📍BIOCHAR CAN BRING BACK NUTRITION IN OUR FOOD

There have been quite a few reports in recent times showing that the nutritive value of our food has been declining steadily. It would appear that in just one lifetime, the vital complex mineral mix our bodies need is now just half of what it used to be. So the spinach or carrots that we eat today have only half the nutrition of what our parents or grandparents got from their spinach and carrots.

The reason is that our soil and the nutrients in it are only a fraction of what there was earlier. What we did was to abandon the biological resilience inherent in our soils and opted for chemicals like urea to add nutrients. With this, the living ecosystem of bugs, worms and bacteria that lived in the soil and maintained its nutrition, went into decline. So how do we rectify this situation? An important part of the solution lies in the age old practice of Biochar.

Biochar, literally translated as charcoal or coal made from biological materials was known to ancient agricultural societies as far back as 2,500 years ago. Indigenous communities across the world, from the Amazon Basin to sub-Saharan Africa, have historically used biochar as a soil amendment to improve fertility and increase crop yields. These farming communities improved their weak acidic soils by adding a mixture of charcoal and biomass to it . This rich soil was self-generating and is still found to be fertile after all these years. A significant benefit from biochar use is its beneficial impact on soil structure. The addition of biochar increases soil porosity, creating spaces that enhance water infiltration and retention. This property is particularly beneficial in arid and semi-arid regions where water availability is limited, as it helps plants access water more efficiently during dry periods. 

When biochar is incorporated into the soil, it enhances the soil’s moisture-holding capacity and promotes microbial activity. This in turn produces compounds which increase crop yields. Studies have shown that soils amended with biochar exhibit higher levels of essential nutrients, leading to materially higher crop yields and more nutritious agricultural produce. So our spinach and carrots would become nutritious as before .

Other benefits of biochar

Biochar production has the potential to profitably deal with crop waste and to create a circular farming system. In Louisiana for instance, a 150 year old sugarcane farm is setting up biochar production as a solution to its multi-million ton piles of sugarcane waste/bagasse. Similarly, in Kenya, sugar producers are moving toward creating biochar from their massive piles of bagasse. This biochar is sold to farmers as a soil improvement package.

Farmers in India should be encouraged and supported to use this approach to deal with crop residue every season. Instead of burning this crop residue and adding to the already horrific air pollution, it can be used to produce biochar, a profitable revenue generating product to increase the fertility of their own farms and sell to other farmers.