[Stoves] planting trees ( the way I'd do it 1, 000, 000, 000 years from now)
Kevin
kchisholm at ca.inter.net
Sat Jun 21 06:15:04 CDT 2014
Dear Anand
----- Original Message -----
From: Anand Karve
To: Kevin ; Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2014 1:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Stoves] planting trees ( the way I'd do it 1, 000, 000, 000 years from now)
Dear Kevin,
I had somehow missed reading your message earlier. Thanks for all the alternatives. The roots of most crops remain in the field in any case and they rot in situ, providing food to the soil microbes.
# Yes, indeed!! as they say "Feed the soil, and the plants can take care of themselves." Removing roots robs the soil of organic matter, makes the soil more prone to erosion, and disturbs existing "soil life form relationships."
As far as biomass based fuels are concerned, we have succeeded in making biomass briquettes and char briquettes, and making gases in the form of wood gas, coal gas and biogas. But users are not very happy with solid or gaseous fuels. There is a general demand for liquid fuels, an interesting area of research in which I am personally interested.
# Sadly, it is all too easy to make liquid fuels that are difficult to burn, toxic, messy, difficult to handle, and variable in composition. The challenge seems to be in making liquid fuels that are easy and convenient to use, and that have consistent properties, while still being affordable.
Best wishes,
Kevin
Yours
A.D.Karve
On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Kevin <kchisholm at ca.inter.net> wrote:
Dear AD
800,000,000 tons of Agricultural Waste is indeed a huge potential resource! How should it be handled to be of the highest possible value to the People of India?
Clearly:
* Some should be returned to the soil directly to improve soil organic matter
* Some should be composted, and added back to the soil
* Some should be converted to char for use as biochar
* Some should be converted to char for use as fuel
* Some should be used directly as fuel
* Some should be processed into pellets or briquettes for energy use
* Some should be used as animal feed
* Some should be incinerated simply to dispose of excess in the least costly manner
* Some should be used to make useful by-products
* Others....???
I would suggest that the People of India would get the greatest value for this potential resource if it was put to "diverse uses", rather than all being used for a single purpose.
Best wishes,
Kevin
----- Original Message -----
From: Anand Karve
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 2:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Stoves] planting trees ( the way I'd do it 1, 000, 000, 000 years from now)
Dear Stovers,
We convert agricultural waste into charcoal by using a TLUD type of kiln and briquette the powdery char. In India, we produce annually about 800 million tons of agricultural waste, which can theoretically yield about 166 million tons of charcoal. There is no need to cut any trees for charcoal.
Yours
A.D.Karve
On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 9:43 PM, Cookswell Jikos <cookswelljikos at gmail.com> wrote:
OK.... as discouraging as the facts may be, the facts are reality, and they must be dealt with to avoid future problems.
1: Can different species be grown, that have higher Mean Annual Increments of growth?
Yes - at least in East African drylands - the traditional colonial methods of silviculture were focused on high land pine and cypress plantations not indigenous dry land adapted trees. (which now provides the feedstock for more of Kenyas charcoal) Since 1994 we have been experimenting with different dryland planting and agronomic techniques (please see http://www.acts.or.ke/dmdocuments/PROJECT_REPORTS/PISCES_Sustainable_Charcoal.pdf pg. 7) and most of our findings so far have led us to belive that endimic tree species managed in a holistic and permacutrual manner produce coppiced 'branch' charcoal with an excellent life cycle analysis profile.
2: Can the woodlots be managed better?
I think there is always room for improvement in many fields, but I have definitely noticed more small and large farms in Kenya appling more of a conservation agriculture approach to land use planning.
3: Can cooking practises be changed?
Yes - but with great difficulty. Imagine me coming from Kenya to tell your grandma that she's all wrong and vice versa...
What I have found though is that as people achieve higher incomes (and watch more TV) in East Africa cooking energy sources becomes more mixed and more specialized depending on the dish being cooked.
4: Would more efficient stoves help significantly?
The Kenya Ceramic Jiko has been one of the most widely disseminated cookstoves in East Africa, on one hand, it saves users up to 50% on their charcoal bills compared to all metal non-insulated stoves. On the other hand, me and my father always wondered that if by making popularly stove that made it cheaper and easier to use charcoal coupled with population growth, did we not create more of a fuel dependency? This is why since the 1990's we have been advocating as much as possible to encourage all other stove makers to also think about provisions for reafforestation efforts.
5: Can other forms of fuel, or other sources of energy, be used to take some of the pressure off the woodlots?
Please see this recently released quite amazing document from ICRAF http://www.slideshare.net/agroforestry/miyuki-iiyamaicrafcharcoal-review2013 ''What happend to the charcoal crisis?''
Yes, but if as WWF has seen in Virunga, if people switch to fossil fuels, what happens when they are found under forests? And even solar cookers and microwaves may not help as much as if one takes into account the Life Cycle Analysis of the transport, computing power to design one etc... a 3 stone fire and growing your own trees start looking more attractive.
I am a great proponent of tree based biomass energy for at least people's sunday BBQ's ( which is a huge cause of charcoal us in Kenya!) due to the fact of all the other ecological trickledown effects.
6: Would some form of "Agroforestry" be possible, to put the land to a higher use, with multi-cropping?
...etc...
yes we have tried food, fuel and fodder combinations to good effect in Kajiado - linear non-woodlot forestry is beginning to create more of an appearance in this area as land becomes adjudicated and title deeds issued. Land tenure is a huge obstacle to forestry in Kenya, this is why I personally am in favour of things like aerial seeding programs - if we some how grow too many trees, we will always be able to cut them down to cook with! https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.622109591163773.1073741929.199734683401268&type=1&l=0b605799ef
Many thanks for your response.
Teddy
Cookswell Jikos
www.cookswell.co.ke
www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos
www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com
Mobile: +254 700 380 009
Mobile: +254 700 905 913
P.O. Box 1433, Nairobi 00606, Kenya
On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:15 AM, <Carefreeland at aol.com> wrote:
Kevin and Stovers,
I am desperately wanting to farther study points 1,2,5 and 6. You got my attention buddy. Sorry, I don't have a 100 year old experiment to show you the results of my work. I do not do research papers because I'm an illiterate idiot. Many of you who have been on this list a while may remember- this letter will be a small record of the state of a sample of my research. Nobody has me asked this lately but you, Kevin. I'll probably die knowing and wanting to know way more than I can ever tell, if I talked the rest of my life. It just seems to bore everybody but some Biomass people. I miss you all out here alone trapped in the future.
My extensive experience with landscaping and gardening suggests we have only begun to barely scratch the surface of multicropping research. Mother Nature has done an amazing job of this, but we are not after the same goals as her. Typical natural forestry suggests that a 3 layer canopy is most efficent in biomass productive environments. As we push into less productive land, that will be different in both directions. . What each layer consists of for any given set of environmental conditions is has wide increasingly complex variables. Someday 100 years from now, a computer program will be crunching in whatever is the Cray Super Computer of that age. It will tell the then modern forester what works best- maybe. Then, only experiments to compare the real time data to to the computer model will fine tune the long term plan.
Modern complex forestry computer programs mostly focus on select harvest models. Computer planting programs just use current harvest data to optimise plantation - type management. How do you get data on trees that take 300 years or more to be fully mature? Recent studies suggest that 1000 year old Redwoods are still increasing in biomass production over younger trees. Got 1000 years to collect data?? Maybe we should be breeding many trees to grow 1000 years.
If we make half the progress growing trees that we have made in a typical productive vegetable garden in 4000 or more years, you can throw out the predictions for production numbers. New numbers may be easily a power of ten more productive. Just look what small changes have brought us. When you consider the efficiency of photosynthisis to convert sunlight into chemical energy, that number theoreticlly can go two powers of ten or more. Not only do we need to first optimise growing technique, but then optimise breeding, and back to growing technique and so fourth.
I don't even want to consider pandoras box of geneticly modified plants. I think outer space is the best place to release them so they don't contaminate our biosphere like GM corn has. I considered that thought over 20 years ago and it merged with my childhood idea of growing trees on the moon and on orbit. That is why I've wanted to merge a greenhouse with a blacksmith shop. It's how space homesteads will do it. I discussed this issue at a hydroponics conference in the early 1990's and everybodys eyes rolled, so I just went out and worked on it with what I had. Nobody came to collect the amazing data I saw everyday for twenty years. A few years ago, my greenhouse was forced to close and my finacial situation has nearly halted all my research. I hope to slowly get back in the game if I don't loose my new 5 acre farm. It is Gods gift to me for my study. Most of the assets of this land are hidden and only of use to me.
Most of the forests today are being primarlily managed for lumber of some type. Hunting wildlife is about the only large second crop. Small private lands and prototype corporate plantations are where the experiments are being done. When we start to combine orchard and vegetable production with forestry, the sky is the limit. I take that back, how far has the Big Bang blown things open today? That is the limit. And this is how we will get out there if we do, over a billion years of future evolution and space travel. Call me crazy, but I saw a powerful vision as a child that told me this. You just keep moving the decimal point on the equation. Carl Sagan must have seen a vision like mine, and so I supported his work long ago. Most thought he was craazy too. Thanks Carl.
I have been blessed to spend a little time with one of the greatest foresters of our generation. John Guthrie of Wiggins Mississippi fame. My crash course in Southern USA forestry, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, taught me the following: The closer we get to understanding the original native environment, the better we can merge our needs to the use of the land given to us.
John would be first to tell you that if only a higher power can make a tree, who are we to decide how and where to grow it? That has led him to push the reintroduction of missing native tree species which have been eliminated one at a time. Grown in plantations to examine and focuse on each, longleaf pine is a good example. It was like the White Oak tree, the king of the forest, until it was logged nearly to extinction. Currently, burning of undergrowth is done like the Natives did for management in early stage plantations. Timing is everything. We had lively conversation about grazing and/ or underplanting of numerous shrub species to reduce this practice. I think I opened up his mind by the smile on his face. Some private plantations were doing this on a very basic experimental level in 2006.
The forest plot I was camped in, had longleaf pine being interplanted where select thining was being done to young Southern Yellow Pine, It was John"s land right behind the International Paper plant, so I think it was a prototype. The thinnings were going mostly to chip and saw for OSB and other products. The small thinings were hauled at harvest cost for pulp. Katrina opened it up more - as if God were saying to John " you got the idea boy, now go with it and I'll help yu".
Dr. Michler I belive is his name, discussed his work at Purdue U. with me about 10 years ago. At the time he was pioneering in the selecting of 3 hardwood species: Red Oak, Black Cherry, and Walnut. An Indiana nursery was selling the products of tissue culture of the best selected species. Breeding of hardwoods was still in it's infancy. The new science then was using gene mapping to select known genes to assist breeding of trees which were only starting to bear fruit. That is very exciting -more productive and safe than GM plants. I called because I wanted to know if anybody had studied growing trees to make charcoal fuel and he wondered what for.....
Kevin, I would like to add to your bucket list a huge compounding factor number 7. What happens when we do all of the above, yet look at secondary and multiple layers of recycling of plants. For a great example you and I may have discussed the fact that Charcoal production for an industrial fuel may be the best utimate landfill killer. Demolition waste must be the largest growing filler of landfills. I have done limited research into which trees produce the best metallurgical charcoal. What happens when we breed trees for example, to both build houses, then reuse the wood to fuel a blast furnace to make the finest iron ever made?. The two uses are very compatible. Just so happens that some of the strongest hardwoods as well as pine species make real clean charcoal. The hardwoods make the most dense charcoal by nature. We can also infuse charcoal with additional hydrocarbons in the conversion process, with net energy production. If we grow walnut trees for example, we can produce food and many chemicals too at no additional cost.
Nearly every organic chemical can be coaxed from living material. Don't even get me started on the chemical refinery/production avenue. I've said enough. I cannot do much more or take time to record what I've found out or can find out without a break in life somewhere. That is why I don't contribute much anymore to these lists. It gets me all excited, and then frustration sets in. I have 3 kids to raise and cannot waste my time playing with the future of mankind when I need food stamps.
Enough said.
Ok , do I have anybodies attention now???
I have to get off the computer so my Son can do his homework, Sorry, no time for editing or additional info tonight.
Dan Dimiduk
Shangri- La Research.
In a message dated 11/13/2013 7:41:16 AM Eastern Standard Time, kchisholm at ca.inter.net writes:
Dear RB
OK.... as discouraging as the facts may be, the facts are reality, and they must be dealt with to avoid future problems.
1: Can different species be grown, that have higher Mean Annual Increments of growth?
2: Can the woodlots be managed better?
3: Can cooking practises be changed?
4: Would more efficient stoves help significantly?
5: Can other forms of fuel, or other sources of energy, be used to take some of the pressure off the woodlots?
6: Would some form of "Agroforestry" be possible, to put the land to a higher use, with multi-cropping?
...etc...
Most people like to do things the way they have always been done. They can't expect different results if they do things the same way they have always done things in the past. The cruel facts are that if they want different results, then they will have to find changes that are acceptable to them, OR choose to live with the consequences of their present practises. Those seem to be the cruel realities.
Best wishes,
Kevin
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***
Dr. A.D. Karve
Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
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