The Biochar Solution - 9780865716773

Conventional Agriculture pollutes our water, is a major contributor to climate change and has degraded soil carbon by as much as 80 percent in most of the world's breadbaskets. Created by burning biomass in the absence of oxygen, biochar has the unique ability to withhold carbon from the atmosphere while simultaneously building soil fertility. Author Albert Bates traces the evolution of this extraordinary substance from the ancient dark earths of the Amazon to current practices.

The Biochar Solution combines a detailed analysis of our global climate and food predicament with techniques for the production and use of biochar and practical carbon farming.

Stepping back from the brink of irrevesible climate change will require deep and lasting social changes and significant industrial emissions reductions. Carbon farming practices could from an important part of a new agricultural paradigm, one that places priority on ecological restoration, protecting biodiversity, healing the atmosphere and oceans, and once again becoming a garden planet.

Bates has woven together a highly engaging interdisciplinary answer to climate change...Tracy L. Barnett, Journalist and founder/editor of TheEsperanzaProject.org