CHARdays 2015

From Kathleen Draper at the Biochar Journal…

An invitation to join us for CHARdays: June 18 – 21

Hello biochar community –

We’d like to invite all of your to join us for the first (hopefully annual) CHARdays event from June 18 – 21st. Location: your backyard or at your company location or anywhere you choose. The idea is to build awareness for biochar by hosting charring events around the globe. For those interested in participating, we are working on a way to help you advertise your event though social media and the Biochar Journal.

We don’t have a baseline goal for how much carbon we think the biochar community could help sequester in these 4 days but would love to hear what you all think.

Hope you will join us in spreading the word!
http://www.biochar-journal.org/en/ct/60-CHARdays-2015

We have commitments from Australia, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands, and the US so far which is great.  There will be at least 100 Swiss and German ‘charmaniacs’ participating as well and some have asked us about posting live video – we are checking into that.

If you’d like us to help advertise your event, feel free to send the relevant information to Maddie Brown(brown@ithaka-institute.org) . You can use your own flyer or just send us the details and we’ll put them in this simple format and post to our CHARdays Pinterest board.

Cheers, Kathleen

Biochar and organic certification in NZ

I was on a couple of road trips in the North Island recently, talking to many different groups and folk about biochar. This has quickly led to two biochar-composting trials… 1 underway and the 2nd in the planning stages. Both are commercial producers of certified organic compost so if these trials show promise, then these companies will need to engage with their respective organic certification body (either BioGro or AsureQuality)

I note that one NZ company producing a biochar related product got organic certification from BioGro back in ~2012. A search on the ‘biochar’ at the BioGro site reveals a couple of articles on biochar from their October and December 2012 newsletters.

Questions about biochar and its safety are being addressed around the world by organisations such as IBI and European equivalents. This is relevant to us with new biochar products rapidly being presented in NZ. We are in the nice position of watching IBI & Europe advance this process on our behalf. Take a look at the following link for a great description on the way forward…

http://www.european-biochar.org/en/objectives

NZ climate politics film now on YouTube

I’m forwarding from this NZ Herald link… not directly related to biochar (sorry – showing my colours)

Hot Air – climate change politics in New Zealand is an award-winning feature length documentary which argues that corporate interests have prevented successive governments from acting on climate change.

The film’s Wellington premiere at the International Film Festival last year was a sell-out. It was also nominated as a finalist in the New Zealand Film Awards for Best Documentary and Best Editing, and won the 2013 Bruce Jesson Senior Journalist Award.

However, co-director and producer Alister Barry is disappointed that Hot Air has not created more public engagement with climate change issues. The film has just been released on YouTube for free viewing, making it accessible to a wider audience.

“What I tried to set out in the film was the political journey that we’ve been on,” says Mr Barry. “It’s all very well to understand the science of the issue and the economics of the issue, but if we’re going to get action it has to be, in the end, political action at a national level by our own government, representing our interests.”

Barry comments that by taking a look at the political happenings of the past 20 years, during which time climate change became an issue of public concern, he was hoping to help people have more of an understanding of how our democratic institutions have approached the issue over the years, and ultimately to make them feel more empowered to use their energy as citizens to achieve positive change.

He emphasises that the narrative of Hot Air is about politics.

“It starts out with saying at the beginning of the film, it’s 1988 and suddenly climate change managed to get on to the political agenda for the world, really. Obviously scientists had been aware of the growing problem up to that point, but in 1988 the American president and government sat up and took notice, and the rest of the world followed on quickly after that.”

Barry says Hot Air starts quite hopefully. “In the late 1980s and early 1990s we could address the problem. But as time went on by, those who didn’t want to see any action on climate change – because it was going to effect their profits, essentially – began to get themselves politically organised.”

New Zealand’s current Climate Change Issues Minister Tim Groser has recently implored the public for input into climate change policy after the year 2020. Barry believes the Minister may genuinely be concerned about climate change, but that he is an example of corporate interests preventing any real action.

“I think that Tim Groser probably is concerned about climate change,” he says. “He’s certainly well informed about the subject, but he is in a political situation where he has to, if you like, literally pay tribute to the large corporations that sustain the National government in power, that will jump down very heavily on it if he takes what corporations would call a radical view of the issue.”

Pukekohe biochar gathering

I’m a bit slow to report on this but it was a great success. We had folk from Taupo to Kaitia but mostly local to Pukekohe and the Auckland area. Cam’s farm was a great venue and the weather was kind. Cam became the recipient of a few 100 litres of mainly maize cob char. This local seasonal biomass (from maize seed production) makes for a reliable and fast burn in a TLUD. Maybe too fast in some cases, as we found that the after-burner can be overwhelmed by volatile gases, leading to visible smoke. We played with restricting primary air but a larger (full drum) after-burner volume may be the best solution. Mixing the cob with wood-chip was also explored.

TLUD’s where provided by our host, Cam smith, Simon Day, Brian Richards and Graham Smith (the nearest thing we have to a professional biochar maker). Brian also demonstrated the TFOD via an inverted commercial range hood. This worked very well on the paulownia wood that he also provided.

I hope that more of these events spring up around the country. It would be good to have local horticulture and farming groups involved in the future. They are not difficult to organise and help open eyes on the potential for biochar in it many pathways to the soil.

My thanks to Ron Serber from Earthwhile and the Auckland Permaculture Workshop who proved the linked photos of the day.

Being Frank about biochar in Tasmania

Frank is based in the more attractive and stimulating part of Eastern NZ.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-12/tas-country-hour-8-may-2015/6461028

He’s becoming the ‘go-to’ guy on TFOD among many other things. We need to clone him for NZ… things would be happening a lot faster. He’s willing to share / open source his knowledge and designs on TFOD/cone/Kon-tiki but has a vision for royalty funding back to support Ithaka and the Biochar Journal. A great vision… lets get some systems in NZ.

http://blog.robertsltd.com.au/2015/03/benefits-of-biochar-for-tasmanian-farms.html

New Oz research on biochar-N cycling

Biochar-induced concomitant decrease in ammonia volatilization and increase in nitrogen use efficiency by wheat

Abstract

Ammonia (NH3) volatilization is a major nitrogen (N) loss from the soil, especially under tropical conditions, NH3 volatilization results in low N use efficiency by crops. Incubation experiments were conducted using five soils (pH 5.5–9.0), three N sources such as, urea, di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), and poultry manure (PM) and two biochars such as, poultry litter biochar (PL-BC) and macadamia nut shell biochar (MS-BC). Ammonia volatilization was higher at soil with higher pH (pH exceeding 8) due to the increased hydroxyl ions. Among the N sources, urea recorded the highest NH3 volatilization (151.6 mg kg−1 soil) followed by PM (124.2 mg kg−1 soil) and DAP (99 mg kg−1 soil). Ammonia volatilization was reduced by approximately 70% with PL-BC and MS-BC. The decreased NH3 volatilization with biochars is attributed to multiple mechanisms such as NH3 adsorption/immobilization, and nitrification. Moreover, biochar increased wheat dry weight and N uptake as high as by 24.24% and 76.11%, respectively. This study unravels the immense potential of biochar in decreasing N volatilization from soils and simultaneously improving use efficiency by wheat.

Full-size image (29 K)

Biochar markets

Erin from TR Miles has posted the following on the biochar discussion group. This translates easily to opportunities in NZ…

“Kathleen Draper with Fingerlakes Biochar did a great job of outlining Biochar markets during her presentation at NE Biomass Conference in Portland, ME.  She’s got nice write-up of her thoughts on her blog”

part 1/2 http://bit.ly/1ESf208 Markets for Biochar – The current & future landscape

and  2/2 http://bit.ly/1bXAZzx Combined Heat & Biochar (CHAB) Markets

Erin Rasmussen

TR Miles Technical Consultants Inc.   http://www.trmiles.com/

and BioEnergy Discussion Lists   http://www.bioenergylists.org/

CHAB

NZ biochar research on contaminated soils

I think this paper is based on NZBRC PhD work from Sam Gregory…

Biochar in Co-Contaminated Soil Manipulates Arsenic Solubility and Microbiological Community Structure, and Promotes Organochlorine Degradation

Abstract

We examined the effect of biochar on the water-soluble arsenic (As) concentration and the extent of organochlorine degradation in a co-contaminated historic sheep-dip soil during a 180-d glasshouse incubation experiment. Soil microbial activity, bacterial community and structure diversity were also investigated. Biochar made from willow feedstock (Salix sp) was pyrolysed at 350 or 550°C and added to soil at rates of 10 g kg-1 and 20 g kg-1 (representing 30 t ha-1 and 60 t ha-1). The isomers of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) alpha-HCH and gamma-HCH (lindane), underwent 10-fold and 4-fold reductions in concentration as a function of biochar treatment. Biochar also resulted in a significant reduction in soil DDT levels (P < 0.01), and increased the DDE:DDT ratio. Soil microbial activity was significantly increased (P < 0.01) under all biochar treatments after 60 days of treatment compared to the control. 16S amplicon sequencing revealed that biochar-amended soil contained more members of the Chryseobacterium, Flavobacterium, Dyadobacter and Pseudomonadaceae which are known bioremediators of hydrocarbons. We hypothesise that a recorded short-term reduction in the soluble As concentration due to biochar amendment allowed native soil microbial communities to overcome As-related stress. We propose that increased microbiological activity (dehydrogenase activity) due to biochar amendment was responsible for enhanced degradation of organochlorines in the soil. Biochar therefore partially overcame the co-contaminant effect of As, allowing for enhanced natural attenuation of organochlorines in soil.

Nepal – how biochar can help…

Hans-Peter Schmidt was in Nepal during the earthquake working on biochar projects. Please take a look at his story…

Dear all,
In the following article I try to share both impressions and some of the despair experienced last week in Nepal and a proposal for the biochar community for longer-term support for farmers in Nepal. Today was the first day that Nepal was no longer the headline in European media outlets, ousted by other news. Yet the suffering remains as does the hope for our help. It will be important to create a model for the people to take the future into their own hands; not to rebuild the same fragile mud huts, but rather to build with bamboo and straw; not to plant the same endless corn terraces, but apply agroforestry principles to prevent future landslides; not to erode the soil, but to build humus.
Yours Hans-Peter Schmidt

http://www.ithaka-journal.net/nepal-climate-farming-fond?lang=en