17.05.12

Global climate change and soil degradation from industrial agriculture are threatening the world food system.  Extreme weather events, brought on by climate change, will likely make food even more difficult to grow in the coming decades. These added costs to food production are also due to increases in the price of oil.  A higher population will also drive up demand.  As a result, Oxfam International has projected that food prices will double in the next 20 years.   Biochar is the answer to this looming crisis.  Biochar was first discovered in an investigation of the extremely fertile, “terra preta” or black earth of the Amazon.  This soil was created by an early Amazonian civilization hundreds of years ago, and continues to be productive today.  The productivity of the soil owes itself to the micro pore structure of the biochar itself.  The pores of the biochar hold nutrients essential to plant growth, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, in the soil.  This allows for farmers to decrease the cost of food production while using less nitrogen fertilizer derived from fossil fuels.  This is critical to the most poverty-stricken areas of the global south often that do not have access to artificial fertilizer.

Source: GreenAnswers