last year we were swamped at times by public interest. Please get in touch with the secretary if you can spare half a day with the team chatting about biochar to visitors. We hope to be able to provide a Fieldays entry ticket in lieu of your support.
Dylan continues his advocacy and education work on getting biochar into compost systems.
I have one more reason for commercial compost producers to consider adding biochar…
11) We know compost will normally reduce in volume as biomass breaks down under biological action (50% reduction in volume?). Adding say 10% biochar (by mass) into a compost batch mix may actually be (say) 20% by total volume at the start and the biochar will not change in volume during composting. This should lead to an increased volume of higher value compost for sale… 10% more?
It would be great this get this hypothesis confirmed by commercial compost trials.
Dylan’s previous work on compost is available on the BNNZ website.
Plenty of previous compost coverage… https://soilcarbon.org.nz/?s=compost&x=0&y=0