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Biochar turns a negative positive
Tyler Hamilton, Toronto Star
Charcoal – it’s great for barbequing hamburgers and hot dogs over a long weekend. But can it help save humanity?
Dozens of scientists who gathered in Australia three weeks ago for the first annual International Agrichar Initiative conference say that making “char” and burying it in soil – a process called “sequestration” – could prove a valuable approach to managing climate change.
It seems an odd suggestion, but early research shows that “agrichar” or “biochar” sequestration not only keeps carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere, it can actually extract it and contribute to the goal of reducing atmospheric concentrations. Instead of being “carbon neutral,” the storage of biochar in soil is being dubbed as “carbon negative.”
“Our calculations suggest that emissions reductions can be 12 to 84 per cent greater if biochar is put back into the soil instead of being burned to offset fossil-fuel use,” Johannes Lehmann, an associate professor of crops and soil sciences at Cornell University, wrote in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature.
Lehmann, a co-chair of the Australian conference and one of the leading experts on biochar sequestration, said the potential could be huge but more study is necessary. In fact, a keynote speaker at the conference was scientist Tim Flannery, author of the top-selling book on global warming, The Weather Makers, who has become a vocal supporter.
To better understand the concept of biochar sequestration, it’s important to distinguish between an approach that’s carbon “neutral” and one that’s “negative.”
(21 May 2007)
Good article. Nice to see the mainstream media taking an interest in Terra Preta. -BA
British prawns go to China to be shelled
Jon Ungoed-Thomas, Sunday Times
Supermarkets and food producers are taking their products on huge globetrotting journeys, despite pledging to cut their carbon emissions.
The Sunday Times has found that home-grown products are being transported thousands of miles overseas for processing before being put on sale back in Britain.
Scottish prawns are being hand-shelled in China, Atlantic haddock caught off Scotland is being prepared in Poland and Welsh cockles are being sent to Holland to be put in jars before going on sale in Britain. ..
Organic and fair trade producers are also guilty of notching up excess food miles by sending their goods from country to country. Traidcraft coffee, sold at Sainsbury’s, is made from beans grown in Bukoba, Tanzania.
Once the coffee is cultivated, it is driven 656 miles to Dar-es-Salaam and then shipped 3,250 miles to Vijayawada in India where it is packed. The coffee is loaded back on the ships and transported another 5,000 miles to Southampton. It is then driven 330 miles to Gateshead and is finally driven to Leeds for distribution to Sainsbury’s stores. ..
(20 May 2007)
Sky-high corn means hogs get candy
Lauren Etter, Denver Post
When Alfred Smith’s hogs eat trail mix, they usually shun the Brazil nuts.
“Pigs can be picky eaters,” Smith says, scooping a handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews from one of the 12 one-ton boxes in his shed. Generally, he says, “they like the sweet stuff.”
Smith is just happy his pigs aren’t eating him out of house and home. Growing demand for corn-based ethanol, a biofuel that has surged in popularity over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn, Smith’s main feed, to near-record levels. Because feed represents farms’ biggest single cost in raising animals, farmers are serving them a lot of people food, because it can be cheaper.
In Colorado, Ken Ulrich is mixing stale potato chips, outdated flour, sunflower hulls and sometimes even beer into the food he serves the 8,000 cattle eating meals at his Platteville feedlot.
“Historically we’ve fed them either corn and silage or corn and hay,” Ulrich said. Products left over from making people food have always been added when it was available – things like whey from a tofu manufacturer and potato peelings from off a snack food maker’s floor.
“Since the price of corn has gone so high, we’ve done it more.” ..
(21 May 2007)
Why food costs more
John Greenwood, Financial Post (Canada)
After steamrolling through a laundry list of base metals, then oil and gas, the global commodity boom is finally hitting us in the gut: at the supermarket checkout counter.
Canadians paid 3.8% more for food in April compared with a year earlier, including an extra 12.9% for fresh vegetables. The experts have coined a new term to describe the phenomenon. They call it agflation, and they blame the hedge funds.
The examples are everywhere. Global milk prices are rising at the fastest rate ever. Powdered milk, a key benchmark, has jumped 60% in six months to US$1.58 at the beginning of May. Since 2000, beef prices have jumped nearly 30% on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
We’ve all heard how China and India are pushing up demand for food products, and how the biofuels sector is gobbling up corn supply. But many observers say hedge funds are the biggest culprits behind food inflation.
“This is a new game,” said Don Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Capital Markets. “These people have amounts of capital that are mind-boggling and if they decide they like something, they put in a lot of money and they are prepared to do it in a hurry.”
(19 May 2007)
I’m not an expert, but it seems that there are two phenomena: a long-term rise in food prices, and short-term volatility. Hedge funds might affect the volatility, but not the long-term trends. -BA
