- Berry-go-Round 6, a plant-based blog carnival, is up. Jeremy says: “Taxonomy! Yay!“
- US uproots sugarcane, Kenya plants it. “Deciding who is right is difficult.” Er, you betcha.
- California’s largest cash crop can be an environmental disaster.
- Cassava not as nasty as its wild relatives.
More energy
And, concidentally or not, a conference on Charcoal and Communities in Africa has just ended in Maputo. There’s been some press coverage, but I can’t find any recommendations etc. online yet.
Maybe bio-char does have a part to play
Terra preta is the very fertile black soil found mostly in parts of the Amazon basin, and believed to have been created by people mixing fine particles of charcoal and other stuff into the soil. A whole lot of voodoo has grown up around the subject, with unscrupulous charlatans, head in the sand naysayers and all manner of other life forms clustering around the idea. Some people think that one can create terra preta by adding bio-char to the soil, and that miracles will ensue.
I recently dumped on biofuels from a great height because in essence they are mining the soil. Doesn’t matter how slowly; at some point, the fun will have to stop. In the comments on that post, Karl and Anastasia weighed in by saying that bio-char, a potential residue after extracting bioenergy, could be returned to the land to close the loop. I dumped on that idea too.
Now I’m not so sure. Continue reading “Maybe bio-char does have a part to play”
Nibbles: Biofuels, Prices, Biofuels again, Wolf, Mushrooms
- Wanna laff? Ag Leaders Challenge Ethanol Myths.
- Whisper it; the market works. Rice futures tumble, again.
- “Some biofuels might do more harm than good to the environment, study finds”. Alert the media! Oh, they already did.
- “Graphing Jane Austen” approach suggests wolf taught man to hunt. Little Red Riding Hood unavailable for comment.
- India’s Mushroom City.
Biofuel dreams will all go up in smoke
It doesn’t get any more straightforward than that.