[Stoves] Fuel production, biochar, and feeding the stove in 2040

[Anand Karve]

Dear Crispin,
for the past two days, I have been thinking about your comments. All
soils have minerals as well as micro-organisms. Water is a universal
solvent. So all minerals in the soil dissolve in the capillary water
to give solutions having concentrations that can be measured only in
PPM or PPB. The roots of the plants are quite inefficient in absorbing
minerals from such a dilute solution, because the absorptive organs of
the roots are the root hairs at the tips of the roots. The soil
micro-organisms can absorb the minerals more efficiently, because they
absorb through their entire cell surface. 1 g soil contains about 10
raised to 8 microbes (8 zeroes after 1) so you can imagine the surface
area of the microbes that is available for absorption. The capillary
water in the soil represents a saturated solution, because there
always exist in the soil a certain quantity of minerals in an
un-dissolved form. Whatever is absorbed from the solution by the
microbes or by roots is immediately replaced by molecules migrating
from the pool of undissolved material into the solution.  Thus the
concentration of minerals in the capillary water has a constant value,
which represents the equilibrium concentration.  The minerals absorbed
by the microbes are metabolized by them and converted into proteins,
co-enzymes, cell wall components, etc. This is how the soil microbes
mobilise the minerals in the soil. When the microbes die, the minerals
sequestered in their cells are released into the soil. These minerals,
now in a water soluble form, can be readily absorbed by plants. All
agricultural scientists are in agreement that the microbial count in a
soil is positively correlated with soil fertility. The plants feed the
microbes with leaves and other plant parts that they drop on the
ground, and the microbes feed the plants with soil minerals, which
they mobilise by the process described above. Thus your argument, that
the available nutrients in the amezon soil have already been absorbed
by trees and nothing is left in the soil, is wrong. As long as there
are un-dissolved minerals in the soil, they would continue to be
mobilised by the microbes and fed to plants. If you have a soil layer
1 m deep in your farm, it would have enough minerals in it to allow
you to conduct agriculture for 25,000 years. We have about 30 km of
earth's crust under our feet and new rocks are all the time being
formed. So the argument that the soil gets exhausted when plants grow
on it is wrong.
Nothing in the above message has been mentioned in the textbooks on
soil chemistry. I just sat under a Bodhi tree, meditated, and it all
came to me as a revelation.
I am unfortunately no longer associated with any research Institute,
but students do come to me for advice about the projects that they are
supposed to conduct as part of their academic work. I am thinking
about some experiments to test the hypothesis that some soil microbes
might be in a position to metabolize molecular carbon. It is assumed
that there was life on the earth about 4 billion years ago, and
photosynthesis came into existence only about 2 billion years later.
So how did the living organisms sustain themselves in the first 2
billion years of their existence? Of course there was no mineral coal
during the first 2 billion years!
 Yours
A.D.Karve

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
<crispinpigott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear AD
>
>
>
> Terra Preta soil in the Amazon is probably the result of at least 10,000
> years of rotational slash-and-burn farming (on about a 7 year cycle) and it
> formed accidentally. It is well established that the fertility of the soil
> is much higher where the char is, and only a few feet away it is acidic and
> much less productive.
>
>
>
> OK, well and good. In the Amazon rain forest, there is nearly no nutrients
> in the soil because anything that can be taken up has been. The value is all
> above the ground, not buried in it. Is it possible that the char makes
> things unavailable? That the real reason it works is that it hold the
> nutrients away from the massive tree growth above?
>
>
>
> Apart from the obvious water-holding ability (which some soils do not have)
> is it possible the benefit comes from rotational slash-and-burn where the
> forest grows and invests in roots and litter, and the high-char soils grab
> and hold the fertility? Then some farmer comes along and plants a different
> set of crops that specialise in growing underground (yams, peanuts etc) and
> these plants are able to access the stored materials because they promote a
> different set of bacteria on their (different) roots.
>
>
>
> If the soil is in no need of additional water retention capability and is
> already exhausted and no retained fertiliser is in it, then there would be
> no benefit.
>
>
>
>>The fact that even the so called insoluble minerals like quartz and opal
>> dissolve in water, suggests that charcoal buried in the soil might also be
>> dissolved in water and absorbed by plants and microbes.
>
>
>
> Carbon has quite strong electrical charges at the tips of its structures,
> right? That could induce mineral crystal breakdown together with a bacteria
> or two.
>
>
>
>>There are no records of molecular carbon being metabolized by living
>> organisms, but this line of thinking needs to be followed up and
>> investigated.
>
>
>
> Correct. The fact that it seems to work well only in acidic soils might be a
> pointer. Acid + electrical charge. What does that
> give/liberate/stall/prevent/permit?
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Crispin
>
>
>
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-- 
***
Dr. A.D. Karve
President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)

*Please change my email address in your records to: adkarve at gmail.com *